RBGI Ethical Guidelines

RBGI's ethical guidelines are based on guidelines established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and encompass a required high degree of principles and ethical behavior from all parties involved in the editorial flow: authors, editors and editorial staff, reviewers and publisher.

 

Responsibilities and Duties of the Authors:

Ethical and legal aspects: authors must submit works that have been developed ethically and responsibly, and that comply with all relevant legislation, as well as authorization from the Research Ethics Committee, when applicable due to the nature of the study.

Article authorship: Article authors are considered to be any individual who made a significant contribution, in terms of conception, theoretical framework, method, analysis and conclusions, actively participating in the research or writing the publication. All those who made significant contributions are characterized as co-authors, and are responsible for the results presented. Others who have collaborated with secondary elements, such as textual review, access to data collection, can be acknowledged via acknowledgments in the article itself.

On originality and plagiarism: all manuscripts must be the original work of the authors and not present any kind of plagiarism, including self-plagiarism, using the same passage in different media. RBGI uses plagiarism detectors in articles.

  • No LLM tool will be accepted as a credited author on a research paper. That is because any attribution of authorship carries with it accountability for the work, and AI tools cannot take such responsibility.
  • Researchers using LLM tools should document this use in the methods or acknowledgments sections. If a paper does not include these sections, the introduction or another appropriate section should be used to document the use of the LLM:  Just state you used it and where. Like any other software. 

Acknowledgment of sources: if the authors have used work and/or words from third parties, the publications must be duly cited and referenced directly or indirectly.

Multiple, redundant or concurrent publication: authors must not submit the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time, as well as 'fragment' works into smaller articles ('salami science') with the sole purpose of increasing the number of publications and citations.

Disclosure, Conflicts of Interest and Financial Support: Authors must, at the time of submission, disclose any conflict of interest, financial or otherwise, that may influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. Authors must also acknowledge individuals or organizations that provided financial support to conduct the research.

Data access and retention: Authors may be asked by RBGI at any time to provide raw data related to manuscripts for editorial review and must be prepared to provide public access to this data, if possible.

Corrections/Retractions: When an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published work, it is the author's obligation to immediately notify the journal's editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the article.

 

Responsibilities and Duties of Evaluators:

Disclosure, Conflict of Interest, and Use of Authors' Intellectual Property: Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in a Reviewer's research without the express written consent of the author. Furthermore, all privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for any type of advantage, as they are characterized as the authors' intellectual property.

Double-blind evaluation: evaluators will focus their efforts on evaluating the manuscript itself, and will not seek to investigate, by other means, the identity of the authors, focusing on evaluation based on the scientific merit of the research.

Cordiality and constructive evaluation: evaluators will not use arguments that are offensive and that attack the moral and integrity of the authors, and may be disqualified on the basis of the journal's evaluation, if such behavior is identified.

 

Responsibilities/Duties of the Editor and the Editorial Board:

Editorial decisions: The editor-in-chief and the corresponding editor are responsible for deciding which of the articles submitted to the journal should be published. The decision must be guided by the journal's Editorial Board policies and must be based exclusively on academic merit and the decision supported by the reviewers. Peer review helps the editor make editorial decisions and, through editorial communications with the author, also aims to help the author improve the manuscript.

Fair play: an editor should evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content, without considering race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, personal interests, ethnic origin, citizenship or political philosophy of the authors in their evaluation.

Confidentiality: The Corresponding Editor and any member of the editorial team must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, and other editorial advisors, as appropriate.

Disclosure, Conflict of Interest, and Use of Authors' Intellectual Property: Unpublished materials disclosed in a submitted manuscript must not be used in an editor's research without the express written consent of the author. Furthermore, all privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for any type of advantage, as they are characterized as the authors' intellectual property.

 

Any and all evidence of plagiarism and/or redundant publications will be evaluated by the Editorial Board of RBGI and EDUCS. The Journal may request an investigation by the institution where the work originated and other competent bodies. Every reported act of unethical behavior may be investigated, even if discovered years after publication, consistent with Crossmark's policies.

RBGI, committed to defending scientific integrity, may publish Errata, Expressions of Concerns or Retraction Notices depending on the situation and in compliance with COPE.

 

Editorial Board Members, Editors, Journal Staff Publications
The Managing Editor or Assistants cannot publish his/her own manuscripts in the journal he/she manages. If the editor or the editorial board member is the author of the manuscript submitted to the journal, which he/she serves, then he/she cannot participate in peer review process and the decision making procedure regarding his/her own work.

 

RBGI is signatary of DORA

RBGI is commited with RRBM

Reference

Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). (March 7, 2011). Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors. Available at: http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors_Mar11.pdf