The purpose of this Code of Ethics is to define the general principles upon which are based the responsibilities of the editors, editorial boards and external reviewers, and researchers and specialists who work and/or publish in the journals edited by CENSA. The Editorial Boards of these journals request the authors to keep in mind this Code in their Professional Conduct linked to publishing of the Scientific Research.

The journal will ensure at all times the quality of its contents and the proper exercise of ethical practices by each of actors involved in the publication. The following is the Code of Conduct and Good Ethical Practices followed by the journal and is based on the Guidelines on Good Practices for Publications developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

In addition, the journal adheres to the Principles of Transparency and Best Practices in Scholarly Publishing issued by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).

In the event of suspicion or non-compliance with any of the good ethical practices established in this Code, we will proceed according to the guidelines in the Core Practices and the Flowcharts of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) for each case. In the event of suspicion or detection of new bad ethical practices that are not stated in this Code of Conduct, provisions of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in its Code of Conduct shall be evaluated and, accordingly, the actions shall be carried out as established for the dishonest actions detected.

I.PREAMBLE

All scientific disciplines, those related to natural sciences as well as to social sciences or humanities, have contributed to knowledge advances and to the material progress of life. Through its historical evolution, science has transcended stages in which man has become its main axis.

The present generations are responsible for the world we are leaving to the future generations; thus, scientists have to encourage the ethical reflection in such a way that the extraordinary possibilities derived from the scientific research contribute to improve the future life conditions and not to deteriorate them.

Although the scientist and the institution are no directly responsible for the use it might be made of the knowledge they bring to the common stock of scientific knowledge, they will avoid getting involved in projects or in dissemination of information when they suspect these might be used to an inconvenient purpose.

Research, therefore, should be transparent. The scientists must always be ready to account for their work, recognizing, on the one hand, the importance of the opinion of their peers in evaluating their findings and, on the other hand, the social impact of the scientific activity.

The Code should be a tool capable of promoting and ensuring the integrity and quality of the scientific research being published in both journals of the National Center for Animal and Plant Health (CENSA)

DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES

The following declaration of principles should guide publishers, authors, editorial boards, drafting committees and external reviewers in their various roles and levels of responsibility at which they work professionally.

Publisher, editors, editorial board, drafting committee, external reviewers, and authors should:

1. Act honorably and in accordance with the highest professional integrity rules.
2. Be guided by the parameters governing academic practice.
3. Exemplary promote the ethical standards for research and academic activity.
4. Conduct the work in an objective form.
5. Communicate the information in a responsible manner. .
6. Present scientific or professional judgments revealing the degree of foundation in the results.
7. Avoid giving opinions influenced by a conflict of interest.
8. Not at all be involved in any way in false, fraudulent or misleading publishing

Code of conduct of the journal publisher

The Publisher of the journals should:

• Define the relationships between the publisher, editors and other interested parties or acting in the publishing process through different contracts (designers, operators and managers of publishing houses)
• Respect privacy (for research participants, authors and peer reviewers)
• Respect what has been established as a standard with regard to copyright.

The publishing house should work with the editors of the journals to:

Establish the appropriate journal policies and aspire to cover those policies, particularly with regard to:

• Editorial independence
• Research ethics, including confidentiality, consent, and special requirements for human and animal research
• Authorship
• Transparency and integrity (leaving well-established the conflicts of interest, research funding, etc.)
• Team work and respect to the role of the editorial team
• Appropriate solution of the appeals and complaints
• Communication of the journal policies
• Periodical review of the journal policies (paying attention to the phenomena arising under the Open Access framework)
• Establishment of the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for the editors
• Maintaining of the academic register integrity
• Publishing of corrections, clarifications and retractions
• Publishing of the content on a timely base

The editors should:

• Accept or reject a manuscript based on the importance of the manuscript, as well as on the originality, clarity, validity of the study and its relevance to the journal involved. The responsible and prudent exercise should prevail in this act making the editor ask criteria to experts chosen for their expertise and judgment in respect to the quality and reliability of the manuscripts normally submitted for publication. However, manuscripts may be rejected without external evaluation if the editors think they are inappropriate for the journal.
• Give impartial consideration to all manuscripts submitted for publication, judging them according to their merits without discriminating them because of the country of origin, race, religion, nationality, sex, age or institutional affiliation of the writer(s).
• Immediately take into account the relationships with other manuscripts previously submitted or simultaneously offered by these authors to other journals.
• Consider manuscripts submitted for publication with all reasonable quickness.
• Not disclose information about a manuscript under consideration to people who are not involved in its revision.
• Respect the intellectual Independence of the writers.
• Send their own manuscripts submitted to the journal to the associated editors to evaluate them and select the corresponding reviewers, as the assessment of their own manuscripts constitutes a conflict of interest
• Not use unpublished information, arguments, or interpretations disclosed in a manuscript submitted to the journal in their own research, except when possessing the consent of the writer.
• Facilitate publication of an appropriate report pointing out or correcting an error in the case that convincing evidences are presented supporting that the main essence or conclusions of an article published in the journal are erroneous. The report can be written by the person who discovered the error or the original writer
• Work on continuous improvement of the journal.
• Encourage initiatives to educate researchers about ethics to keep in publishing
• Publish guidelines or standards for authors with all possible details that make authors write an appropriate article. These guidelines or standards should be reviewed and updated regularly.
• Provide the peer reviewers the guidelines for article assessment

