Ethical principles

All papers submitted for publication in the journal Agronomía Mesoamericana can only enter through the electronic journal, authors must subscribe at http://revistas.ucr.ac.cr/index.php/agromeso/user/register. In addition, they must be original, unpublished and may not be proposed in whole or in part to another journal. All publications will be published in electronic formats, including the Internet, based on the rules of disclosure and transfer of rights by the authors.

Agronomía Mesoamericana journal does not charge for the concepts of sending, editing and publication. The persons in charge of reviewing each work will be at least two external experts or peer referees, with experience in the subject; these will be selected based on their academic background and publications in scientific journals.

The journal Agronomía Mesoamericana declares that it follows the procedures and recommendations given by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), which are based on the promotion of integrity in research and its publication.

From misconduct to ethics

Agronomía Mesoamericana agrees to pursue ethical misconduct in order to maintain the integrity of the scientific publication. In the journal, papers submitted for publication are handled confidentially; however, conduct that is detrimental to transparency in research and data presentation is not tolerated.

In case of suspicion of unethical conduct, the journal will proceed to make the necessary inquiries, handling with confidentiality the suspected material.

In order to deal with cases of suspected misconduct, the COPE guidelines and flow charts will be followed, and based on them, any work that is proven to have incurred in malpractice will be rejected or retracted, depending on the state of the manuscript at the time of detecting misconduct.

Any publisher, reviewer, author, or reader may inform Agronomía Mesoamericana of undeclared conflicts of interest, data errors or inventions, or any other conduct deemed unethical. If any complaint is received, Agronomía Mesoamericana undertakes to investigate the case and inform the complainant of the outcome of the investigation.

Conflicts of interest

Agronomía Mesoamericana understands that a conflict of interest exists when any personal interest of the subject, whether the author, editor, reviewer, or reader, conflicts with the veracity or integrity of a publication, peer review, or editorial decision-making. They can have diverse origins such as commercial, intellectual, financial, among others.

In order to submit a paper for publication in Agronomía Mesoamericana, authors must declare that they do not possess any conflict of interest. To avoid incurring a fault, authors must declare the sources of funding for the research, their participation in the design, development, and analysis of the study.

The reviewers of papers submitted for publication in Agronomía Mesoamericana must inform the director or editor of any conflict of interest they may have on any subject that prevents their impartiality in the review of a paper, so that they may proceed to dispense with their participation in the arbitration of the manuscript.

In the event that the director or editor has a conflict of interest with any subject matter or authorship of any work, he or she should decline to manage the work, in order to avoid incurring in subjectivities or undue delays in the process of editing the work.

Readers who wish to comment on a published work should declare their conflicts of interest with the subject matter or authors.

Agronomía Mesoamericana does not accept the use of trade names in pesticides, equipment or food, with the exception of particular formulations that may affect the results. Pesticides should be written with the common name followed by the chemical in parentheses.

From the authors

When submitting a paper for publication in Agronomía Mesoamericana authors must attach a letter stating that the paper is original, that it has not been published or submitted for publication in other journals, except in the form of an abstract or as part of a conference, opinion, or thesis, and that it is not under publication in another scientific journal. They should take full responsibility for the content of their work. They should include the full name of the authors with their respective affiliations, including the city, country where the work center is located. Papers submitted for publication must have the authorization of the institution or company where the research was carried out and the one that provided the funding (if not the same).

Authors should specify that they have sufficient legal capacity to authorize Agronomía Mesoamericana to carry out all the processes of graphic and style editing so that the writing complies with the quality standards of the journal; to allow the journal to publish the work for the first time in any written or electronic medium. In addition, they recognize and accept the principles of open access and Creative Common licensing used in the journal. (Attribution-NonCommercial-NonDerivative 4.0 International).

Authors will be considered those who participated to a sufficient degree to assume public responsibility for the content of the work. It is the author who intervened in an essential way in a) the conception and the design of the study, obtaining of the data, or the analysis and interpretation of the same; b) the writing of the work or the critical revision of a substantial part of its intellectual content; and c) the final approval of the version that will be published. Requirements a, b, and c must be met simultaneously. Participation exclusively in obtaining funds, data or the coordination of work and general supervision of the research group does not justify authorship (taken from the indications to the authors of the journal Colombia Médica http://colombiamedica.univalle.edu.co/informacion.html).

