Editorial policy

Editorial policies

  • Authorship
  • Peer Review
  • Conflicts of Interest
  • Plagiarism, duplicate publication and data fabrication
  • Informed Consent
  • Copyright and reproduction
  • Errata and retractions
  • Photographs and images
  • Preprints
  • Open Access
  • Advertising
  • Submission and publication fees
  • Use of Artificial Intelligence in Writing

 

Authorship

Authorship refers to the contributions and roles of researchers during the conduct of a study. In addition, authorship confers responsibility for the contents and procedures related to the article and the research itself.

The authorship policy of RPMESP is based on the guidelines by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). These guidelines state that authors must meet the following criteria:

  • Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work.
  • Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content.
  • Final approval of the version to be published.
  • Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

All four criteria must be met for a researcher to be considered as an author. This has to be stated in the “Author contributions” section of the article. The contribution of each author and the order of appearance in the article is the responsibility of the authors; the journal does not interfere in these aspects.

Manuscripts submitted by undergraduate students must be accompanied by at least one healthcare professional who has expertise in the subject and shares responsibility for the content of the article.

ICMJE recommendations also mention that having participated only in obtaining funds, data collection or general supervision of the research group does not justify inclusion as an author. Researchers who only contributed in this way should be listed in the “Acknowledgements” section.

RPMESP uses the CRediT taxonomy (Taxonomy of Contribution Roles) to recognize the individual contribution and work of each author. The corresponding author should thoroughly verify that all authors are included in the “CRediT roles” section; this information must not be modified in each corrected version requested by the editor, until publication.

If a change in authorship is requested, RPMESP will proceed according to the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) as appropriate:

Other authorship issues will also be handled according to the COPE guidelines:

Authors are advised to thoroughly review the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript for the first time.

If a change in authorship is requested, the editorial committee will require supporting documentation. RPMESP follows the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) regarding authorship changes; however, the Editorial Committee will decide whether such changes are accepted after evaluating each case.

The editorial process of the article will be temporarily suspended while the Editorial Committee reviews the request for changes.

Members of the RPMESP Editorial board who are authors must comply with the requirements specified in our Instructions for Authors, and the editorial process will be carried out as stated. These manuscripts will follow the editorial process without any participation of the Editorial Board member involved, who will not participate in the Editorial Board sessions when their article is reviewed or decided upon. This member will not have access to any information about the editorial process of the article, nor will he/she know who the assigned reviewers are. In addition, members of the RPMESP Editorial Board will declare their potential conflicts of interest with respect to such articles so that the rest of the Board can evaluate whether or not the article should be considered for publication.

 

Peer review

Articles published by RPMESP undergo external double-blind peer review, in which the identity of the authors and reviewers is unknown to both parties.

All articles will be submitted to peer review: Original Articles, Brief reports, Review Articles, Special Articles, Case Reports, Public Health History Articles and Letters to the Editor. Original articles (including Brief reports) will be evaluated by a minimum of two reviewers.

Manuscripts are evaluated by two or more Peruvian or foreign reviewers, preferably one of each. Reviewers are selected according to their expertise in the topic, reputation, recommendations, previous experience reviewing articles for RPMESP, among other aspects. Likewise, reviewers with expertise in biostatistics and epidemiology will focus on the methodological aspects of the studies.

In all cases, the participation of the reviewers is ad honorem and anonymous during the evaluation and publication process.

Communication between the editors and peer reviewers will be carried out via the OJS-RPMESP platform. In this platform reviewers will declare whether they have any conflicts of interest with the study, issue their assessment and recommendations on the academic quality of the content of the manuscript, originality, methodology and its contribution to the field of knowledge. Reviewers have a maximum of 15 business days (if additional time is required, an extension of the deadline may be considered) to issue their evaluation.

The reviewers’ reports will not be edited before being sent to the authors; the only exceptions include language that may be considered offensive or comments that may contain confidential information.

The informed assessment of the reviewers must conclude in one of the following:

  • Recommended for publication without modification.
  • Publishable with minor comments, which are recommendations for improvement of the article.
  • With major comments, the response to which is essential before accepting the article for publication.
  • With invalidating comments, which recommend not to publish the article.

In the case of original articles, reviewers have the additional option of suggesting that the article be published as a Brief Report. In cases of controversy, either because the assessments of the peers are opposed to each other, or because the Editor in charge requests it, an additional reviewer will be appointed.

Based on the peer reviewers’ assessment and recommendations, the Editorial Board will decide whether the article is rejected, accepted or if the recommendations are sent to the authors in order to improve the article.

Once the authors’ comments have been addressed, the Editorial Board will review the article to ensure that it complies with the requirements for publication. If any additional corrections are needed, they will be sent to the authors a second time.

