Ethical Responsibilities of the Editorial Board and its Coordinator
The Editorial Board must guarantee that all the editorial decisions, including the peer review process, be objective and impartial; fair and appropriate.
The Editorial Board, through its Coordinator, is in charge of making sure that all the contents proposed for publication go through the review processes and evaluation necessary to guarantee their quality and originality.
The Editorial Board has to ensure that the reviewers assess the submitted papers objectively, irrespective of the author’s ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality or political affiliation.
The Editorial Board decides which articles are accepted by the journal. The decision to accept or reject a paper for its publication is based solely on the importance of the paper itself, its originality, clarity and suitability to the journal. If a paper is subject of controversy, the Board’s Coordinator has the final say on the matter.
The Editorial Board is committed to guaranteeing the confidentiality of the review process; it shall never reveal the identity of the authors to the reviewers neither the identity of the reviewers themselves. Only the author and the formally appointed reviewers can receive texts and information about the review process.
The Editorial Board, through its Coordinator, assumes the responsibility of duly informing the author the stage of the review process which the submitted paper has reached as well as the results of the evaluation.
The Editorial Board shall let authors know the evaluation criteria explicitly, and in every instance, it shall justify under academic criteria the acceptance or rejection of the texts submitted for publication. The Editorial Board shall always justify any controversy in the review process.
The Editorial Board, through its Coordinator, shall publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies if needed.
Ethical Responsibilities of the Authors
Authors must guarantee their texts are product of their original work and that the data has been obtained ethically. Likewise, they must guarantee their work has not been published previously or that it is not being considered for publication by another journal. A previously published work is understood as any of the following:
When the text has been published in its entirety.
When extensive fragments of previously published materials are part of the text submitted to the journal.
When the paper submitted to the journal is part of annals published in extenso.
These criteria refer to previous publication either in printed or electronic form and in any given language.
In order for their work to be published, authors must strictly follow the guidelines for publication of articles as defined by the Editorial Board, and the papers must closely adhere to ELA’s style sheet.
The authors of reports of original research must present a precise description of the work that has been done, as well as an objective analysis of its importance. The underlying data must be represented accurately in the article. The document must contain enough detail and references to allow others to use the work. Fraudulent or deliberately inaccurate statements are deemed as unethical behaviour and are unacceptable.
Authors attest that they have written the text submitted for publication in its entirety. If they have used the work or words from other authors they must be referenced appropriately. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes an unethical editorial conduct and it is unacceptable. Consequently, any text which commits plagiarism will not be considered for publication.
An author should not, broadly speaking, publish texts that describe essentially the same research in more than one journal or primary publication. Submitting the same text to more than one journal constitutes an unethical behavior which renders its publication unacceptable.
Sources should be acknowledged in the proper manner. Authors should reference the publications that have been influential to the nature of the submitted text. The information obtained privately, as in conversations, correspondence or in conversation with others, should not be used without the explicit consent of the source.
Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution or interpretation of the study. All those who have made significant contributions should appear as co-authors. The main author or authors should make sure that the co-authors be included in the article and that all have seen and approved the final version of the document and have agreed to submit it for publication. The exclusion of those who have contributed to the authorship of the paper is unacceptable. Likewise, it is unacceptable to add as the author of a paper someone who has not been significantly involved in the process of design and execution of the research and/or in the wording of the written report of the aforementioned research. If unjustified exclusions or inclusions of authors were to be found, the paper will not be considered for publication. Additionally, once a text has been submitted, changes in authorship will not be accepted.
Ethical Responsibilities of the Reviewers
The reviewers must be committed to maintaining the confidentiality of all the information related to the articles they are reviewing. Any disclosure of the texts they are working on, or of the information (data, results, opinions, etc.) is unacceptable. It is also unacceptable for reviewers to make publicly known both their participation as evaluators of a given text as well as their opinion of it. Likewise, they are not to use this information for personal gain. Any breach of the principle of confidentiality results in the definitive exclusion of the perpetrator from the pool of ELA reviewers.
The reviewers must perform their evaluation in an objective manner. All criticism directed at the author is inappropriate. The reviewers must express their opinions or points of view in a clear way and should support them with valid arguments in a language that is to be strictly academic.
For the evaluation of the texts, the reviewers should follow the criteria that has been proposed by ELA in performing the task. These can be found in the evaluation format that has been made available to them in this website in the internal section for reviewers. These criteria for evaluation correspond to the fundamental guidelines that the authors must follow in the preparation of their articles (See Guidelines for Authors).
If the reviewers were to detect any unethical conduct by the author or authors, they are bound to report it. Additionally, they are to put forward any matter which could be a reason why the articles should not be published.
Specialists invited to review a text should notify the Editorial Board in as little time as possible if they are able to review a proposed text within the time frame and in the utmost professional manner.
In the instance of a conflict of interest, the specialist asked to review a text should notify this to the Editorial Board and should reject the invitation.
