Ethical Editorial Policies

By submitting to LANKESTERIANA, authors affirm that their content:

  • is an original work, not previously published, not under consideration elsewhere, free of copyright restrictions, and devoid of plagiarism.
  • all authors have consented to publication in LANKESTERIANA.
  • proper acknowledgment has been provided for contributions to the study, including appropriate co-authorship (see Author Contributions statement).
  • all addresses, institutional affiliations, and ORCID numbers are accurate and complete.
  • authors adhere to national and international research legislation, including securing necessary permits for wild specimens and complying with the Convention on Biological Diversity and CITES.
  • adequate recognition of funding sources and disclosure of conflicts of interest are included.
  • authorization from copyright holders to publish all submission components has been obtained.

 

Code of Ethics and Good Scientific Practices

General Statement

This document outlines the ethical principles and best scientific practices that govern the publication process at LANKESTERIANA. We, the individuals involved in various editorial and technical roles of the journal, fully endorse these principles and practices. They are as follows:

Principles

At LANKESTERIANA, adherence to the following principles is paramount throughout the publication process:

  1. Principle of Open Access: Making research publicly available at no cost promotes global knowledge exchange. Consequently, every article published in LANKESTERIANA is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 Costa Rica license.
  2. Principle of Authorship: Intellectual contributions of authors and submitters of manuscripts are recognized and respected. Responsible usage of published and cited information is also upheld.
  3. Principle of Quality: Rigorous academic publications are valued, adhering to principles of relevance, originality, coherence, and quality foundational to academic research and output.
  4. Principle of Integrity: Maintaining the highest ethical standards in academic research and publication is deeply committed. LANKESTERIANA proactively identifies and rejects submissions containing falsified or manipulated results, misappropriation, or inadequate acknowledgment of authorship.
  5. Principle of Peer-review: LANKESTERIANA is a peer-reviewed journal that sets high standards for the quality and originality of its publications. Each manuscript submitted to the journal undergoes a rigorous double-blind review process by two or more external reviewers to ensure the impartial evaluation of manuscripts. Reviewers are chosen based on their expertise and alignment with the manuscript's subject matter.

The acceptance criteria are based on originality, quality, adherence to the journal's scope, and ethical standards. The journal encourages authors to submit significant scholarly, scientifically robust research with solid methodology, discussions, and conclusions aligning with the results and ethical standards. The journal does not rely on novelty or impact criteria for selection. Every contribution meeting universal scientific standards is valuable, and the journal aims to consistently enhance articles with objective feedback and expert reviewers for publication. The rejection rate does not indicate the journal's productivity.

  1. Principle of Acceptance Criteria: All submissions accepted for review at LANKESTERIANA must meet the following criteria:
  • Research Validity: Each submission must present a valid research question, motivation, and hypothesis within relevant theoretical frameworks, clearly contributing to the existing body of knowledge.
  • Methodology: The methodology must be correct, transparent, and appropriately detailed. This includes a clear presentation of the study design and materials used.
  • Presentation: The submission should be well-written and coherent. Figures and tables must adhere to scientific norms and standards.
  • Compliance with Guidelines: The submission must conform to LANKESTERIANA’ author guidelines, which cover editorial and ethical policies.
  • Literature Integration: The research should be well-supported by sufficient references and cover the relevant literature adequately, demonstrating a thorough understanding of the field.
  1. Principle of Rejection Criteria: An article may be rejected at any point before publication, including pre-peer-review, during peer-review, after initial acceptance, and even post-acceptance due to various reasons:

Quality and Presentation:

  • The manuscript's language and presentation do not meet the required standards for a thorough peer review.
  • The manuscript does not adhere to LANKESTERIANA´s author guidelines.

Scholarly Context and Validity:

  • Significant errors are present in the study's methodology, including design, insufficient description, data collection, and analysis.
  • The references do not reflect the current state of knowledge in the field.
  • The study's conclusions are misleading due to biased or flawed analyses or are not supported by the data.

Compliance and Ethical Standards and Research Integrity:

  • The manuscript lacks a coherent research question or hypothesis.
  • The content lacks originality, includes plagiarized elements, or duplicates previous work.
  • The authors have violated authorship guidelines and have engaged in data fabrication, falsification, or unethical manipulation of images and figures.
  • The manuscript does not comply with the editorial and ethical policies or meet specific manuscript requirements.

Publication History and Exclusivity:

  • The manuscript has been previously published.
  • The manuscript is being considered for publication elsewhere.
  • The manuscript, focusing on taxonomy and nomenclature, was previously deposited on a preprint server or platform.