All members of the Editorial Board and the Drafting Committee should:

1. Respect the rights and reputation of authors, and respect privacy in case it is required by their results.
2. Not falsely infer sponsorship or certification by the institution
3. Seek approval of the Centre to give written or audiovisual advertising of the journal projection or activity.

(1) In particular, this applies to situations in which a researcher attempts financial or professional benefit with a decision in which he or she participates. Any potential conflicts of interest should be fully announced. Various situations can cause conflicts of interest (authors), since interpretation of results may be influenced by labor, trade, or financial relationships, consulting, and other causes. Other conflicts of interest may arise with the reviewers by interpersonal or family relationships, and other causes

The reviewers should commit to:

1. Accept evaluation of manuscripts when they are truly experts in the given field and can make a correct and objective assessment of their content; besides, they should be able to meet the working time scheduled for the evaluation.
2. Respect the confidentiality of the peer review process and not to disclose details of the manuscript and its review during or after the review process and beyond the time it is published
3. Not to use the information obtained during the review process for themselves or someone in their institution, to take advantages, disadvantages or for bad reputation of others.
4. Declare all potential conflicts of interest.
5. Not to allow their reviews to be influenced by the origin of the manuscript, by nationality, political or religious beliefs, gender or another characteristic of the authors, or by commercial considerations, making a fair evaluation of the results.
6. Make manuscript evaluation in an appropriate way, explaining the editor and authors their opinion of the work so that their comments can be clearly understood.
7. Alert the editor when relevant results obtained by other scientists are referred in the articles they are reviewing, as well as any substantial similarity between the manuscripts under consideration and any other published work or simultaneously submitted manuscript to another journal.
8. Comply with the term given for the review process by the editor or notify him or her in case the deadline cannot be met.
9. Be objective and constructive in their evaluations, not making aggressive, defamatory or hostile comments.
10. Notify editors those manuscripts reporting research which, on the basis of ongoing knowledge, can reasonably provide knowledge, products, or technologies that could be used inappropriately by others and become threats to public health and safety of agricultural crops and other plants, animals and the environment.
11. Provide the Journal of accurate and true personal and professional information of their expertise.

Ethical obligations of authors

1. The principal obligation of the authors is to present an accurate and complete description of the research carried out, including data, making an objective discussion of the importance of the research, using the personal honesty and professional integrity which must characterize them. The research report and data collected should contain sufficient details and the reference to public sources of information, so that they allow reproducing the experimental observations by a trained professional.
2. Ensuring the Journal that the article being submitted, or any portion thereof, has not been previously published (except in the form of summaries or press releases) and will not be submitted to the consideration of other means for publication without prior cognizance of the Journal.
3. Submitting and publishing of an article in a journal means cost (time and space) for the journal, editors and reviewers, hence the author should use that "cost" in an economical and wise way by submitting specific and objective articles.
4. No submitting of fraudulent articles or duplicates; not plagiarizing, avoiding fragmentation of the reports. Fragmentation consumes space and working time in journals.
5. The co-authors of a report (publication) should be the persons who made significant scientific contributions, who also share responsibility for the results contained in the article. Other types of contributions, not inherent to the scientific results, such as administrative contributions, translations, and others, must be recognized in the session of Acknowledgements. The name of a dead person might appear in the list of authors, but the date of death should appear in a footnote at the bottom of the page. Fictitious names or pseudonyms are not allowed. When submitting the manuscript, the submitting author must have the consent of all the coauthors.
6. Follow of the rules established for the treatment of laboratory animals in case they are used in the research. All articles in which experiments on animals are conducted must meet the internationally required ethical standards
7. No use of manipulated images or taken from websites or other researchers or sources without the corresponding consent.
8. Having the institution authorization, in writing, for publishing the research results (so that no sensitive information, protectable objectives, other patrimonial information of the institutions are diffused)
9. Declaration of the conflicts of interest (when exists).
10. Comprehensive response of the remarks of the evaluation process by the academic reviewers in a warm and clear tone, and with appropriate technical elements, prior to the final judgment and, where possible, compliance with the deadlines set by the Editorial Board.
11. Transfer by the authors of their copyrights to the publisher once the original manuscript has been accepted, in accordance with the provisions of this Code.

