Ethics Policy

The quality of a scientific journal is contingent on adherence to the established ethical rules that govern the publication. These rules pertain to the editorial board, the anonymous reviewers and the authors themselves. In the case of the journal Normas, the ethical guidelines followed are based on the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines)

Editorial board and scientific committee

The quality of a periodical publication such as the journal Normas is safeguarded by the editorial board and an advisory scientific committee. Members of both of these committees are renowned specialists in the principal subject of the journal, namely the Spanish language.

All data received is strictly confidential and is shared only between the editorial board and the author or the anonymous reviewers. In this last case, the reviewers will receive a document in which all references to the authors are eliminated or edited to avoid identification of the authors.
The members of the editorial board follow the publishing instructions and procedure, accessible on the website, where the publishing processes of the journal and the specific requirements related to academic plagiarism and to the authors’ rights or copyright are established.

The participants in the editorial board assess the content of the papers according to their specialism (Spanish philology, Spanish language or, on certain occasions where this can be justified, philology in general). Scrupulous attention is paid to submission in order to identify cases of academic plagiarism either with respect to the use of unquoted works from other authors or the use of articles of the same author already published in other publications.

Moreover, the decision by the editorial board is sovereign and said board is free to publish or reject any paper. In situations in which various reviewers make differing assessments of the merit of a given paper (for example, where one reviewer suggests acceptance and another rejection), the editorial board intervenes to prioritize one of the evaluations or, as far as possible, ask for a final, third evaluation.

2. Authors

Authors who wish to contribute an article for the journal Normas must send original manuscripts resulting from their own research. The evaluation of articles that are being evaluated simultaneously in other journals or books, as well as research already presented partially or fully elsewhere (journals or books) will not be allowed.

An author submitting an article to be reviewed in Normas is the only and ultimately responsible party for providing all the identification details for themselves and for any other authors participating in the paper. All authors must have participated in the in the research.

Similarly, in cases of quotations, authors are committed to referring adequately to the corresponding bibliographical sources. In this sense, in cases where a formal authorization for quoting other publications is required, authors are also responsible for obtaining these authorizations.
If authors consider it appropriate to refer to sources of funding (for a research project, for example), they are allowed to do so in the body of the text submitted. Furthermore, any conflicts of interest must be identified with the original manuscript submission.

Once the process of publication takes place, if authors detect any mistakes in their articles, they should immediately contact the editorial board in order to make the necessary corrections.
Authors must provide personal data such as their name, surnames, email address, country and institution of affiliation. Some of these data will be used only for editorial purposes, such as including the academic institution in the submitted article.

3. Reviewers

All the content of the journal is subject to double blind and anonymous peer review. Two reviewers will advise the editorial board about the scientific quality of the evaluated papers. At the same time, reviewers may suggest to the authors, if needed, important references that may not have been mentioned initially in the article.

The evaluations carried out by the reviewers are objective. In the event that a reviewer is able to identify the author whose work is being assessed or in situations in which there may be a conflict of interest, the reviewer must decline to evaluate the received article. Similarly, the evaluation of the article must be confidential. The evaluated information must not be used for personal interests.
In the review procedure both the authors and the reviewers’ identities will be concealed (double blind and anonymous). The journal has a document containing detailed instructions for the process of revision and evaluation. Moreover, this document explains how to initiate the review procedure via the virtual community used by the journal, which is housed on the virtual platform created by the Universitat de València’s IT service (Aula Virtual).