Editorial Policies

Editorial Code of Ethics

Presentation

Scientific integrity and transparency in academic publishing processes are indispensable conditions for the generation and dissemination of knowledge. The Autonomous University of Sinaloa (UAS), committed to academic excellence and intellectual rigor across all areas of knowledge, adopts as its general regulatory framework the principles established in its own Institutional Code of Ethics, which call upon the university community to act with honesty, responsibility, and transparency in the exercise of their professional and academic activities.

In accordance with that commitment, this Editorial Code of Ethics (hereinafter, the Code) establishes the principles and procedures that shall govern the conduct of all persons involved in the process of receiving, evaluating, editing, and publishing the works disseminated by this journal. Its international regulatory foundation rests on the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), a global reference body in matters of ethics in scientific publishing, whose standards guide responsible editorial practices in academic journals across all disciplines.

The Code is not intended to replace the judgment of the persons who form part of the editorial community, but rather to guide their actions toward verifiable standards of probity, equity, and rigor. Its adoption is a necessary condition for the journal to maintain the trust of the academic community and contribute to the advancement of knowledge from the highest levels of integrity.

Chapter I. Scope of Application

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The provisions of this Code are mandatory for all persons who participate, at any stage, in the processes of receiving, peer reviewing, editing, proofreading, and publishing the academic works disseminated by this journal under the editorial imprint of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa. Its scope of application includes both internal editorial staff and external collaborators, including those who submit manuscripts for consideration.

Chapter II. Purposes

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This Code has the following purposes:

To establish the ethical principles that guide the conduct of all persons involved in the journal’s editorial process, regardless of their discipline, subject area, or institutional affiliation.
To promote responsible, equitable, and transparent publication practices aligned with COPE international standards.
To protect the integrity of peer-review processes and ensure that editorial decisions are based exclusively on academic criteria.
To prevent and sanction unethical conduct such as plagiarism, data fabrication or falsification, fictitious authorship, duplicate publication, and undeclared conflicts of interest.
To establish clear mechanisms for the management of complaints, corrections, and retractions, in accordance with COPE protocols.

Chapter III. Intended Subjects

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The Code is addressed to all persons involved in the journal’s editorial process. The main roles are described below:

Author: any natural person who has made a substantive intellectual contribution to the conception, development, analysis, or drafting of the work submitted for publication, in accordance with the authorship criteria established by COPE.

Editor-in-chief: the person responsible for directing, supervising, and ensuring the academic and ethical quality of the editorial process as a whole. The editor-in-chief represents the highest authority in publication decisions.

Associate editor: the person responsible for monitoring and developing the stages of peer review and communication with reviewers and authors.

Editorial Committee: the collegiate body that designs and guides the journal’s editorial policy. It is responsible for approving general guidelines, resolving editorial disputes, and supporting the editor-in-chief in situations requiring collective deliberation.

Peer reviewer: an external specialist who confidentially evaluates the methodological quality, originality, and academic relevance of manuscripts submitted for peer review.

Editorial team: staff who participate in the technical tasks of the editorial process: copyediting, layout, metadata management, typesetting, and OJS support.

Chapter IV. Principles of Editorial Ethics

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Article 1. Responsibility

Editorial responsibility entails assuming the consequences of decisions made in the publication process, ensuring the quality of the published material, and acting promptly in response to any detected irregularity.

Obligations of the editor-in-chief and the Editorial Committee:

To make acceptance or rejection decisions based exclusively on the academic relevance, originality, clarity of exposition, and suitability of the work in relation to the journal’s scope, without considering criteria unrelated to scientific merit.
To clearly disseminate the journal’s evaluation criteria and editorial guidelines, making them accessible to authors from the time of submission.
To be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, or apologies when errors or unethical conduct are detected in works already published, following COPE protocols.
To act expeditiously in response to any significant inaccuracy, misleading information, or unethical conduct identified in a manuscript under review or in a published article.
To refer cases requiring such action to the Editorial Committee, in accordance with the established institutional procedures.

Obligations of authors:

To disclose any conflict of interest, whether financial or otherwise, that could influence the results or interpretation of the work. The project’s sources of funding must be explicitly indicated.
To immediately notify the editor-in-chief when a significant error is detected in their own work after publication, and to actively cooperate in its correction or retraction.
To comply with the journal’s editorial guidelines regarding format, length, and citation style.

