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Best Practice Guidelines and Publishing Ethics Policies

by Richard Meckien - published May 28, 2020 09:20 AM - - last modified Mar 21, 2022 12:42 PM

Original papers must be submitted through the journal's official e-mail address (estudavancados@usp.br) or via SciELO. In a preliminary stage, the content will be analyzed by the Editorial Board regarding compliance with editorial standards, internal consistency of the text, relevance to the editorial line of the journal, and contribution to knowledge innovation. Once approved, the papers will be sent for appreciation of the merits of its content. The peer-review model is used in order to guarantee confidentiality regarding the identity of the consultants and the authors. The analysis of the text is based on the journal's evaluation instrument. The opinions sent by the consultants are analyzed by the Editorial Board regarding compliance with the rules of publication, content, and pertinence. After this process, the papers will be sent to the authors with an indication of acceptance, reformulation, or refusal.

Estudos Avançados follows standards of consensus and common sense. The evaluation of the received manuscripts is taken into account. The text must be sent to a referee chosen from among researchers of notable competence in the area of ​​knowledge in which the collaboration is registered. The consultant's name must be protected by strict confidentiality. The review of papers is aimed at ensuring the integrity of blind peer review. In double-blind reviews, the names of the author (or authors) and of the reviewers are not revealed to each other. The opinion, whether favorable or otherwise, with or without restrictions, is then immediately sent to the interested party. If favorable, the author is informed of the estimated time to publish their text. Being favorable with restrictions, if these are accepted by the interested party, a new version will be reexamined by the same referee. The average time for these procedures varies from one to two months depending on the consultant's readiness.

In the case of a manuscript ordered to integrate a certain dossier, the editorial staff reserves the right to approve it, plan it, or send it to a consultant explaining the reason for this procedure. The prevailing trend is the acceptance of the commissioned manuscript, since the request for collaboration has been addressed to a specialist with a notorious knowledge in the area covered in the dossier.

There is some complexity in choosing dossiers and special issues. As Estudos Avançados is a publication open to varied and, in general, current topics, the systematic choice ended up configuring its own "physiognomy," with an emphasis on environmental issues, economic policy matters, relevant social phenomena (such as migrations, present ideological currents in the public debate, problems of gender, and ethnicity), as well as analyses and interpretations of works and cultural currents, especially literary and artistic. There is a sense of openness, however, for the reception of other themes for which contemporary social life requires reflection, as is the case of the Covid-19 pandemic in the first half of 2020, which mobilized the journal's editorial staff to publish a set of analyzes of the serious world public health crisis already in its then most recent edition (# 99).

It is worth mentioning the requirement of originality, which is customary, yet allows rare exceptions. These occur when there is awareness of an absolutely fundamental content to illuminate the main issues of a given dossier. In this case, the author and the source of the original publication are contacted to agree on the transcription of part of or all the text in question to Estudos Avançados, which will naturally give the necessary credit to the publication that accepted the procedure.

Copyright and license policy

The journal publishes articles in open access under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, which allows use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, without restrictions as long as not for commercial purposes and correctly citing the original work.

Ethics and plagiarism policy

The most serious problem in terms of editorial ethics is to admit the publication of texts plagiarized from national and foreign journals.

In 33 years of existence, Estudos Avançados has not registered any occurrence or complaint of total or partial plagiarism. It is the result of two procedures:
1. every received article is easily collated with others in the same thematic area via internet;
2. the journal makes use of a network of specialized reviewers who are able to verify the originality of the texts.

In its issue #80 (Jan-Apr, 2014), Estudos Avançados published a set of texts under the heading "Integrity and scientific innovation," coordinated by Professor Sueli Gandolfi Dallari, former president of the USP Ethics Committee (2012-2014), which was intended to contribute to the predominance of ethical behavior at the University of São Paulo.

For some time now, the journal has adopted the plagiarism identification software iThenticate and more recently the tool Turnitin, that allows text similarity analysis to strengthen academic and scientific integrity.