PUBLISHING ETHICS AND POLICIES
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1. PUBLICATION MALPRACTICE STATEMENT
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9. ANIMAL & HUMAN RIGHTS POLICY
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1. PUBLICATION MALPRACTICE STATEMENT
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Our publication ethics and publication malpractice statement is mainly based on the Code of Conduct and Best-Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (Committee on Publication Ethics; COPE).
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​2. PUBLICATION ETHICS
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Papers must be submitted exclusively to Mexican Journal of Biotechnology and are accepted on the understanding that they are entirely original and have not been, and will not be, published elsewhere (except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture or academic thesis).
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​Editor should:
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​​Maintain and promote consistent ethical policies for Mexican Journal of Biotechnology and decide which of the papers submitted to the journal will be published.
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​Evaluate manuscripts without regard to the authors' race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy. The decision will be based on the paper’s importance, originality and clarity, and the study’s validity and its relevance to the journal's scope.
​Ensure the confidentiality of the review process.
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​Exercise the highest standards of personality integrity in their work as editor of Mexican Journal of Biotechnology.
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Reviewers must:
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​Conduct themselves fairly and impartially.
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​Maintain the confidentiality of the review process.
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​Alert the Editor in Chief of any real or potential conflict of interest and decline to review where appropriate.
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​Express their views clearly with supporting arguments. Any selected referee who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible should notify the editor and withdraw from the review process.
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​Authors must:
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​Avoid plagiarism (and autoplagiarism) and should cite the work of others.
​Do not submit your work to more than one journal at a time.
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​Disclose any actual or potential conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationships with other people or organizations.
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​Approve the submitted and published versions of the paper and take public responsibility for the content of their paper.
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​Know that authorship should be limited to those who have contributed in any significant way to the research or writing.
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Obtain permission from authors of published articles that you want to reproduce any item (e.g. figure or table). It is suggested to do your own items.
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​Include a statement disclosing any financial or other substantive conflicts of interest that may be construed to influence the results or interpretation of their manuscript. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed.
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Know that a CrossCheck powered by iThenticate software is used to check the originality of manuscripts. The consequences of plagiarism can be personal, professional, ethical, and legal. Author’s home institution must be notified of a plagiarism.
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​3. AUTHOR MISCONDUCT
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The Editors appreciate that some minor lapses of ethical standards occur as a result of a genuine misunderstanding of research methods and ethical principles. In these instances an explanatory letter from the Editor will inform the authors of shortcomings in their submission. Authors will have the opportunity to respond to such allegations. These include publication of an editorial giving details of the misconduct, formal retraction of the paper, and a ban on future submissions from the authors.
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4. JOURNAL POLICIES
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​This journal operates a single blind review process. Papers are sent to a minimum of two independent expert reviewers to assess the scientific quality of the paper. The Editor is responsible for the final decision regarding acceptance or rejection of articles. The Editor's decision is final.
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​Submission of an article implies that the work described is original and has not been published previously (except in the form of an abstract, a published lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publication is approved by all authors and tacitly or explicitly by the responsible authorities where the work was carried out, and that, if accepted, it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, in English or in any other language, including electronically without the written consent of the copyright holder. To verify originality, papers are checked by the originality detection service Crossref Similarity Check.
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All the names of the authors should be clearly indicated in the article submitted to Mexican Journal of Biotechnology. For quality policies of the journal, to include or eliminate authors after the review process should be made in writing the respective application with the signature of all authors of the manuscript, who will endorse the application.
The views expressed in the papers are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of any member of the editorial board or the editor in chief.
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Corresponding authors will be informed by e-mail about the online publication date.
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​Average times and steps in the decision process:
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Receipt to first decision 42 days
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Receipt to online publication 82 days
5. OPEN ACCESS POLICY
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This journal provides open access to its content, based on the principle that providing free access to the research achievements supports to a greater global exchange of knowledge.
​6. COPYRIGHT NOTICE
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The papers and articles published in this journal are subject to the following terms:
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1. The journal retains the patrimonial rights (copyright) of manuscripts published, and encourages and enables reuse of the same under the license specified in point 2.
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2. Manuscripts are published in the online edition of the journal under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerives 4.0. All manuscripts can be copied, used, disseminated, transmitted and publicly displayed, provided acknowledgment of authorship, the URL, and the journal are mentioned and that the materials are not used for commercial purposes.
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7. AUTHOR RIGHTS
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​Share their article for personal and internal institutional use and scholarly sharing purposes (teaching, internal training, etc).
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​Retain patent, trademark and other intellectual property rights (including research data) and credit for the published work.
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8. THE PROCESS FOR HANDLING CASES REQUIRING CORRECTIONS, RETRACTIONS, AND EDITORIAL EXPRESSIONS OF CONCERN
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Mexican Journal of Biotechnology ensures that its published articles follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) (http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf) and the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (https://publicationethics.org/guidance).
