1. Editorial process and peer evaluation

Papers received for Dossier and Miscellaneous, without exception, will go through a first evaluation process by members of the Editorial Committee, who will verify if the submission respects the quality requirements demanded by Iuris Dictio, If found to be otherwise they will reject the submission. Authors will be notified in either case (accepted or rejected) of their articles up to a year after the call for paper ends, starting from the date the text was received.

Subsequently, each article that goes through the initial filter will be examined by two external judges who are specialists in the matter. The name of the author will not be provided to the reviewers. They will decide whether to publish, publish with corrections or reject the article. In the case that the judges do not come to an agreement, the article will be sent to a third judge who will have the determining vote.

If decided to publish, the article will be sent back to the author who will make the required corrections according to the publishing schedule. Authors will have two months maximum from the time of notification to accept publication and to apply changes. Overdue papers will not be published.

Once the texts have been evaluated they will have one of three ratings: publishable; not publishable; and publishable with modifications. In the latter two cases the author must include the recommendations made by the evaluators in his/her/their article. Likewise, the author should fill out the document Certificate of Changes, which we will send from the magazine and with which the author can show the changes made to the article. Once this process is complete, the text can be published on the magazine’s website.

The Editorial Team reserves the right to reject articles, always giving the reasons to the author, at any point the process, to guarantee the quality of the publication.

The peer-review process does not apply to Reviews, Interviews, and Translations.

For the evaluation, each peer referee must fill in the following form after having read the article to be evaluated: Evaluation form.

 

2. Conflicts of interests

Peer reviewers are obliged to communicate possible conflicts of interest that may be detected in the process of evaluating the articles for the following reasons: involvement with institutions to which they belong or work with; academic or personal relationship with the authors; impossibility to make a correct evaluation. If the conflict of interest is with the Editorial Director or any person from the Editorial Committee, the situation will be discussed by the Editorial Committee without the person involved. Transparency and fairness must always be guaranteed in the process of evaluation and publication of the text.

 

3. Verification of originality and authenticity

The Editorial Team of Iuris Dictio verifies the originality of the papers received with Turnitin, anti-plagiarism software that evaluates the article, making a comparison of similarity percentages with other papers published on the Internet. Papers must present the author's own ideas.

In case of detecting plagiarism, the article will not be published, and the author of the original document will be informed.

The contents of published articles are the responsibility of the authors, ensuring having reviewed current, relevant sources on the explored topic.

 

4. Retractions

Once an article, review or translation has been published, it cannot be withdrawn from the journal. However, the article could be withdrawn by the journal, prior approval from the Editorial Committee, because of two circumstances.

1. A serious human error in the collection, analysis, or classification of information.
2. An ethical fault is proven. For example, simultaneous submissions to multiple journals, fabrication or manipulation of data, non-compliance with research protocols, plagiarism or fragmentation.

The mere request by an author to withdraw their article is not a reason to withdraw the text, so the journal is not obliged to do so.

 

5. Corrections after publication

When an author discovers a serious error in their work, they must inform the journal immediately through a letter, explaining the reason for the error and the proposal to amend this information, either through a correction or an erratum. The final decision will be made by the Editorial Committee. If the error is detected by any of those who are part of the Editorial Committee, the author must demonstrate that their work is correct.

 

6. Ethical guidelines

Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) is committed to promoting ethical conduct in the publication of its scientific journals and takes as reference the principles published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors, in addition to the Code of Honor and Coexistence. To attend to the accepted use of previous works by the same author we follow the guide Text recycling guidelines for editors.