Responsibilities

Responsibilities of the authors

At LANKESTERIANA, we believe that authors are responsible for ensuring that their manuscripts meet certain conditions before submission. These conditions include:

  1. Declaration of Self-Intellectual Property or Co-Authorship: Authors must indicate whether the manuscript is their self-intellectual property or in co-authorship. In the case of co-authorship, the authors must indicate that the co-author(s) are aware of and in agreement with the submission.
  2. Authorship: All authors must have made substantial contributions to the submitted manuscripts. We strongly encourage authors to provide a concise Author Contributions statement following their paper, outlining their individual contributions to the published work. This statement should encompass, but not be limited to, the following elements:
  • Conception and design of the research
  • Data acquisition
  • Data analysis and interpretation
  • Manuscript drafting or critical revision
  • Approval of the final version for publication

For additional details, we recommend referring to CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy). Individuals who have supported or assisted the research but do not meet authorship criteria should be acknowledged.

  1. Authorship Changes: LANKESTERIANA refers to COPE guidelines guidelines regarding changes in authorship. Any adjustments to the author list post-initial submission mandate unanimous agreement from all parties involved, encompassing additions, deletions, and changes in sequence of authors. Requests for alterations must originate from the corresponding author, accompanied by a comprehensive explanation and rationale for their inclusion or exclusion of authors after submission. Such requests undergo rigorous scrutiny and require LANKESTERIANA's approval, potentially involving validation of the authors' contributions by an institutional authority. LANKESTERIANA generally declines requests to modify authorship once a manuscript has obtained editorial acceptance for publication. In authorship disputes, LANKESTERIANA unequivocally refrains from arbitration, directing unresolved conflicts to authors' respective institutions in accordance with COPE guidelines and strictly adhering to institutional recommendations post-investigation. Failure to promptly resolve pre-publication authorship discrepancies may result in LANKESTERIANA withdrawing or rejecting the manuscript. Authors bear the responsibility of ensuring timely resolution of any outstanding issues, including effective communication among themselves or with pertinent institutional authorities. Following resolution, LANKESTERIANA may consider the manuscript for resubmission.
  2. Corresponding Author Responsibilities: The corresponding author assumes full responsibility and represents all coauthors. The corresponding author must:
  • Ensure full compliance with LANKESTERIANA's editorial and publishing policies.
  • Provide the manuscript's title, authors, and affiliations, including email addresses and ORCID numbers (if available) for each coauthor.
  • Ensure all authors review the final version of the manuscript submitted to the journal and agree to the author list and contributions.
  • Confirm in writing to the journal that all authors consent to any proposed changes in the manuscript's authorship.
  • Ensure all authors have approved the final draft of the manuscript before publication.
  1. Response to reviewers: Authors must respond to editor and reviewer comments during the submission process. It is crucial to carefully consider all feedback and incorporate appropriate revisions into the manuscript before resubmitting. In instances where authors disagree with reviewers, we encourage them to respectfully acknowledge and address any disagreements within the manuscript or in the cover letter. Authors are kindly requested to include a cover letter summarizing the changes made to the manuscript and their responses to each comment from the reviewer(s) or editor. In cases of disagreement with comments, please provide a clear explanation of your reasoning. To facilitate the review process, please use "track changes" or distinguish changes with color in the revised manuscript. Furthermore, provide a version of the manuscript with all changes that have already been accepted. Your cooperation in this regard greatly enhances the efficiency and effectiveness of the review process.
  2. Originality and Rights: All corresponding authors must complete, sign, and submit a letter attesting to the originality of the work and granting necessary rights. This letter should be read, understood, and signed before submission. Along with the manuscript, this signed letter should be sent to the journal's email: lankesteriana@ucr.ac.cr.
  3. Format and Style Adherence: All submissions must rigorously adhere to the journal's prescribed format. Citations within the manuscript should uniformly follow APA Reference Style 6th The presentation of tables, figures, or other graphical elements should be consistent with the journal's style guidelines.
  4. Manuscript withdrawal: An author can withdraw a submitted article by formally stating the reasons in a letter addressed to the Editors of LANKESTERIANA and send to lankesteriana@ucr.ac.cr. The journal will issue a formal response letter and remove the signed documents associated with granting rights and any digital or physical files related to the submission.
  5. Results and Opinions: All authors are responsible for each result and opinion generated by the submitted texts. They understand and accept that the journal does not necessarily agree with or share those results and opinions.
  6. Ethical Standards: All contributions submitted to the journal must be free of ethical faults. If an author has not respected this provision, the Editorial Committee must reject the manuscript, regardless of when it occurs during the editorial process. If the document is already published, the Editorial Committee must withdraw the digital file from the website and attempt to include an agreement about it in the following printed issue.