II. DEFINITIONS

a) Error: Unintentional or unrecognized omission of an experimental result or detail, or misinterpretation of data

b) Fraud: Indicates the deliberate creation, falsification or omission of data. It undermines scientific activity from every point of view.

c) Plagiarism: It is the representation of someone else's work in such a way that it seems to be own without the proper acknowledgment. Plagiarism is the appropriation of ideas, results, processes and writings without giving proper credit to the author, appearing as if they were of their own. Plagiarism is making copies literally or near-verbatim. It is to paraphrase work texts or results of others without acknowledgment of the sources (without citing the author, paper and journal).

d) Duplicate article: It is the unacceptable reproduction of author's own results published earlier, without acknowledging the source.

e) Misconduct: Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism or other serious deviation from accepted practices for proposing, conducting or reporting research results; failure in welfare of laboratory animals, and inability to fulfill other legal requirements meeting the state, local and institutional requirements that protect and ensure the governing research.

f) Additional forms of lack of scientific conduct include: (1) simultaneously submitting the same article to more than a journal without informing the editors involved; (2) lack of consent of the co-authors (scientific work in collaboration indicates that all individuals who have genuinely participated in the investigation, either in conceptual or practical sense, have full knowledge and are fully in agreement with the content of the article); (3) lack of acknowledgement of the financial support.

- A clear distinction between error and fraud should be made. The former can be tolerated, but once recognized must be corrected. The latter cannot be accepted under any circumstance.

III. CODE OF ETHICS AS A FRAME OF REFERENCE

The objective of this Code of Ethics is to provide general principles to guide the conduct of scientists and inspire them to act according to their ethics in their professional activities.

This Code of Ethics shall not be used as an instrument to deprive any individual of the opportunity or freedom to practice scientific research with complete professional integrity. No action should be taken based on the Code of Ethics without the maximum foresight to safeguard the rights and confidentiality of the concerned individual.

IV. PRACTICE OF RESEARCH AND ACADEMIC ACTIVITY

In the practice of research and academic activities, authors publishing in the journal should accept the responsibility for the consequences of their actions. This includes the selection of their research topics and methods used in their research, analysis and reporting. They should seek and declare the truth as they see it, that is, practicing intellectual honesty. They should make every effort to plan research so that the possibility of misleading findings is minimized; they should provide a thorough discussion of the limitations of their data.

In publishing reports of their work, they should only credit the work they have actually done and avoid relationships that may limit their objectivity, create a conflict of interest or compromise their freedom of research.

The rights of intellectual property of all participating researchers must be protected properly crediting the outcome of their investigation.

To encourage intellectual honesty, articulation of institutional policies that promote research loyalty, discussion of research ethics to increase the mere awareness of an appropriate behavior, and emphasis on quality rather than on the amount of research as a criterion for recognizing the academic activity.

V. ETHICS IN HUMAN RESEARCH

Research must be scientifically sound, with an identifiable benefit perspective. Before research starts, consent submitted voluntarily by all the involved authors must be obtained; authors should withdraw from the research project at the first indication of possible harm, either physical or psychological, that they may suffer as a result of being experimental subjects. Privacy of researchers must be protected. Results should be written in an honest and accurate form.

VI. ETHICS IN RESEARCH WHEN EXPERIMENTAL ANIMALS ARE USED

All contributions using experimental animals must comply with the international code of ethics

A researcher using experimental animals should strive to treat them humanely. Despite regulations and laws, the immediate protection of the animal depends on the conscience of the scientist himself. In pursuit of these purposes, the investigator should ensure:

- That acquisition, care, use, and disposal of animals will be in accordance with the regulations prevailing in the jurisdiction of the institution. The care of laboratory animals will be important to ensure that their welfare, health and humane treatment are adequate. All scientists should ensure that all individuals using animals under their supervision have received explicit instructions about the experimental methods and care, maintenance, and handling of the species being used.

 

- Responsibilities and activities of individuals involved in research projects should be consistent with their respective competence; surgery should be performed under appropriate anesthesia; techniques to avoid infection and minimize pain should be applied during and after surgery; and when it is required to end the life of an animal, it will be done quickly and without suffering. Articles where work with animals is included must submit the authorizations by the ethics committee of their institution to the Editorial Board

VII. AGREEMENT WITH RESPECT TO COPYRIGHT OF AN ARTICLE

In order to ensure the widest dissemination and protection of the material published in our journal, the authors are asked to transfer the copyright in their articles to the Editorial Boards of Revista de Salud Animal / Revista de Proteccion Vegetal. This allows us ensuring protection against infringement.

