Arbitration process and peer review

     The Revista Médica Vozandes – RMV only accepts articles for consideration, which are not under evaluation by another journal or that have not been previously published, except for articles with preliminary presentations with partial results.

The evaluation process consists of two stages:

a) Primary review: once the article has been submitted, the editor-in-chief executes the anti-plagiarism policy and if it is in accordance with the regulations of the journal registers the manuscript and assigns it an alphanumeric code.

     The registration sheet is sent to the corresponding author along with the anti-plagiarism report and the manuscript is assigned to a member of the editorial committee to carefully review compliance with the standards defined in the indications for authors.

     If there are no changes in the structure of the manuscript, it automatically goes to the secondary review phase.

     Manuscripts that have corrections will be sent to the corresponding authors with the respective evaluation report. The authors have a reasonable time to make the corrections and send a new version of their manuscript, if the suggested corrections have been made they will move on to the secondary review phase.

b) Secondary Review: in this phase the manuscripts are sent to two external reviewers, both authors and reviewers and institutions remain anonymous, that is, the evaluation process in this phase is double-blind.

     External evaluators can be national or international and, preferably, external to the publishing institution.

     The external peers will evaluate the clarity, coherence, adequacy and relevance of the study, in addition, the introduction, methodology, results, discussion and conclusions together with the ostensible contribution in the generation, transmission, expansion or updating of knowledge, according to the areas of knowledge of the journal.

     After approval by the reviewers, the article undergoes a review of grammar, vocabulary, cohesion, clarity and reading fluency before final publication.

Periodicity

At the moment the periodicity of the magazine is biannual:

Number 1: January – June, publication date July.

Number 2: July – December, publication date January.

Editorial Ethics and Best Practices Statement

     The statement of editorial ethics and good practices of the Vozandes Medical Journal -RMV seek to ensure editorial quality, transparency and integrity throughout the editing process of a manuscript from receipt to publication.

     The ethical principles governing the publication of articles in the RMV are based on the international standard proposed by the Committee on Publication Ethics – COPE (Code of Conduct and Best Practices – Guidelines for Journal Editors), International Committee of Medical Journal Editors – CIERM and the common standards for journal publication and digital content.

1.- Policies on authorship and contribution

     In the Cover Letter or Cover Letter, the authors inform that they know the criteria required by the RMV, the author and contribution policies, in addition, that the manuscript sent is an unpublished work and that it has not been previously published, nor is it under evaluation in another journal.  

     Authors have the right that the evaluation of their manuscripts is fair and impartial and that the review is done in a reasonable time, in addition, they will be treated with respect in the interrelation with the journal, likewise, the authors must obligatorily place their ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) on the Tittle Page  of the manuscript.

     The contribution of the authors must follow the CRediT norm – taxonomy of academic collaboration roles, with the aim of differentiating and recognizing the contribution of each co-author in the scientific manuscript, that is, it represents the responsibilities played by each of the co-authors in the scientific academic production.

     This taxonomy distributes participation roles into 14 different typologies:

1.- Conceptualization – Ideas, formulation or evolution of general research objectives and goals.
2.- Data curation – Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), clean data, and maintain research data (including software code, where necessary to interpret the data itself) for initial use and subsequent reuse.
3.- Formal Analysis – Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data.
4.- Acquisition of funds – Acquisition of financial support for the project leading to this publication.
5.- Research – Conducting an investigation and research process or collecting data/evidence.
6.- Methodology – Development or design of methodology and creation of models.
7.- Project Administration – Responsibility for the management and coordination of the planning and implementation of the research activity.
8.- Resources – Supply of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computer resources or other analysis tools.
9.- Software – Programming, software development, software design, implementation of computer code and supporting algorithms, testing of existing code components.
10.- Supervision – Supervisory responsibility and leadership in planning and conducting research activities, including external mentoring to the core team.
11.- Validation – Verification, either as part of the activity or separately, of the replicability/general reproduction of results/experiments or other research products.
12.- Visualization – Preparation, creation or presentation of published work, specifically the visualization/presentation of data.
13.- Writing – original draft – Preparation, creation or presentation of the published work, specifically the writing of the initial draft (substantive translation is included).
14.- Writing – review and editing – Preparation, creation or presentation of published work by members of the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or review – pre- or post-publication stages should be included.

2.- Policies on conflict of interest

     The Conflicts of Interest form can be downloaded automatically from the http://www.icmje.org website, the instructions to fill it correctly are available in the manual prepared by the Vozandes Medical Journal (See Manuals section), remember that it is a form for each author and its submission is mandatory.

3.- Anti-plagiarism policy

     The RMV has a plagiarism detection policy, which aims to ensure that authors comply with the ethical standards necessary to ensure a process of transparency in the publication process.

     The editor-in-chief of the journal performs the plagiarism detection process through the Grammarly – Plagiarims (https://app.grammarly.com/) software, which is carried out in the primary review phase (once the article is received). 

     This tool yields a similarity report, whose percentages are always variable depending on the type of article, when the percentage of anti-plagiarism is greater than 7%, the editor-in-chief performs an analysis in order to establish if there is plagiarism or not.       

     Articles that commit total or partial plagiarism or violate copyright are indicators of poor editorial quality; For this reason they are immediately rejected.

     In the same way, external reviewers, during the secondary review stage, are requested to report if they detect any form of plagiarism in the manuscript.

4.- Open access policy

     Following the principle of democratization of knowledge, the RMV provides free and immediate access to its content, according to the BOAI (Budapest Open Access Initiative) definition of open access.

     Users can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link the full texts of the articles as long as they correctly cite the source of publication and these acts are not for commercial purposes.