Responsibilities for the editors 

As members of the academy and experts in the journal’s focus area, the editors of LANKESTERIANA commit to the following responsibilities:

  1. Content quality: Editors are committed to ensuring the content meets the highest scientific standards. Each manuscript is assigned to an editor who supervises the process and decides on its publication, considering both peer reviews and its intrinsic quality.
  2. Confidentiality: The editorial board protects everyone's personal data during publication. Only information authorized for publication will be disclosed.
  3. Review Outcomes: The results obtained during the peer-review process will be officially announced in a decision by the publisher's committee and the journal's editor. Authors are expected to address all feedback and comments provided by reviewers. If doubts arise, a third pair of reviewers may be consulted. If post-review plagiarism is identified, the editor will promptly follow the predefined procedures for such instances.
  4. Peer review: The editor in charge of managing a manuscript is responsible for improving the manuscript's concordance with the journal's general style and overseeing the entire editorial process, from submission to final decision-making.

Each manuscript undergoes a double-blind review process by two or more external reviewers. An Editor in charge is assigned to each manuscript to ensure it aligns with the general style of the journal and oversees the editorial process from submission to final decision-making. Based on the quality of the work carried out by the reviewers and their comments. The Editor makes the final decision on manuscript acceptance, considering reviewers' comments, the review process's rigor, and the work's quality. If the manuscript receives at least one rejection from a reviewer, the Editor may accept this decision or, after careful consideration, opt to send the manuscript to a third reviewer or recommend resubmission. If any reviewer suggests resubmission, it implies a second round of reviews to determine acceptance.

For manuscripts submitted by members of the Editorial Board, at least three external reviewers evaluate and make the final decision. Reviewers are selected from different academic institutions worldwide based on their expertise in the fields required for the rigorous evaluation of manuscripts for scientific content and compliance with high standards. Manuscripts are usually evaluated within six weeks of formal acceptance by the journal.

  1. Efficient publication: LANKESTERIANA strives to maintain an efficient and effective publication process. Through Early View, we aim to reduce the time required for the effective publication of reviewed scientific articles, benefiting both authors and readers of the journal.

Responsibilities of the external reviewers

Reviewers, as external peers, play an instrumental role in upholding the quality and impartiality of scientific articles. Consequently, they are bound by the following responsibilities

  1. Expertise and Objectivity: Reviewers should possess domain expertise in the subject matter under review. Their evaluations should be detailed, impartial, and conform to the journal's guidelines while fostering mutual respect amongst peers.
  2. Conflict of interest: Should a conflict of interest emerge during the review, reviewers must promptly notify the journal.
  3. Confidentiality: Reviewers are entrusted with upholding the confidentiality of the manuscript throughout the review and publication stages.
  4. Feedback: Feedback from reviewers should be objective, honest, and respectful. While authors are encouraged to make revisions based on this feedback, refusal to accommodate crucial changes can lead to the manuscript's removal.
  5. Adherence to Review Guidelines: Both reviewers and authors must comply with the journal's established peer-review process, ensuring the publication's integrity and quality.

Responsibilities of Lankesteriana's Editorial Board:

The editorial board of LANKESTERIANA is entrusted with upholding the journal's academic reputation in its area of focus, consistent with its aims and target readership. Accordingly, the board undertakes the following responsibilities:

  1. Competence: The editorial board is dedicated to enhancing the quality, quantity, reach, and academic impact of articles published in LANKESTERIANA. Furthermore, it ensures that the journal preserves its distinct scientific identity.
  2. Academic integrity: The board guarantees that all manuscripts undergo rigorous academic evaluation. Acceptance is solely based on intellectual merit, ensuring no bias or favor towards any author.
  3. Dissemination and Outreach: Committed to knowledge dissemination, the board recognizes LANKESTERIANA as a crucial tool for nationally and internationally advocating research.
  4. Continuous Improvement: The board is unwavering in its commitment to refining every aspect of the publishing process and ascertaining that the journal aligns with its scientific focus areas.
  5. Upholding the Editorial Seal of Universidad de Costa Rica: The board acknowledges the DIEDIN at the Vice Rectorate for Research at the University of Costa Rica as the foremost authority on publications bearing an editorial seal in compliance with the university's guidelines. Therefore, LANKESTERIANA adheres to directives from this body concerning editorial affairs, especially when symbolizing the University of Costa Rica as a product of its editorial division.

Confidentiality

Editors, authors, and reviewers must uphold strict confidentiality during the editorial and peer review processes. Peer review is conducted anonymously, with reviewer identities kept confidential. Reviewers who need external input must consult the editor to ensure confidentiality. Any manuscript details, correspondence, or confidential materials must not be disclosed without written consent.

