Statement on ethics

• The journal Fortunatae defends, demands, and guarantees ethical behaviour at all stages of each issue until final publication. Our ethical rules are based on the Committee on Publication Ethics’ (COPE) Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.
• Manifestly racist or sexist content, or any other content that violates the fundamental rights of people, will not be accepted. In this respect, our code is based on the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity by ALLEA, 2017.

Notwithstanding the above, we would like to summarise the following points:

• The articles received are treated confidentially by the members of the editorial team, the members of the scientific advisory committee and the assesors, until accepted for publication.
• Only then can the title and authorship be divulged. Any conflict of interest between the authors, reviewers, and members of the editorial team will be avoided.

Responsibility of the authors

• Texts submitted for publication must be the result of original and unpublished research.
• Sufficient information must be provided so that any specialist can repeat the research and confirm or refute the interpretations defended in the work.
• People listed as authors must meet certain requirements to be designated as such. Each author must have been sufficiently involved, in order to assume public responsibility for the content of the work. One or more authors should assume responsibility for the entire work, from the onset of the work until publication. Authors are credited according to their essential contribution in terms of: 1) study conception and design, or data collection, or data analysis and interpretation; 2) writing the article or critical review of a substantial part of the intellectual content; and 3) final approval of the version to be published. Requirements 1, 2, and 3 must be met simultaneously. Participation exclusively in fund-raising or data collection, or the overall supervision of the research group does not justify authorship. Journal directors may request authors to describe the participation of each of them, and this information may be published.
• Other people who contribute to the work but who are not the authors should be cited in the acknowledgements section. Increasingly, multicentre essays are done and attributed to a corporate author. In these cases, all members of the group listed as authors must fully satisfy the above authorship criteria. Group members who do not meet these criteria should be mentioned, with their permission, in the acknowledgements section.
• The order of the authors will depend on the decision jointly adopted by the co-authors. In any case, the authors must be able to explain it.
• Authors must ensure that they have written original works. When using materials that are not their own, they must duly cite the sources and obtain the corresponding reproduction rights.
• Any attempt at plagiarism will be followed by rejection of the submitted manuscript or, if not previously detected, exclusion from publication and replacement of the reference with “Withdrawn for plagiarism”.
• Authors must not submit the same paper or describe basically the same research in more than one journal. Submission of the same manuscript to more than one journal constitutes unethical practice, unless otherwise specified.
• Errors in published works: when authors discover an error or significant inaccuracy in their own published work, they are obliged to promptly notify the journal editor and cooperate in the correction of the document.

Responsibility of reviewers

• All assessors must know and take into account the journal’s editorial policy and ethics statement. 
• Fortunatae reviewers help editors decide whether or not to publish a submitted manuscript. They are obliged to treat the manuscript received for review confidentially and shall not use the information obtained through peer review for personal advantage.
• Reviews should be carried out objectively. Personal criticism of the author or authors is inappropriate.  Any claim that an observation, derivation, or arguments have been previously used in other works must be outlined. Any reviewer or reader can and should draw the editor’s attention to any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript in question and any other published documents of which they are aware.
• Reviewers should withdraw if they know they are not qualified to evaluate a proposal, believe their evaluation of the material will not be objective, or consider themselves to have a conflict of interest.
• If the reviewer considers that research misconduct has occurred or appears to have occurred in the document to be evaluated, the editorial committee must be informed and will treat each case accordingly.
• You should express your views clearly, with supporting arguments, as well as draw attention to any relevant published work on the subject that has not been cited by the author.

Responsibility of the editors

• The editorial team of Fortunatae is responsible for deciding which submitted articles will be accepted and finally published.
• The team will be especially vigilant in order to prevent plagiarism. Turnitin anti-plagiarism software provided by the University of La Laguna is used to that end.
• When managing the works proposed for publication, the team will remain impartial and will respect the intellectual independence of the authors, who have the right to reply if they have been negatively evaluated.
• Manuscripts should always be evaluated according to their intellectual content, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnicity, nationality, or the political philosophy of the authors.
• The editorial team must not disclose information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, potential reviewers, or other editorial advisors.
• No member of the editorial team may use data, arguments, or interpretations contained in unpublished works for their own research, without the express written consent of the person or persons who have carried it out.
• The team will ensure that the accepted research papers have been evaluated by at least two specialists in the field, and that said review process has been fair and impartial. Likewise, the team will value and appreciate by written attestation the contribution of those who collaborate in evaluating the papers submitted to the journal.