 

Conflicts of Interest

The International Ethical Guidelines for Health-related Research Involving Humans of the Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) define conflicts of interest as situations in which there is substantial risk that the secondary interests of one or more parties will unduly influence their judgment and thereby compromise or undermine the primary purpose of the research.

Financial conflicts of interest include (but are not limited to):

  • Receiving reimbursement, honoraria, funding, or salary from an organization that in any way stands to gain or lose financially from publication of the manuscript, either now or in the future.
  • Own stocks or shares in an organization that stands to gain or lose financially in any way from publication of the manuscript, either now or in the future.
  • Holding or applying for patents related to the content of the manuscript.
  • Receive reimbursement, honoraria, funding, or salary from an organization that holds or has applied for patents related to the content of the manuscript.

Non-financial conflicts of interest include (but are not limited to) interests related to the following:

  • Political
  • Personal
  • Religious
  • Ideological
  • Academic
  • Intellectual

 

RPMESP requires authors to declare all potential or existing conflicts of interest related to their research. All submitted manuscripts must include a “Conflicts of Interest” section at the end of the manuscript that lists all conflicting interests (financial and non-financial).

Each individual author must include in the Sworn Statement any and all financial or non-financial relationships, activities, circumstances, or other factors that could be construed as a secondary interest or influence professional judgment about the validity of the research and objectivity of the manuscript. Authors should provide information on the existing or potential conflict of interest. This information must include the nature of the relationship with third parties or with the institution (profit or non-profit) where the study was carried out, whose interests may be affected by the content of the manuscript. If there is any doubt about whether or not a situation constitutes a potential conflict of interest, it should be declared as well.

The RPMESP Editorial Board will independently evaluate conflicts of interest and potential conflicts of interest and will decide whether or not the scientific article should be published.

Editors, editorial board members and reviewers must also declare any conflict of interest; they will be excluded from the editorial process or peer review if there is any.

In case of detecting misconduct related to the declaration of conflicts of interest, the RPMESP will proceed according to the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) as appropriate:

 

Plagiarism, duplicate publication and fabrication of data

Plagiarism: is defined as the unacknowledged copying or an attempt to incorrectly attribute authorship of images, texts, ideas, results, among others. Attention should be paid to proper attribution and citation when summarizing and/or paraphrasing texts by other authors. The “recycling of text” or reusing parts of a previous published research by the same author of the current article is a form of self-plagiarism.

Duplicate publication: occurs when a substantial part of a previous work by the same author is reused without proper citation. This type of scientific misconduct includes publishing the same article in different journals, using a portion of the data from a previously published article, among others.

Fabrication of data: occurs when research data are invented.

If any ethical misconduct is detected during the editorial process or after publication, RPMESP will take the necessary measures based on the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Word Association Medical Editors (WAME), International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and Council of Science Editors (CSE).

All manuscripts submitted to RPMESP will be subject to review by a text duplication detection software. The detection procedures will be carried out in accordance with INS internal guidelines. Authors of submissions that evidence plagiarism, duplicate publication, or fabrication of data will be subject to the guidelines established by COPE.

These measures involve: rejection or retraction of the article, non-acceptance of future articles submitted to RPMESP, notification to other journals, as well as communication to the respective authorities (institution of origin, institution that funded the study, professional associations and ethics committees), among others.

The procedures in case of detecting misconduct will be based on the COPE guidelines:

In the case of detecting plagiarism:

In the case of detecting redundant publication:

In case of detecting data fabrication:

 

Informed Consent

According to the Ethical Guidelines of the American College of Epidemiology (ACE) 2000, informed consent is a process by which sufficient information is provided to the potential participant in order to be able to make a decision about whether or not to participate in the research. The information received by the participant should be in simple language, be understandable, and contain details about possible benefits, risks, and sequelae that may occur as a possible consequence of the procedures. It should be carried out respecting the patient’s freedom and autonomy. In the same way, it is necessary to provide sufficient time for the potential participant to consider the information received and evaluate it in order to make a decision.

A written form must be used to record the informed consent, which must be signed by the participant or his/her legal representative. This consent must have been approved by a research ethics committee.

RPMESP requires that all articles involving research on human subjects explicitly state that informed consent was obtained, in addition to specifying when it was requested and providing details of how it was obtained; this should be included in the Materials and Methods section (or equivalent according to the type of study).

In the case of Case Reports, the authors should state whether the informed consent was provided by the participant or his/her legal representative. If it is not possible to obtain the informed consent of the patient or his/her legal representative for any valid reason, the approval of an ethics committee must be obtained to carry out the research.

For case reports, the informed consent must include permission for publication of the report and its photographs in journals or other forms of scientific publication. In addition, the authors must have the permission of the head of the hospital department or service or equivalent for the publication of the report.

