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.

General duties and responsibilities of editors

The editors of this journal undertake to:

• To endeavor to meet the needs of readers and authors.
• To endeavor to constantly improve the journal taking into account different points of view of authors, readers, reviewers and editorial board members.
• To have implemented in the journal all the necessary processes to ensure the quality of the material published.
• To allow freedom of expression without allowing discriminatory or offensive manifestations.
• To evaluate articles without taking into account race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, political belief, nationality, ethnic origin or personal position of the authors.
• To decide which articles should be sent for peer review, as well as which are in conditions to be published after their review, in addition to preserving the confidentiality of the evaluated articles, not disclosing any information about their content, subject matter, authorship, data included, analysis performed or final conclusions.
• To guarantee the preservation of all journal content.
• Prevent commercial needs from compromising intellectual and ethical standards.
• To publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when necessary
• To provide all the actors in the process with the necessary information to perform their function efficiently
• To support all necessary actions to reduce the various manifestations of research and publication misconduct, and encourage ethical and responsible behavior
• To ensure that each published document correctly reflects the results and interpretations proposed by the authors.
• To archive reports and results of the evaluations of each article, and make them available whenever requested by the competent natural and legal persons
• To ensure that the sections with and without peer review are clearly identified.
• To ensure that peer review in the journal is fair, impartial and timely.
• To adopt the peer review methods most appropriate for the journal and the research community it serves
• Editors will be alert to intellectual property issues and in correspondence will work with their publishers to handle possible infringements of intellectual property laws and conventions intellectual property
• Best practices for publishers will also include adoption of systems for detecting plagiarism (e.g., software)

Related to readers

• Be informed about the funding sources, authors and institutions of the different works.
• They will have all the necessary information and tools to enable them to retrieve the metadata of the different documents.
• They will be able to access the full text of documents at any time and in different responsive formats.
• They have the obligation to properly reference the documents they consult.
• They have the obligation to make an adequate and responsible use of the information ensuring that no principle of good practice is infringed.

Related to the authors

• The editors' decisions to accept or reject a paper for publication will be based on the contribution of the paper, originality, clarity, validity of the study, and its relevance to the subject area of the journal.
• The willingness to submit a paper to the journal will not be rejected unless problems are identified in the established submission guidelines.
• New editors will not revoke decisions to publish papers approved by previous editors unless problems are identified that were not taken into account in previous evaluations
• A guide will be made available to the author with all the characteristics and elements to be checked in the peer review process before and during the submission process.
• The evaluation of each document submitted to the journal will be carried out by competent professionals specialized in each of the publication topics.
• Authors will remain anonymous throughout the peer review process.
• Requests made by authors not to have their work evaluated by a reviewer declared in the journal's referee portfolio will be respected, as long as the conflict of interest between the reviewer and one or more of the authors of the paper can be adequately justified.
• The presentation of other authors' ideas as one's own is not an acceptable practice.
• Authors should report any source of funding that has allowed the study to be developed, as well as any other commitment that could influence the interpretation of the results.
• All authors are obliged to provide the necessary corrections of mistakes.
• Only authors are considered authors of the work according to the Taxonomy of Roles of Contribution (CRediT).
• In acknowledgements, names of persons or institutions that have provided other types of support for the work will be placed in the acknowledgements. Only contributions that the authors consider relevant will be acknowledged.
• In cases in which ethical misconduct is detected concerning the incorrect assignment of authors, omission of authors and undeclared conflict of interest, the journal will automatically cancel the publication of the work and will issue a note to the entire scientific community informing the event and the names of those responsible for the unethical conduct.
• The editors will support authors whose copyrights have been violated or who have been victims of plagiarism by requesting retractions or removal of material from websites regardless of copyright.

Related to reviewers

• The reviewers must issue their opinion in an objective and unbiased manner.
• The reviewers will have all the necessary orientation and preparation, as well as an evaluation guide, which will allow them to know how they should carry out the evaluation, weigh the quality of each part of the document, state their observations and final decision.
• The reviewers will handle papers and the information contained in them confidentially until the document is published.
• The journal will guarantee the preservation of reviewers' anonymity during the entire process
• Reviewers will immediately communicate to editors about detected violations of good ethical practices during the review process such as: unethical research design, inadequate manipulation of data and rights, plagiarism, among others.
• Reviewers will communicate in a timely manner to the editors any conflict of interest they may detect when reading an article sent for review.
• The necessary procedures will be implemented to ensure that reviewers' comments reach the authors in their entirety and that they do not contain offensive or defamatory comments.
• Regularly monitor the performance of reviewers and take measures to ensure that reviews are of high quality.
• To maintain and renew the database of reviewers so that it presents an adequate representation of the scientific community specialized in the journal's publication topics.
• To stop using reviewers who consistently produce offensive, poor quality, and late reviews.

Related to the members of the Editorial Committee

• Editors will provide new Editorial Board members with guidelines on what is expected of       them and should keep existing members updated on new policies being implemented
• Qualified editorial board members will be identified who can actively contribute to the development and good management of the journal
• Provide clear guidance to Editorial Board members on their expected roles and duties which may include: developing and implementing journal dissemination strategies, seeking new authors and novel papers, reviewing submissions, writing editorials, commenting and reviewing papers in their field, consulting with Editorial Board members periodically to evaluate the performance of the journal, among others.