Ethical Standards
CCHE adheres to the codes of conduct and guidelines published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Responsibilities
From the Editorial Team
To manage, coordinate, decide, select, reproduce and distribute CCHE. It is responsible for every published work. It will make an effort to assure the quality of the published material, grant the compliance of ethical principles, defend free speech, maintain the journal’s academic integrity. Finally, to respect the procedures and pledged deadlines for evaluation and publication and be available to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies if necessary.
From the Scientific Committee
To support and guide the journal’s academic activity advising about general decisions and key areas towards its strategic development, and work as a third evaluator through one of its member’s collaboration in case of a tie during the double-blind peer evaluation process.
From the evaluators
To evaluate impartially the articles’ content, keep confidentiality with respect to the information and refrain from using it for any other purpose but evaluating. Also, to abstain from evaluating in case of conflict of interest and provide suggestions to the author in order to improve the work.
From the authors
To send original writings that are not being evaluated for publishing in any other media. To declare the source funding received for its publication and potential conflicts of interest. To Declare all references used as base of the work. Recognize the coauthorship work. To verify the authenticity of all information and assure there is no fraudulent use of the data or plagiarism. To accept the CCHE’s intellectual property rights policy and follow the peer evaluation process and make corrections to the work according to the given observations. In the case of articles that report empirical research results, the authors must declare the Ethical Committee’s approval from their institution and the participants’ informed consent.
Criteria to regulate the ethical performance of the publication
Transparency
CCHE makes public its editorial policy, peer-review process, evaluation criteria of the writings and the responsibilities of the Editorial Team, Scientific Committee, evaluators and authors.
Complaints
CCHE follows the procedure established in the flow chart from COPE. The mechanism to submit complaints consists of sending an e-mail to the members of the journal’s Editorial Team who will respond as soon as possible.
Encouragement of academic integrity
The Editorial Team will assure that research material published in CCHE is in line with internationally accepted ethical standards.
Protection of individual data
CCHE’s Editorial Team must protect the confidentiality of individual information.
Monitoring of inappropriate behavior
CCHE’s Editorial Team has the duty to act in case there is any suspicion of inappropriate behavior (plagiarism, falsification of data, writings previously published in other media, undeclared conflicts of interest, unrecognition of authorships, among others). Additionally, CCHE must not only reject the works that do not meet ethical standards, but also monitor the supposed cases of inappropriate behavior. This implies, first, to inquire the involved people. If the reply is not satisfactory, CCHE must request the employers or any other monitoring organization to investigate the situation. CCHE must follow all reasonable steps to find a solution to the problem.
Editorial Independence
The Editorial Team must make decisions concerning which works to publish based on quality and suitability and never decide based on political or economic benefits that the work could bring.
Conflict of interests
The Editorial Team must have a system to manage its own conflict of interests, and also the personnel’s, the author’s, the evaluator’s and the Scientific Committee’s ones.
Use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in editorial process
Generative AI is a kind of artificial intelligence that can produce texts, images, audios or synthetic data.
Manuscripts are handled as confidential documents in CCHE. The Editorial Team will not upload a work nor any of its parts in a generative AI, since, by doing so, it could infringe confidentiality and the author’s property rights. In addition, if the article contains personal information it could infringe privacy rights of data.
CCHE commits to comply with the highest integrity standards during the peer-review process and acknowledges that the editorial evaluation management is a scientific work that implies responsibilities which can only be attributable to human beings. The Editorial Team will not use generative AI or assistive technology by AI to help with the evaluation or making-decision process of a work, since critical thinking and original evaluation are essential and are out of reach of this technology considering the risk of generating biased, incomplete or incorrect conclusions about the works.
The author can use generative AI or assistive technologies by AI during the composition process before delivery, but only to improve language and their work’s legibility. This must be informed at the end of the work in a separated section and before the reference list. Likewise, all approved works go through a style correction process that can only be carried out by humans. In case there is suspicion that an author or evaluator has infringed the AI policies, the Editorial Team must be informed.