Obligations of peer reviewers:

To notify the editor-in-chief of the existence of any conflict of interest regarding the assigned manuscript before beginning the review, and to decline the review if such conflict cannot be resolved.
To communicate in a timely manner if they do not have sufficient expertise to evaluate the assigned work or if they cannot complete the review within the established deadline.
To inform the editor-in-chief of any indication that, in their judgment, justifies the immediate rejection of the manuscript, including well-founded suspicions of plagiarism, data fabrication, or prior publication.
To evaluate the intellectual content of the manuscript objectively and support each observation with verifiable academic criteria.

Article 2. Probity

Probity requires that all persons involved in the editorial process act with rectitude, honesty, and impartiality, without seeking personal benefit or causing harm to third parties in the exercise of their duties.

Obligations of the editor-in-chief and the Editorial Committee:

To reject manuscripts in which there are well-founded indications of unethical conduct. Rejection applies equally to unpublished works and to previously published works when an irregularity is identified. Before adopting a final decision, the editor-in-chief must give the persons involved an opportunity to respond; if the response is not satisfactory, the editor-in-chief shall promote an investigation before the competent body.
To tolerate no form of plagiarism—including self-plagiarism, plagiarism of ideas, and textual plagiarism—nor any other conduct contrary to scientific integrity.

Obligations of authors:

To guarantee that the work submitted for publication is original, is the product of the intellectual work of the signatory persons, and has not been previously published nor is being simultaneously evaluated in another journal or editorial work, in any language or format. A work shall be considered previously published when: the full text has been disseminated in any print or electronic medium; extensive fragments of the manuscript form part of works previously published; or the work appears in its entirety in conference proceedings or other publicly accessible publications. Unpublished versions translated into another language shall be considered original works.
To correctly cite all sources used, including their own previously published works, while respecting the intellectual property rights of third parties.
To include as coauthors only those who have made substantive contributions to the work, in accordance with the criteria established in the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) described in the author guidelines. All coauthors must have approved the final version of the manuscript and agreed to its submission for publication.
To submit a written declaration guaranteeing the originality of the work, intellectual property over their own content, and respect for the rights of third parties over materials reproduced with authorization.

Obligations of peer reviewers:

Not to use privileged information, unpublished data, or ideas obtained through the peer-review process for personal benefit, nor to share the content of the manuscript with third parties without the express authorization of the editor-in-chief.
To act objectively in the evaluation. All criticism must be directed at the academic content of the work and expressed with reasoned arguments; personal criticism of the author is inappropriate and inadmissible.

Article 3. Transparency

Transparency entails providing adequate public information on editorial processes, offering authors clear and timely information on the status of their manuscripts, and justifying decisions adopted within the evaluation and publication process.

To ensure transparency, the Editorial Committee shall:

Publish and keep updated the journal’s evaluation criteria, author guidelines, and editorial procedures.
Communicate to authors, within a reasonable period, the stage of the editorial process in which their manuscript is located, as well as the outcome of the evaluation with the corresponding justification.
Respond in a timely and documented manner to complaints, inquiries, or appeals submitted by authors, offering in all cases a reasoned resolution.
Notify any change in editorial criteria or procedures, as well as the reasons motivating such change.
Record in published articles the date of receipt, date of acceptance, and, where applicable, the history of corrections or retractions.

Article 4. Confidentiality

Confidentiality protects the information generated during the editorial process and safeguards the identity of persons involved in peer review, ensuring the impartiality of the process.

To preserve confidentiality, all persons involved in the editorial process shall:

Treat as confidential all content relating to manuscripts under evaluation, including their existence, their content, and the outcome of the review report.
Guarantee double-blind anonymity in the peer-review process: the identity of authors shall not be disclosed to reviewers, nor shall the identity of reviewers be communicated to authors at any stage of the process.
Not disclose information about any manuscript received to persons outside the editorial process, except to those directly involved in its evaluation or editing.
Refrain from using unpublished materials known through the review process for purposes of personal research or any other benefit, without the express written consent of the corresponding author.

Article 5. Equity and Inclusion

Editorial decisions shall be adopted without discrimination on the grounds of gender, ethnic or national origin, institutional affiliation, country of origin, language of original composition, ideological orientation, or any other condition unrelated to the academic merit of the work. The journal guarantees that its evaluation and selection procedures are equitable and accessible to authors from different backgrounds and institutional contexts.