This transfer ensures that the necessary written authorization has been obtained from the copyright owner, or the competent authorities, for the reproduction of the article, its illustrations, photos, charts, graphs or any other material being required. The author, in his/her transfer of the copyrights in the article, ensures that the parts included in the article correspond to his original work and he/she is not infringing the intellectual property rights of any other person or entity, and that they do not constitute plagiarism of other published work.

The author also ensures that the article is not currently held or under the consideration of any other journal or publication, neither has been previously assigned or licensed to any third party, and that he/she agrees that the full version of reference will not be published elsewhere without prior written consent of the Editorial Boards of the Revista de Salud Animal / Revista de Proteccion Vegetal.

In addition, the author guarantees that the article does not contain any statement that is abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, or fraudulent; that, in any way, it violates the rights of others or the applicable laws.

The author guarantees that he/she has revised our Editorial Code of Ethics and Conflicts of Interest in our publishing policy.

When the article has been written jointly with other authors, the author guarantees that he/she has been authorized by all the co-authors to sign this Agreement as a representative on their behalf; and that they have reached an agreement on the order of the authors’ names appearing in the article.

This agreement (and any litigation, proceedings, claims or disputes in relation to it) is subject to the Cuban law and the jurisdiction of the courts of the Republic of Cuba.

VIII. MODEL OF ASSIGNMENT OF PUBLISHING RIGHTS

I, _____________________________________, assign to the Editorial Board of Revista de Salud Animal / Revista de Proteccion Vegetal the right to publish the manuscript and all accompanying tables, figures, data, pictures, tables, graphs or other material, and any additional information in Revista de Salud Animal /Revista de Proteccion Vegetal in all forms, in the languages deemed, worldwide, during the full term of copyright, always considering that the article is accepted for publication.

Furthermore, I confirm that I am authorized by my co-authors to the grant of this license as a representative on their behalf. For avoidance of doubt, this assignment of copyright includes the right to supply the article in electronic form and online.

I confirm that I have read and accept the full terms of the agreement regarding the Copyrights of Revista de Salud Animal / Revista de Proteccion Vegetal attached to this model, including my guarantees as author, and that I have read the policy of the Journal expressed in its Code of Ethics

 

Signed: ________________________________

Printed Name: _____________________________

Institution name (if a representative): _____________________________________

Date: _________________________________.

IX. CONFLICT OF INTEREST

The conflict of interest related to an article published in the journals, occurs when this fact favors circumstances in which an individual can obtain a personal financial gain or being placed in a position of future personal benefit of financial or other nature through the participation of a decision-making process. The conflict of interest may also involve a potential fraud. Hence, the conflict of interest should be avoided in the conduct of scientific research and other activities.

An apparent conflict of interest can often be as damaging as an actual act of conflict of financial interest. In the research institution or in the applicable associations any potential conflict of interest must be fully revealed.

In the event that a conflict of interest occurs, the members of the Editorial Board and the Drafting Committee should participate in the discussions or decisions on the outcome of the deliberations. Everything will be documented and both parties will keep aware with full transparency.

X. RESEARCH PUBLICATION

The individuals to be included as authors of the paper are those who have made significant contributions in terms of scientific direction, scope or depth. Carrying out routine tests or providing samples and / or reagents should be appointed in the acknowledgments, but does not justify a collaborative work

Providing resources such as laboratory space, instrumentation for research, but without a direct involvement in a project, are not reasons for a collaborative work. It is not appropriate for supervisors, heads of departments or sections to insist being included as authors of a work only because of their position.

The principal author / investigator is responsible for drawing up the list and order of the authors. Each author must be able to defend the methods and data relevant to their specific contribution. First of all, the manuscripts must represent an accurate reflection of the methods used and all the data obtained. The leader author must submit a statement of authors and their order according to their contributions.

Original articles, review articles, short communications, letters to the editor and dissertation summaries will be considered publications in the journal.

It is the responsibility of the editor and reviewers to maintain versions of these articles as each part of them is evaluated.

XI. PUBLICATION ADVERTISING

Advertising the journal publications should be considered and started together with the direction of the center in order to satisfy and improve visibility of the publications

XII. REPORT OF MISCONDUCT AND PENALTIES

The journal reserves the right to punish members for lack of scientific conduct by not publishing their articles or not receiving any other from the involved researcher. The editors will handle any report of violations of the Code of Ethics confidentially.

Penalties will not be implemented without the prior approval by the direction of the National Center for Animal and Plant Health, CENSA.

XIII. SUMMARY

The Code of Ethics compromise the level of professionalism of those represented; it is the ultimate expression of our professional ethics. The code of Ethics is a commitment of honor and each member has the responsibility to adhere to it.