Authors may withdraw the work submitted for publication in Agronomía Mesoamericana at any time prior to publication, the withdrawal can only be express, it will never be understood that work has been tacitly withdrawn. Withdrawing the editing work gives the possibility that the authors submit the unpublished work to another journal.

All similar research information used in support of the information presented in a paper should contain an acknowledgment by citation. Authors should accurately represent the work of others in citations and should not copy references from other publications but have read the full paper. Information obtained from private sources will only be used with the informed consent of the author or possessor. Figures, graphs or tables that are not created by the author must contain the source. Agronomía Mesoamericana does not allow the use of indirect sources of information, this in order to avoid errors of interpretation or reproducibility of the data.

The works must contain the necessary information for the reproducibility of the study and the results; including inaccurate or invented data is considered a breach of ethics, which will imply the immediate rejection or retraction of the work. Authors must comply with relevant conventions, requirements, and regulations to make materials, reagents, software, or data sets available to other researchers upon request. Researchers must present their results clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification, or improper manipulation of data. The results obtained and their accuracy should not include indications that are outside the results of the investigation. Study limitations should be addressed in any publication.

Research with direct and indirect financial support, provision of equipment or materials, and other support (such as specialized statistical or editorial assistance) should clearly indicate, and where there is funding by private companies, it should be signed with the sponsor that the publication may include findings that do not favor the commercial or developing product. There should be a clear separation between the scientific interest and the commercial interest of a product.

The journal recognizes as recurrent or redundant publication those writings that are not original, modified from published research, or partitions of a major work. Any publication of documents that are known to be submitted or published simultaneously in another journal previously published works, or any similar conduct will be rejected or retracted, depending on the state of the writing at the time of detecting the misconduct. 

Of the reviewers

Papers submitted for publication in Agronomía Mesoamericana will be sent to at least two external pairs, who will participate free of charge and voluntarily in the evaluation.

The arbitrators will analyze the work to determine the validity of the proposed objectives, the methodology used and the results obtained, as well as its impact or contribution to science. They will be given the work and the revision guide so that in one month they can issue the results of the revision. If this process is delayed, they will be sent to other specialists and the author(s) will be told if they agree to wait longer or if they will be able to withdraw their work from the editing process. Once the paper is approved, the final version is sent to the authors for review and approval within five working days. The Editorial Board reserves the right to classify works according to their impact and content.

The editing process of Agronomía Mesoamericana has a variable duration but cannot be more than five months from receipt to acceptance; papers accepted for publication will be scheduled in the closest issue to be published as long as they are not in final corrections.

The evaluation model used in Agronomía Mesoamericana is double-blind. The analysis of the works carried out by the evaluators are considered as mechanisms for decision making by the editor and publisher of the journal, they are also a source of improvement in the quality of the works.

The reviewers who receive from Agronomía Mesoamericana a work for evaluation should ensure confidentiality in the treatment of the data, should not share the information with another colleague, so, in case of considering another person to be more optimal, should communicate it to the director or editor of the journal so that they consider including the latter as peer reviewer of the document.

Evaluations should ensure the impartiality of the reviewer, contributions should be objective and not to the personal detriment of the authors. Reviewers can argue their views with supporting material. In case of detecting irregularities or inconsistencies in the data of the work, or if they consider that there are references used that have not been cited, they should inform the director or editor so that they may proceed as appropriate according to the case and in accordance with the recommendations, procedures, and recommendations given by COPE.

From the editor, the publisher, and the Editorial Board

The decision on the publication and qualification of the works in Agronomía Mesoamericana is the responsibility of the director, the editor, and the Editorial Board. The decision will be based on blind peer evaluation. The information obtained from the evaluations will be treated confidentially and without personal purposes.

The director and publisher of Agronomía Mesoamericana will be guided by the authors' instructions, the editorial policies imposed by the Editorial Board and the licenses to manage the works that enter the journal. They will never violate copyright and will be in charge of detecting plagiarism. They may not proceed in a discriminatory manner in the reception and processing of works.

The editorial management of the works will be under confidentiality. The director, the editor or any member of the Editorial Board may not reveal data or information of any of the works submitted for publication in the journal.

The editor, publisher or any member of the Editorial Board has completely denied the possibility of using unpublished material for personal purposes unless there is express consent of the authors.

The editor, the publisher and the members of the Editorial Board assume responsibility for what is published in Agronomía Mesoamericana, therefore, it is up to them to retract and errata when necessary.