Chapter V. Management of Unethical Conduct

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Article 6. Detection and Investigation

When possible unethical conduct is detected, either during the evaluation process or after publication of a work, the editor-in-chief shall initiate an internal investigation process in accordance with COPE protocols. In that process, the right of the persons involved to present their account of the facts shall be guaranteed before any decision is adopted.

Article 7. Applicable Measures

Measures in response to duly substantiated unethical conduct may include, without being mutually exclusive:

Immediate rejection of the manuscript in question.
Retraction of the published article through a duly reasoned public notice.
Formal notification to the institution of affiliation of the person involved.
Temporary or permanent disqualification from publishing in the journal.
Communication of the case to other journals in the institutional repository of Scientific Journals of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa.

The seriousness of the conduct and the circumstances of the case shall determine which of these measures are applied. In all cases, the decision of the Editorial Committee shall be notified in writing to the persons involved.

Article 8. Corrections and Retractions

When a significant error is detected in a published article, the journal shall publish a correction or erratum as promptly as possible. If the existence of fabricated data, falsified results, plagiarism, or any other serious violation of scientific integrity is substantiated, the article shall be formally retracted in accordance with COPE guidelines. The retracted version shall remain accessible in the repository, with a clear indication of its status.

Chapter VI. Ethical and Responsible Use of Artificial Intelligence

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This journal recognizes the Chapultepec Principles. Declaration of Ethics and Good Practices for the Use and Development of Artificial Intelligence as a guiding regulatory framework. The provisions of this chapter apply to authors, peer reviewers, members of the editorial team, and members of the journal’s collegiate bodies.

Article 9. Human Responsibility in the Use of AI

The use of artificial intelligence tools at any stage of the research, writing, review, or editorial management process does not exempt the persons involved from their intellectual, academic, and ethical responsibility for the work produced or the decisions adopted. AI does not replace intellectual authorship, academic judgment, peer review, or editorial decision-making.
Authors are responsible for the final content of their manuscripts in its entirety, including elements generated, assisted, or reviewed with the support of AI tools: ideas, arguments, data, citations, references, images, translations, analyses, and conclusions.
The editorial team and peer reviewers retain full responsibility for their reports, recommendations, and decisions. No editorial decision may be left exclusively to automated systems.

Article 10. Declaration of the Use of Artificial Intelligence

When artificial intelligence has been used significantly in the preparation of a manuscript, authors must declare it clearly within the text, in the space determined by the journal: methodological note, acknowledgments section, final declaration, or another specific section.
The declaration shall indicate, as applicable, the type of tool used, the purpose of its use, and the scope of its intervention. Declarable uses include, among others: copyediting, translation, organization of ideas, data analysis, image generation, information processing, preliminary bibliographic search, and writing assistance.
Undeclared use of AI, when it has substantially influenced the production of the manuscript, shall be considered a lack of editorial transparency and may lead to the measures provided for in Article 12 of this Code.

Article 11. Academic Integrity and Limits on the Use of AI

The use of artificial intelligence to fabricate, falsify, or manipulate data, citations, results, images, bibliographic sources, reports, identities, authorships, or research evidence shall not be permitted.
Nor shall the use of AI be permitted to generate misleading content, disinformation, plagiarism, concealed paraphrasing of others’ works, impersonation of authorship, or any practice contrary to academic and scientific integrity.
AI tools may be used as support, but not as a substitute for critical thinking, disciplinary interpretation, academic argumentation, rigorous documentary review, or the ethical responsibility of those participating in the publication process.

Article 12. Explainability and Verifiability

All content produced with the support of artificial intelligence must be capable of being reviewed, explained, and verified by the persons responsible for the manuscript or editorial process.
When AI is used for data analysis, information classification, generation of results, image production, or methodological assistance, authors shall provide sufficient information for the procedure to be understood and academically evaluated. If an AI-assisted result or procedure cannot be reasonably explained, it shall not be presented as conclusive academic evidence.

Article 13. Use of AI in Peer Review and Editorial Management

Reviewers and editors shall act with strict confidentiality regarding manuscripts received. They shall not upload, copy, or process unpublished manuscripts, sensitive data, confidential information, or materials under evaluation in external AI tools, unless there is express authorization from the journal and verifiable conditions of data protection and confidentiality.
The use of AI as editorial support shall be limited to auxiliary tasks: format review, preliminary detection of inconsistencies, linguistic support, metadata management, or technical improvement of the text, always under human supervision. AI may not replace the academic judgment of reviewers or the editorial decision of the team responsible for the journal.