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We aim to ensure the integrity of the academic record of all published or potential publications. Whenever it is recognized that a significant inaccuracy, misleading statement, or distorted report has been published, it must be corrected promptly and with due prominence. If, after an appropriate investigation, an item proves to be fraudulent, it should be retracted. The retraction should be clearly identifiable to readers and indexing systems.
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Corrections
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Errors in published papers may be identified in the form of a corrigendum or erratum when the Editor-in-Chief considers it appropriate to inform the journal readership about a previous error and makes a correction to the error in the published article. The corrigendum or erratum will appear as a new article in the journal, and will cite the original published article.
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Retractions
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Retractions are considered and published when there are severe errors in an article that invalidate the conclusions. Retractions are also made in cases where there is evidence of publication malpractice, such as plagiarism, duplicate publication, or unethical research.
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According to industry best practice and in accordance with COPE guidelines, Mexican Journal of Biotechnology implements the following procedure if a retraction is confirmed:
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1. A retraction note titled “Retraction: [article title]” signed by the authors and/or the editor is published in a subsequent issue of the journal and listed in the contents list.
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2. In the electronic version, a link is made to the original article.
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3. The online article is preceded by a screen containing the retraction note. It is to this screen that the link resolves; the reader can then proceed to the article itself.
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4. The original article is retained unchanged save for a watermark on the PDF indicating on each page that it has been “retracted.”
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Editorial expressions of concern
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Where substantial doubt arises as to the honesty or integrity of a submitted or published article, journal editors may consider issuing an expression of concern. However, expressions of concern should only be issued if an investigation into the problems relating to the article has proven inconclusive, and if there remain strong indicators that the concerns are valid. Under some rare cases, an editorial expression of concern may also be issued when an investigation is underway but a judgement will not be available for a considerable time.
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The expression of concern will be linked back to the published article it relates to.
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9. ANIMAL & HUMAN RIGHTS POLICY
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Mexican Journal of Biotechnology makes mandatory for the authors reporting experiments with the involvement of animals and human subjects to adhere to following facets:
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The authors should include a statement in the “Methods” section of the article that they have identified the related institutional and/or licensing committee and have taken approval from the committee for their experiments. Institutional Ethical certificate must be submitted along with the manuscript.
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The authors should declare that they have conducted all experiments in accordance with relevant guidelines and regulations of the committee.
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If an author performs experimental studies involving client-owned animals, he/she must present an acceptance document from the client about best practices in animal testing. Field studies and other non-experimental research on animals must observe institutional, national, or international guidelines, and wherever available should have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee.
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The authors involved in research and experiments involving human subjects must confirm that informed consent was obtained from all participants and/or their legal guardians.
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The Editor-In-Chief will evaluate the submitted manuscripts on animal well-being issues and if the research found to be inconsistent with commonly accepted norms of using the animal and human subjects, the manuscript is liable to be rejected. The Editor-In-Chief also reserves the right to contact the approving committee for any further clarification.
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Researchers please note that they have a moral obligation towards the animals and human subjects they use for their research goals and they must treat them with compassion and consider their well-being while designing the projects.
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10. INFORMED CONSENT
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Mexican Journal of Biotechnology policy for informed patient consent for original research and short communication articles
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Informed Patient Consent
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Authors should observe high standards with respect to publication ethics as set out by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE; https://publicationethics.org/about/our-organisation) and ICMJE recommendations (http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/) for reporting about patients. Patients have a right to privacy that should not be infringed without prior informed consent. Identifying information should not be published in written descriptions, photographs and pedigrees unless the information is essential for scientific purposes and the patient (or parent or guardian) has given written informed consent for publication. Informed consent for this purpose requires the patient be shown the manuscript to be published. Identifying details should be omitted if they are not essential, but patient data should never be altered or falsified to attain anonymity. A statement addressing informed patient consent must be included as part of the manuscript under the heading ‘Consent’.
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More guidance can be found here: https://trialsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1745-6215-11-9
The Editorial Board reserves the right to reject papers for which the ethical aspects are, in the Board’s opinion, open to doubt. Please contact the Journal Editorial Office (mexjbiotechnol@uatx.mx) if you have any queries regarding consent.
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11. DATA SHARING POLICIES
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Authors are encouraged to share or make available any data and materials supporting the results or analyses presented in their paper.
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Please note that data should only be shared if it is ethically correct to do so, where this does not violate the protection of human subjects, or other valid ethical, privacy, or security concerns.
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Depositing data
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Authors are advised to deposit data in a recognized data repository that can mint a persistent digital identifier, such as a digital object identifier (DOI), and recognizes a long-term preservation plan.
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We highly encourage researchers to consider the FAIR Data Principles (https://www.force11.org/group/fairgroup/fairprinciples) when depositing data. We further advise researchers use FAIRsharing (https://fairsharing.org/) and re3data.org (https://www.re3data.org/) to search for a suitable repository – both provide a list of certified data repositories. Authors are encouraged to provide a data availability statement, detailing where data associated with a paper can be found and how it can be accessed. This statement can be submitted within the article manuscript, before the ‘References’ section.
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12. ADVERTISING
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Mexican Journal of Biotechnology does not accept advertising of any products or services