 

Copyright and reproduction

RPMESP publishes open-access articles under the Creative Commons 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0). For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Authors seeking to publish in RPMESP agree to the following terms:

  • Authors will retain copyright and grant RPMESP the right of first publication of their work, which will simultaneously be subject to the Creative Commons “Acknowledgment License”, which allows third parties to share the work as long as its author and first publication in this journal are stated.
  • Authors may adopt other non-exclusive license agreements for distribution of the published version of the work (e.g., deposit it in an institutional telematic archive or publish it in a monographic volume), provided that the initial publication in this journal is stated and cited accordingly.
  • Authors are allowed and encouraged to disseminate their work through the Internet (e.g., in institutional telematic archives or on their web page) after the publication of the article, which may produce interesting exchanges and increase citations of the published work.

Any publication, dissemination or distribution of the information presented is authorized provided that the source is acknowledged.

The authors are entirely responsible for the contents of the article and these do not represent the opinion of the journal.

 

Errata and retractions

Errata: It is considered as one or more corrections by the author with the objective of amending significant errors that could affect the integrity of the manuscript. Minor corrections that do not significantly affect the content and understanding of the document, such as spelling errors, typographical errors, and grammatical errors, will not be published; these minor errors should be addressed during the proofreading process.

Retraction: These are situations in which the integrity of a published article is substantially affected. This includes errors in the analysis, reporting of results, research misconduct, among others. In case the journal’s editorial team considers that a retraction is necessary, the published article will be marked by placing the word “retracted” in capital letters across each page, a retraction statement will also be published accordingly.

Addendum: Significant additional information that has appeared after publication and that is necessary to better understand the manuscript may be published as an addendum.

Editorial note: A virtual notification that informs of the start of an evaluation process regarding concerns related to an article.

Editorial note of concern: A statement by the Editorial Board alerting readers to serious concerns about the integrity of an article.

Procedures for making a decision regarding corrections or retractions will be based on COPE guidelines.

 

Photographs and images

Digital images should be minimally edited or processed. They should clearly illustrate what is intended to be shown.

 

Photographs showing patients’ faces should be edited to avoid identification of the person. If a previously published figure is included, the source must be acknowledged; written permission from the copyright holder should also be provided.

 

Photographs should be sent as a separate file with a resolution greater than 600 dpi or 300 pixels. Image captions should describe what is shown in the photographs, and arrows or signs may be used to facilitate understanding. When reproducing microscopic slides, magnification and staining methods should be stated. The caption of the figure or photograph should include the meaning of any acronyms used.

 

Preprints

Preprints are versions of scientific articles that have not yet undergone peer review and are deposited in public servers.

RPMESP accepts articles that have been previously deposited in certified servers as preprints. The details of the preprint, such as the title and DOI code, should be included in the Sworn Statement that is part of the initial manuscript submission.

 

Open Access

RPMESP provides immediate open access to its content, based on the principle that free access to research favors the global exchange of knowledge. The journal uses the Creative Commons 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0).

RPMESP uses the LOCKSS system to collect, preserve and store published articles.

Authors who publish in RPMESP are allowed to deposit the primary data attached to the article in national or international repositories.

Repositories such as the Repositorio Único Nacional de Información en Salud, Zenodo, Open Science Framework, Dryad, GitHub or DataVerse can be used.

 

Advertising

RPMESP admits only advertising from the Instituto Nacional de Salud.

 

Submission or publication fees

RPMESP does not impose charges or fees for the submission or publication of an article. Likewise, RPMESP disseminates its publications on different platforms, such as social networks, also free of charge.

 

Use of Artificial Intelligence in Writing

RPMESP adheres to the recommendations of ICMJE, COPE, and WAME, which aim to promote transparency and ethical conduct in scientific research and publication, particularly regarding the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in manuscript production. Upon article submission, the journal requires authors to declare whether they have used AI-assisted technologies (such as Large Language Models, chatbots, or image creators) in the production of the submitted work.

Furthermore, AI tools should not be listed as authors of an article because they cannot be responsible for the accuracy, integrity, and originality of the work; therefore, they do not meet the authorship criteria as they do not assume responsibility for the content and cannot declare the presence or absence of conflicts of interest.

Authors who use such technology must describe the use of AI in the "AI Usage Declaration" section.

Declaration text: During the preparation of this work, the author(s) used [NAME OF TOOL/SERVICE] for the purpose of [REASON], in the following [SECTIONS (specific parts of the manuscript)] as well as any generated tables or figures.

The authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, including parts produced by an AI tool, and therefore are accountable for any breaches of publication ethics.

 

Updated on June, 2024