Data Accessibility and Benefit-Sharing Section

Data and supporting materials should be publicly available in a trusted archive or repository, such as NCBI for molecular and sequencing data, Dryad, Mendeley, FigShare, or TreeBase for datasets. Software, scripts, and documentation should be deposited in a public code repository like GitHub or CRAN.

ORCID

LANKESTERIANA strongly encourages all authors to provide their ORCID iD during manuscript submission. ORCID offers a persistent digital identifier that uniquely identifies authors, connects them to their research, and guarantees accurate attribution of publications and citations. For further information, please visit: www.orcid.org.

Preprints

The policy of LANKESTERIANA states that preprints made available online before being submitted to the journal will not be accepted for publication in papers dealing with taxonomy and nomenclature because they may conflict with some rules of the current International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants.

Conflict of Interest

Authors must disclose any potential conflicts of interest that could reasonably be perceived as impacting the research or its interpretation. These conflicts of interest may encompass financial, personal, or professional relationships that could introduce bias into the work. In cases where no conflicts of interest exist, please explicitly state that there are none. This practice promotes transparency and maintains the integrity of the research and its interpretation.

Compliance with local country regulations, International Conventions and Regulations on Biological Diversity and Endangered Species (CITES).

Authors must adhere to local country regulations and international conventions and regulations concerning biological diversity and endangered species, including those outlined by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). For studies involving the collection of biological specimens, authors should reference the appropriate collecting permits for the study site and permits for importing and exporting specimens under CITES guidelines. Authors are also encouraged to observe Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) guidelines, ensuring due credit and equitable access to benefits for countries, communities, academic institutions, and scientists involved in the research study.

Originality and detection of plagiarism

LANKESTERIANA accepts only original and previously unpublished contributions, including research articles, reviews, brief communications, comments, and taxonomic or nomenclatural rank extensions that are clearly labeled as such. To ensure originality and prevent plagiarism, the journal uses Turnitin (https://www.turnitin.com) software to check for similarities with previously published works in all submitted manuscripts. Authors are encouraged to check their manuscript for originality and to avoid improper citation or use of others' ideas or words.

Plagiarism involves unacknowledged copying or misattribution of original authorship, whether of ideas, text, or results. This includes substantial unattributed textual copying or text reuse without appropriate citation. Self-plagiarism, such as text recycling from previous publications, requires caution and proper attribution. Duplicate publication might occur when authors reuse substantial parts of their own work without proper referencing.

In the event of identifying any errors, citation manipulation, piracy, plagiarism, duplicate submissions, republications, data fabrication, falsification, authorship disputes, image manipulation, undisclosed conflicts of interest, or any other form of academic misconduct, whether brought to attention by reviewers, staff, or readers, it is essential to report these instances to the Editorial Board promptly.

Lankesteriana editors and Editorial Board thoroughly evaluate such cases and may take corrective actions such as corrections, retractions, or amendments post-publication, issuance of an erratum, or other corrective actions deemed appropriate by the Editorial Board depending on the severity and impact on the study's integrity.

Image Integrity and Ethical Standards 

Maintaining the integrity of images in scientific publications is crucial. Authors submitting digital images for review should be careful in processing to preserve the accuracy of the original data and comply with ethical standards. The Editors recommend that digital images submitted should undergo minimal processing. While some processing is allowed, such as in plant composite plates, the final image or images composing a plate must faithfully represent the samples, specimens, or the original data. Editors may use software to detect manipulation and request raw image files to address concerns during peer review or after publication. It is essential to retain unprocessed data even after publication to assist in issue resolution.

Authors should ensure ethical image processing by fully disclosing the tools and software utilized for image acquisition and processing and documenting all settings and key manipulations in the Materials and Methods section. Combining images from different samples, specimens, or locations should be avoided unless explicitly stated, as it can distort results. Authors should prioritize transparency and accuracy in presenting images to maintain the highest ethical standards in scientific research.

Grant Support Details

Acknowledging funding sources is crucial to ensure the transparency and reproducibility of research. Authors should provide details of all research funding sources, including grant numbers and funding agencies. Funding acknowledgment should adhere to criteria where activities directly supported by the grant are acknowledged, emphasizing original results and financial support for publication fees, while unrelated grants supporting data generation for distinct studies should not be acknowledged. Authors must disclose relevant funding sources for all contributors and be aware of any specific acknowledgment requirements from their funders.

Acknowledgments

The acknowledgments section is dedicated to expressing gratitude to individuals who contributed to the publication but did not meet the criteria for authorship and declaring relevant funding information, cautioning against listing authors in this section. Authors are encouraged to consider equity in research collaborations, especially in multi-region collaborations, and should declare competing interests separately.