Ethical aspects of scientific research and publication

Last Updated on: 8/10/2024

1. Code of Ethics

The editorial policy on ethical aspects of the scientific publication of this journal is governed by the guidelines established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

2. Policy on conflicts of interest
As expressed in the Recommendations for the preparation, editing and publication of scholarly work in medical journals, elaborated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME), public trust in the scientific process and the credibility of published articles depend in part on how transparently conflicts of interest are handled during planning, implementation, writing, peer review, editing and publication. According to these recommendations, a conflict of interest exists when someone during the publication or arbitration process (author, reviewer or editor) has ties that may influence judgement. These ties involve different types, namely:
- Financial relationships with the industry, at personal level or with direct relatives such as: salary or fees for employment or employment relationship; consultancies and/or share holding.
- Personal relationships.
- Academic competition.
- Intellectual interests.

Although conflicts may not be completely prevented, if the author is certain or even suspicious about their existence, he/she should declare them in the Letter to the Editor and in the body of the article, before the bibliographic references.

2.1 Authors
Information available on the Letter to the Editor

2.2 Reviewers
Information available on the Guidelines for external review evaluation

2.3 Editors
The editors participating in final decisions about accepting or rejecting the publication of articles (Director, Editorial Director and Associate Editors) shall refrain from participating in such decisions if they have conflicts of interest or relationships that may lead to conflicts of interest regarding the articles they are evaluating. Likewise, the editors of the Revista Argentina de Salud Pública commit not to share the information of manuscripts or their reception and evaluation, review process content or status, collaborators’ critics or their final destination, with anyone except the authors and reviewers.

3. Research involving human subjects: intervention of research ethics committees and informed consent

Articles submitted to the Revista Argentina de Salud Pública (RASP) shall comply with the ethical standards and principles set out in the WMA (World Medical Association) Declaration of Helsinki – Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects adopted by the 64th WMA General Assembly in 2013, the recommendations on Protection of Research Participants established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the International Ethical Guidelines for Health-related Research Involving Humans prepared by the Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) and the specific regulations of the country in which the research was conducted, if any.

The research ethical safeguards related to the protection of human subjects shall be reported in the section Methods, specifying the obtention of the informed consent from the study participants, if applicable, and the approval of the research protocol by the appropriate Ethics Committee.

With regard to the exceptions to the informed consent requirement, the RASP adopts the approach expressed in the Guideline for Research on Human Subjects, Resolution 1480/2011 of the Ministry of Health of Argentina, section “A3. Informed consent”.

To ensure that authors explicitly state the compliance with ethical principles, in the case of research involving human subjects (including ethnographic works with in-depth interviews or any type of research involving people), they are asked to submit along with the article a Letter to the Editor, in which they shall make a statement on the ethical aspects of the research and the conflicts of interest, including the obtention of the informed consent from people involved in the research and the approval of the research project by a research ethics committee.

4. Corrections, retractions and editorial expressions of concern
For the management of these aspects, the Revista Argentina de Salud Públicatakes as a reference the recommendations given in the Recommendations for the preparation, editing and publication of scholarly work in medical journals, which establishes the following:

4.1 Corrections: if necessary, a correction notice will be published as soon as the mistake/s is/are detected, detailing the changes and the original publication with the title Errata. A new version of the article will also be published detailing the changes compared to the original version and the dates when the changes were made. Likewise, previous electronic versions should prominently note that there are more recent versions of the article.

4.2 Misconduct: Plagiarism, self-plagiarism, duplication and fragmentation: although the editorial policy of the journal is based on the publication of original and unpublished articles in order to avoid behaviors against scientific ethics, Associate Editors use the PLAGIARISMA program as a tool for detecting possible cases of plagiarism. In cases where any of the above mentioned behaviors is detected, the article in question may be removed before publication with prior notice to the author, or after publication, in which case the editor will publish a retraction notice.

4.3 Expressions of concern: The journal may consider the publication of an expression of concern notice if an article is under investigation. This notice may be published when the editor has significant concern about the reliability of an article, but not enough information to warrant a retraction until an institutional investigation is complete.