Ethics of the SAB and Editorial Declaration of Good Practices
This journal adheres to COPE (Code of Conduct and Best Practices Guidelines for Journals Editors, https://publicationethics.org and to the recommendations of the Declaration of San Francisco (DORA, https://sfdora.org) to guarantee good practices related to the evaluation of academic productions.
All members of the Editorial Committee, Reviewers, Technical Staff involved in the editorial process and Authors are committed to respect the objectives and ethics of the Argentine Botanical Society.
For authors
Authorship and contribution: authors are considered to be those who have made a substantial contribution to the design, data acquisition, analysis, writing or data interpretation of the reported study. In addition, the authors as a whole agree to be responsible for all contents, their accuracy and completeness, even for those parts of the study in which the author has not personally participated.
The role(s) of all authors should be indicated at the end of the article; it is suggested to adopt the CRediT categories (https://casrai.org/credit).
The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that all parts of the paper are accurate and all authors agree with the presentation. He/she is also responsible for sharing with all authors the suggestions of reviewers and editors.
It is recommended to avoid "honorary" authors (people with relevant background included, even if they did not participate in the study) or "ghost" authors (researchers who actually participated in the study, but were excluded due to conflicts of interest).
Originality: authors should send original articles, written by those who declare their authorship, and unpublished, prepared especially for publication in the Boletín de la Sociedad Argentina de Botánica, which should not have been published in the same or any other language in any printed or electronic media and should not be in another editorial process. Abstracts of congresses and doctoral theses are not considered as previous publication. The underlying data must be accurately represented in the paper. An investigation must have sufficient details, references and citations to allow the reproducibility of the study.
The taxa involved in the study should be deposited in a Herbarium registered in Index Herbariorum, and their data mentioned in Materials and Methods.
The Editorial Committee will submit the manuscript to anti-plagiarism software and verification of similarity of contents, to verify its originality, and to identify the presence of serious intellectual property faults (inadequate citation, altered or self-plagiarism). When a manuscript is received, Internet searches of other works of the authors, title, excerpts of the abstract, and results are performed. Reviewers, as specialists in the subject matter, are asked to repeat this task. Fraudulent or deliberately inaccurate statements constitute unethical and unacceptable behavior. Authors should not fabricate or manipulate data (including images) to support their conclusions. In cases where any of these behaviors are verified, the manuscript will be returned without evaluation and without the possibility of resubmission. If plagiarism or self-plagiarism is verified, the persons involved will be notified and if the situation is not resolved, the manuscript will be rejected for publication in this journal.
Image integrity: Image manipulation such as brightness, contrast or color balance adjustments are only acceptable if they are applied to the entire image; it is not acceptable to enhance, darken, move, remove or introduce a specific feature within an image.
The Bol.Soc.Argent.Bot. will not accept fragmentation of research: if a study is complex, it should be presented in a single paper and not split into two or more individual publications to increase the number of submissions through submission to several journals or to one journal over time. If an article has already been published and the authors (or any of them) submit another paper showing fragmentation of results or "salami slicing", it will be rejected by the editorial committee. Papers with an indication of "1st part" or similar text in the title or in the manuscript will not be accepted.
Fundamental errors in published works: When an author discovers an error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is his/her obligation to immediately notify the editor of the journal and cooperate with him/her to publish a retraction or correct the work (erratum).
Plagiarism: Authors should avoid extensive textual copies of other works or books; if strictly necessary, the use of quotation marks and the text in italics along with the corresponding citation is recommended.
It is considered plagiarism (self-plagiarism) to use phrases from previously published works by the same author, which could even constitute a violation of copyright laws.
If copyrighted material (texts, images, photographs) or unpublished data belonging to other authors is reproduced, it must be indicated in the text and the corresponding proof of permission must be sent to the Editorial Committee, which must be presented before the paper is accepted, being the sole responsibility of the authors.
Conflicts of interest and financing: authors are obliged to acknowledge and indicate conflicts of interest that could be perceived as bias in their work, which should be explicitly stated at the end of the manuscript before publication. Authors should include in the acknowledgements section any financial support obtained.
Ethics for the Editor and Members of the Editorial Committee
Editors will evaluate the scientific content and merit of manuscripts based solely on the rigorousness of the intellectual content without regard to the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnicity, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors. They will also ensure that the peer review process is fair and impartial by selecting suitable and impartial reviewers.
The editors and all personnel involved in the editorial process guarantee the confidentiality of the data of both authors and reviewers as well as the information about a manuscript submitted to the Bol. Soc. Argent. Bot. Editors will inform and excuse themselves in the event of any conflict of interest. To avoid conflicts of interest, editors should take into account the funding sources and affiliation of the authors in order to choose reviewers who do not belong to those specific circles. They should not use unpublished information for personal gain or their own research.
Ethics for Reviewers
Reviewers collaborate with the editor in editorial decisions and are committed to evaluate the manuscript honestly, objectively, and critically with the goal of helping the author improve the article. Reviewers should carefully evaluate the intellectual content of the submitted manuscript, including the research methodology and procedures, taking into account the same ethical and confidentiality recommendations stated in "for editors". Reviewers should disclose to the editor conflicts of interest, or inability to review promptly, or indicate lack of qualifications or experience to review the manuscript. Reviewers should avoid suggesting citations of their own articles in order to expand citations of their own or their research group. Reviewers should report suspicions of plagiarism or ethical non-compliance.