Estado & comunes follows good practices to offer clear guidance to collaborators, enhance circulation and offer relevant studies about the state, administration, and public policies. This list intends that authors, reviewers, and the editorial team observe the established guidelines and principles. This journal follows the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines available at https://bit.ly/2TNrp89

 

I. Authors

 

- Intellectual property 

     * Authors can make use of their articles without any limitation on their moral or economic rights.

     * Authors declare that they have not breached the intellectual property rights of third parties.

     * Further details are available in the Guideline for authors tab on this webpage.

 

- Submissions 

     * Authors that send a contribution to any call for papers declare that have read and understood the bases, understand the requirements, and agree to comply with them. This includes this code of ethics and the journal’s editorial policies.

     * An author submits an article in a personal capacity and is the only person who makes or processes changes or modifications during the editing process.

     * An author or co-author can only send one article. During the editing process with Estado & comunes, the same article cannot be submitted to other journals, books, or digital platforms.

     * The journal does not publish consecutive articles from the same author. An author must wait for a subsequent number before publishing again.

     * A rejected article cannot be submitted again unless substantive changes are made.

     * An author should explicitly inform the contributions, either institutional or personal, to his or her article. If an article is part of a research funded by an institution or programme, authors should give the relevant credit.

     * The proper structure and logical sequence of the sections and the correct syntax are the responsibility of the author. All authors are responsible for the authorship of the article, irrespective of their order of appearance.

     * Authors declare that they have not breached the intellectual property rights of third parties. Therefore, they state that the journal can make use of the article without any limitation or impediment, including the graphics, photographs, drawings, tables, graphs, charts, maps, diagrams and any other visual or written elements that conform to it.

     * In the case of interviews and focus groups, authors should be able to confirm that they followed procedures and received consent that complies with the right to privacy.

     * The journal advises against the fragmentation of an article, especially if the documents share the same title and content.

     * Authors, once the article has completed the editing process, confirm that they have made corrections, amendments, additions, and improvements, and it can be published.

 

- Plagiarism 

     * Authors declare that they have not committed plagiarism and self-plagiarism. Plagiarism is using ideas, information, and visual elements as one’s own without proper citation. Self-plagiarism is the use of the author’s pre-existing document not properly referenced.

     * Submitted articles must be original and unpublished. Previously published articles in Spanish, in any digital or printed format, in whole or in part, will be rejected. The editors will assess an article’s originality through the Compilation The maximum amount of similitude with other sources is 10% (excluding non-significant common terms). Self-citation will not exceed 10% of the total number of bibliographic references in an article.

     * Authors must cite primary and secondary sources when quoting verbatim, indirectly or paraphrasing. It is the authors’ responsibility to check the correct citation.

     * All quotes must be referenced. The publication date, fragments or obtained data should not be modified. Authors declare that they have not altered the information.

 

II. Editors 

     * Editors pre-assess submitted articles under the following criteria: timely submission, form (language, style, syntaxis, extension, abstract, keywords), and correspondence with the call’s subject.

     * Editors highly regard authors’ intellectual independence as well as the content of the articles.

     * The journal editor, coordinators of the Tema Central section, and a member of the Editorial Board share the responsibility in the search for referees.

     * Coordinators ensure that the articles’ content corresponds with the terms of the call and the university lines of research.

     * The selection of the best works, based on the blind refereeing reports, will be shared with the coordinators of the Tema Central section.

     * The editors will attempt a regular balance between the Tema Central and Coyuntura sections. The number of articles for Tema Central should be no fewer than four and no more than six. Five articles in each section are recommended.

     * Sixteen academic articles per year is the indexing target.

     * Members of the editorial team cannot submit articles to any call for papers. Similarly, coordinators may not submit their own articles to the volume they supervise.

     * Editors can suggest authors to include specialized bibliography if it has not been considered.

 

III. Referees 

     * Peer reviewers will only assess articles that were rated highest during pre-assessment.

     * Referees know and comply with the editorial policies and the code of ethics.

     * Referees employ a language that is precise and constructive in their reports. In the reports, they will communicate their ideas and criticisms effectively and adequately explain their observations.

     * Blind peer reviewers are external professors, researchers, and professionals. They will be chosen according to their academic experience, which should coincide with the university lines of research.

     * If there is a conflict of interest or inability to evaluate, the evaluators should state it and decline the invitation.

     * Likewise, if the referee presumes, despite anonymisation, the article authorship he or she should decline the invitation.