     Neither the Hospital Vozandes Quito, nor the Vozandes Medical Journal will be responsible for the concepts issued in the published articles, whose responsibility is exclusive to the authors.

5.- Preservation policy of physical archives

     Three copies of each issue will be printed and archived in the space designated for the archives of the Vozandes Medical Journal within the library – Bruckner Academy of the Vozandes Hospital – Corporación HVQ SA.

6.- Digital File Preservation Policies

The repository and review of manuscripts of the Revista Médica Vozandes is a system designed to store, organize and manage documents written in digital format. It provides tools and functionalities that allow authors and reviewers to collaborate in the evaluation and improvement of these documents before their publication or dissemination.

Technical description of the components:

1. Database: The system is based on an MS SQL database that stores all documents and associated metadata. Each manuscript is saved in the database with relevant information, such as title, authors, submission and review dates, previous versions, and review notes.

2. User Interface: The repository has a friendly web-based user interface that allows authors to upload their manuscripts, track the review process and collaborate with reviewers. Reviewers also have their own dashboard to access assigned manuscripts.

3. Peer Review Process: The system facilitates the peer review process by allowing reviewers to access manuscripts.

4. Access Control and Privacy: The System has security measures, login with username and password, to ensure that only authorized persons have access to manuscripts and related information. This includes managing roles and permissions for authors, reviewers, and administrators.

5. Notifications and Communication: The system sends automatic email notifications to inform authors and reviewers about important milestones in the review process, such as the assignment of reviewers or the acceptance of a manuscript.

7.- Policy on ethics in research

     The authors are responsible for guaranteeing the right to privacy of people by protecting their identity both in the writing of the article and in the images, anonymizing the information to guarantee data protection.

     Any identifier that may reveal the identity of a person, including their name, initials, or any other personal identifier must be removed in any type of resource such as: x-rays, magnetic resonances, graphics, photographs, videos, among others.

     For case reports and medical images, they must have the informed consent signed by the patient or by the Teaching Department or Institutional Ethics Committee authorizing their publication.
     Original studies independent of the design must have the approval of a Research Ethics Committee on Human Beings – CEISH in accordance with the current regulations established by the Ministry of Health.

8.- Item Processing Fee
     The RMV also has no Article Processing Charge (APC) or author fees for article publication or any of the editorial processes.
9.- Content Licensing
     The Vozandes Medical Journal – RMV is under a Creative Commons license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivative 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

10.- Errata, Corrections and Retractions Policy
     The different types of manuscripts published by the Vozandes Medical Journal – RMV will remain current, accurate and unchanged as far as possible.
     However, exceptional circumstances may arise in which a previously published manuscript must be corrected, retracted or even eliminated, these situations will be evaluated by the Editorial Committee to ensure that they are carried out with the maximum guarantees and based on the standards recommended by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), in this way, the changes will be transparent and always maintaining the integrity of the academic record.
     The different rectification processes may be in the form of typo, correction, retraction and, rarely.
Errata
     They are documents in which an error or omission committed by the journal will be corrected, but where the academic integrity of the article remains intact.
     The errata provide clear details of the error and the changes that have been made to the document.
     The erratum will be published in the next issue, will be linked to the corrected version and will be paginated and with DOI.
Corrections
     They are documents in which an error or omission committed by the authors will be corrected, but where the academic integrity of the article remains intact.
     The correction should provide clear details of the error and the changes that have been made to the document.
     The correction will be published in the next issue, will be linked to the corrected version and will be paginated and with DOI.
Retractions
     They are documents in which the correction of a material error that invalidates the conclusions of the article will be published, or when there has been misconduct in the investigation.     

     The authors may request the retraction of their articles if their reasons meet the following criteria:
• There is evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g., manipulation of data or images) or methodological or statistical error (e.g., miscalculation or experimental error).
• If there is evidence of fraudulent authorship.
• Whether there is evidence of compromised peer review.
• If there are indications of unethical investigation and violations of professional codes of ethics.
     When the decision has been made to retract an article:
1. Before the title of the article will be put Article retracted: [title of the article]
2. A separate declaration of withdrawal, entitled ‘Retraction: [title of article]’, shall be published and linked to the retracted article. This note will be signed by the editor-in-chief of the journal.
3. The declaration of withdrawal will be paginated and assigned a DOI.
Deleting Items
     The removal of an item will take place in exceptional circumstances where the problems are of a very serious nature and cannot be addressed by a notice of correction or retraction.
This will only happen:
• When the article is clearly defamatory, or violates other legal rights.
• When an item is subject to a court order.
• When the article, if not acted upon, could pose a serious risk to health.
     In case an article is deleted, the metadata (authorship and title) will be kept and the text will be replaced by a document indicating that the article has been deleted for legal reasons.

11.- Governing Body
     The Hospital Vozandes Quito – Corporación HVQ SA, is the governing and financing body of La Revista Médica Vozandes – RMV, the budget allocated for proper editorial and publication management depends on the Annual Operating Plan of the Journal which is reviewed and approved by the authorities of the Hospital.

12.- Indexing

At the moment the journal has ISSN: printed version 1390-1656, on-line version 2697-3472 and is indexed to the following databases:

1.- Virtual Health Library of Ecuador – VHL-ECU

2.- Latin American and Caribbean Literature in Health Sciences – LILACS/BIREME: 10167.

3.- Regional Online System for Scientific Journals of Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal – LATINDEX Catalog 2.0: Folio 14526.

4.- Mexican Index of Biomedical Journals – IMBIOMED.

5.- Ibero-American Network of Innovation and Scientific Knowledge – REDIB.