Article 14. Data Protection and Privacy

Authors, reviewers, and the editorial team shall protect personal, sensitive, confidential, or institutional information that forms part of manuscripts, databases, editorial files, review reports, or the journal’s internal communications.
Personal data, clinical records, private information, institutional files, unpublished research data, or confidential information shall not be entered into AI tools without express authorization, adequate anonymization, and compliance with the applicable regulations on personal data protection.

Article 15. Non-Discrimination, Diversity, and Inclusion in the Use of AI

The use of artificial intelligence in research and editing processes shall avoid reproducing biases, exclusions, stereotypes, or forms of discrimination based on gender, ethnic origin, social condition, disability, age, language, culture, territory, orientation, academic discipline, or any other condition.
The journal recognizes the importance of cultural and linguistic diversity in the production of knowledge. The use of AI shall be carried out with attention to local, regional, and national contexts, avoiding the homogenization of forms of expression, analysis, or interpretation specific to each academic community.

Article 16. Updating the AI Policy

Given the pace of development of artificial intelligence technologies, the provisions of this chapter may be reviewed and updated independently of the general review cycle of the Code, when required by relevant changes in international editorial best practices, applicable regulatory frameworks, or scientific journal indexing criteria.

Self-Archiving Policy

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Rationale

This journal recognizes self-archiving as a legitimate and desirable practice within the open-access scholarly communication ecosystem. The broad dissemination of published works contributes to increasing their visibility, impact, and citation, while strengthening the principle that knowledge generated with academic and institutional support should be available to society to the greatest possible extent.

Manuscript Versions

For the purposes of this policy, the following versions of an academic work are distinguished:

Preprint or draft prior to evaluation. Version of the manuscript prior to the start of the peer-review process. It does not incorporate peer reviewers’ comments or the journal’s technical editing.

Postprint or accepted version. Final version of the manuscript approved for publication, after incorporation of corrections derived from peer review, but before final editorial layout and copyediting.

Published version (version of record). Final version of the article as published in the journal, with the layout, typographic design, pagination, and persistent identifiers (DOI) assigned by the editorial team. It is the reference version for academic citation.

Self-Archiving Conditions

Preprint

Authors may freely deposit and disseminate the preprint of their work in institutional repositories, subject repositories, preprint servers, and personal or institutional websites at any time, including before submission to this journal. It is recommended that, upon final publication, authors indicate that a later version has been published in this journal, with reference to the corresponding DOI.

Postprint

Authors may deposit and disseminate the postprint of their work once the article has been accepted for publication. It is recommended that the deposit be accompanied by a clear reference to the published version and include the DOI assigned by the journal.

Published Version

Once the article has been published, authors are fully free to disseminate the version of record in PDF format, as provided by the journal, through any medium or platform, without restriction as to time or distribution channel. This is the recommended version for self-archiving, as it is the reference version for academic citation and incorporates all identification and editorial elements that guarantee the integrity of the scientific record.

The channels enabled for self-archiving of the published version include, among others:

Institutional repositories of universities and research centers.
Open-access subject repositories.
Academic networks and scientific dissemination platforms.
Personal, institutional, or research-group websites.
Academic storage and collaboration platforms.

Attribution Conditions

In all cases of self-archiving, regardless of the version deposited, authors must:

Visibly indicate that the work has been published in this journal, with the complete bibliographic reference and the article DOI.
Not modify the academic content of the deposited version or present it in a manner that could cause confusion regarding its origin or editorial status.
Respect the terms of the license adopted by the journal, which regulates the conditions for reuse, adaptation, and distribution of the content by third parties.

Publication Formats

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This journal publishes its content in open and interoperable electronic formats, in accordance with international standards for accessibility, digital preservation, and open-access scholarly communication.

Each published article is offered in the following versions:

PDF (Portable Document Format). A fixed typographic presentation format that accurately reproduces the article’s version of record, including layout, pagination, visual styles, and persistent identifiers. It constitutes the reference version for academic citation and self-archiving. Its portability and broad compatibility with readers and devices make it suitable for downloading, printing, and distributing the definitive scientific record.

The availability of this format reflects the journal’s commitment to the widest possible dissemination, discoverability, and interoperability of published works, in accordance with the open-access principles that guide the editorial policy of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa.