      * Peer reviewers cannot divulge or share with third parties the article or the evaluation report.

 

IV. Editorial Board

     * The author of a rejected article can appeal the decision. To do so, he or she will send a report to the editor, who will present it to the Editorial Broad. In turn, the Board will analyse the information and share a definitive decision based on the refereeing report.

     * With the aim of preventing conflicts of interest, the editorial team will verify that the referees are external and blind.

     * Before printing, the editors will the journal editor will send the layout version to the coordinators, who will validate it. The editors will approve the proof, front and back covers.

     * Under no circumstance, Estado & comunes will accept an article simultaneously edited by another journal, book, or academic platform. If the journal notices this practice, editors will suspend the editing process and notify other journals and publishing institutions. The journal will not accept articles that have incurred in this practice.

      * Estado & comunes can reproduce articles through virtual channels or events such as fairs, academic congresses, seminars, etc.

     * The editorial team will keep information about the submitted articles confidentially. Thus the editors will not divulgate articles during the editing process.

     * The Editorial Board will supervise that the percentage of authors from IAEN do not exceed 25% to prevent endogamy.

     * The Editorial Board will decide whether an author has failed to comply with these recommendations. In case of serious omission, Estado & comunes could ban an author indefinitely.

 

V. Complaints, requests and appeals 

     * Complaints, requests, and appeals can be submitted and will procesed at this email address: estado.comunes@iaen.edu.ec

     * Authors accept peer reviewers’ comments and observations. In case of a complaint, authors should be able to justify a possible error in the evaluation reports.

     * Authors’ complaints, requests, and appeals will be address according to COPE guidelines and the journal editorial policy. Editors has fifteen days to reply to the request.

     * Registered names and contact information will be employed, exclusively, for the purposes set out in this magazine and will not be provided to third parties or used for other purposes.

     * Editors may ask a member of the International Advisory Board or associated editors for assistance in resolving editorial issues within a period of two months.

     * Requests for certificates are delivered within seven working days.

     * In case of an appeal to an evaluation report that resulted in the article’s rejection, the Editorial Board will assess the motives and the reports before producing a final decision.

 

Conflict of interest 

 This section approaches those conflicts that arise when institutional, personal, formal, and informal relationships affect an author, reviewer, or editor’s objectivity and might influence actions, decisions, and results regarding a scientific article. Estado & comunes supports the independence of authors and peer reviewers; nonetheless, it is necessary to make conflicts of interest explicit, should they be detected. Some guidelines in this regard are:

 

I. Authors

     * Authors declare that their articles are the result of academic research and that there are no conflicts of interest that may have altered, in part or in whole, the objectivity and scientific nature of the manuscript.

     * Authors declare that the data and results obtained from the methodology are accurate and not fabricated. The authors may not alter the data.

     * Authors must communicate if they are, in any capacity, related to a member of the journal’s editorial team.

     * An author that submits an article cannot peer review documents of the same call for papers.

     * In the case of more than one author, collaborators decide the order of appearance according to their contributions, analysis, and writing of the article.

     * Requests to change or include new authors in an article must be motivated and justified.

     * The authors agree with the times established in the call for papers. No author may ask the editor to anticipate the peer review process.

 

II. Peer reviewers

     * The peer reviewer must decline to participate if a conflict of interest is suspected. The previous include having an interest in whether the article is published, a personal or professional relationship with the author, an ideological position concerning the contents, among others.

     * The peer reviewer will inform the editor if the article he or she is assessing has been published in whole or in part in another journal or book. If confirmed, the article will be rejected.

 

III. Editor

     * Editors and authors will resolve possible complaints internally, exhausting the means provided by the journal. If no agreement is reached, Editorial Board will mediate and suggest a solution.

     * Communications between editor, authors, and peer reviewers are confidential and cannot be published nor shared.

     * The editor may correct errors in published papers. Authors validate typeset articles, and any amendments are communicated to them before publication.

     * Editors publish articles approved by peer reviewers because of their relevance and academic contribution without discrimination or favoritism for content or authors.

     * Editors can publish clarifications, apologies, and corrections that result from their work.

     * An article approved for publication whose author, without objective justification, decides not to continue with the process, will not be able to send contributions to other calls for papers.

     * If there is evidence to suggest an undisclosed conflict in the published article, the editor will investigate, take corrective action and may publish a correction or clarification on the journal’s website.

     * If an article published in Estado & comunes is found to be the result of plagiarism, at the suggestion of the Editorial Board, it will be removed from the journal’s website and from all repositories and databases.