Digital Preservation Policy

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Institutional Commitment

This journal assumes digital preservation as a permanent editorial responsibility and not as a supplementary technical measure. Continuous, complete, and verifiable access to published content constitutes an essential condition for long-term scholarly communication. Consequently, the journal implements an integrated set of procedures, infrastructures, and standards aimed at guaranteeing the availability, authenticity, and recoverability of all its digital objects, regardless of technological or institutional changes that may occur in the future.

Preservation Procedures

The journal continuously carries out the following procedures:

Backups. Periodic backups are performed for all published content and editorial management system data, in accordance with the protocols established by the technological infrastructure of the Autonomous University of Sinaloa.
Monitoring of the technological environment. The editorial team regularly monitors the evolution of file formats, management software, and metadata standards in order to anticipate and plan the necessary migrations before technological obsolescence occurs.
Digital preservation metadata. Metadata constitute the set of structured and standardized data that describe and identify the digital objects published, and represent an essential component of any long-term preservation strategy. Their correct assignment ensures that the journal’s content is findable, recoverable, and interpretable regardless of technological or institutional changes that may occur in the future.

Every article published in this journal incorporates, at a minimum, the following metadata elements:

Authorship: full name of each author, institutional affiliation or, where applicable, declaration of independence, and ORCID identifier.
Article title in the original language and, where appropriate, in English translation.
Structured abstract in the original language and in English; as applicable, the journal shall provide translation of the described texts.
Keywords or subject descriptors preferably drawn from thesauri in the original language and in English.
Publication data: journal name, volume, issue, year, pages or article identifier, and date of electronic publication.
Persistent document identifiers: DOI and, where applicable, other standardized identifiers.
Institutional affiliation of the authors and contact information of the corresponding author.
License of use and access conditions.

These metadata are recorded in accordance with international interoperability standards and are exposed through the OAI-PMH protocol (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting), allowing their automated harvesting by repositories, indexes, and external aggregators. Their standardization and completeness are necessary conditions for the indexing of the journal in national and international databases, as well as for the proper functioning of the distributed preservation systems LOCKSS and CLOCKSS in which this publication participates.

Open publication formats. Published files are offered in formats of broad compatibility and reproducibility, in accordance with international best practices in open access and documentary preservation.

This policy shall be reviewed periodically by the editorial team to ensure its suitability in relation to changes in the technological environment and international digital preservation standards.

PKP Preservation Network (PKP Preservation Network)

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The journal participates in the Public Knowledge Project Preservation Network (PKP Preservation Network, PKP-PN), which provides free digital preservation services to journals operating on OJS and meeting the established eligibility criteria. Through this network, the journal’s content is archived in a distributed manner through the LOCKSS and CLOCKSS systems, guaranteeing its long-term permanence even in the event of technical or institutional contingencies.

LOCKSS

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Open Journal Systems is compatible with LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe), an open-source program developed by Stanford University Library. LOCKSS enables participating libraries to preserve independent copies of registered web journals through the periodic and automated harvesting of published content. Each archived copy is continuously validated by comparison with the records of other participating libraries, so that any damaged or lost content can be restored from those records or from the journal’s original source.

Issues archived through this system may be consulted through the journal’s LOCKSS Manifest. https://revistas.uas.edu.mx/index.php/SIBIUAS/gateway/lockss

CLOCKSS

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Open Journal Systems also supports CLOCKSS (Controlled Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe), based on the same open-source infrastructure as LOCKSS and likewise developed at Stanford University Library. CLOCKSS operates as a controlled dark archive: archived content remains inaccessible to the public under normal circumstances and is activated for free distribution only when it is verified that it is no longer available through the journal’s usual channels, thereby guaranteeing continuity of academic access in situations of institutional or technical contingency.

Content archived through CLOCKSS is distributed to participating libraries through the journal’s CLOCKSS Manifest. https://revistas.uas.edu.mx/index.php/SIBIUAS/gateway/clockss

Indexing and Open Access as a Complementary Preservation Mechanism

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The presence of this journal in databases, indexes, and open-access repositories constitutes a complementary mechanism of preservation and visibility. Indexing across multiple platforms ensures that published content is identifiable and retrievable from diverse sources, reducing the risk of loss of access due to infrastructure changes or modifications to the journal’s electronic address.

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