Publishing Policies
Peer review process | Recommendations for reviewers and authors
Originality and no previous publications
Ethicals considerations/patient consent for related material
The Revista del Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires (RHIBA) adheres to the peer review process as the most effective and efficient mechanism to guarantee the quality, reliability, integrity, and consistency of the academic literature in terms of scientific accuracy. The type of review adopted is double-blind.
All manuscripts received are submitted to this two-stage process: a first general evaluation by the Editorial Committee that determines if the manuscript is suitable for publication. If approved, it goes to the second evaluation, which consists of a double-blind arbitration system in which both authors and reviewers remain anonymous. The reviewers selected will be external to the Editorial Committee.
The Journal provides a guide to facilitate the revision. The reviewers may recommend publication without changes, with minor or substantial changes, or non-publication. Authors will get feedback from the editorial coordination of the reviewers' comments and may accept or reject the suggested changes. If the authors confirm the changes, they should submit a newly revised manuscript for evaluation. Additional changes may be requested if necessary. The Editorial Committee will have the final decision on the acceptance or rejection of the article. They will inform the authors in writing with the appropriate justifications in the case of its rejection.
The complete review and correction process will have an estimated turnaround time of three months (90 days).
The approved article will be published immediately under the continuous publication scheme (online first) adopted by the journal. The dates of reception, approval and publication will appear in the articles once published. The approved article may be cited from the moment of its publication using the corresponding date (day, month and year) and the assigned DOI number; and will be incorporated into an annual number where all the articles published in the same period will be found, ordered by section and chronologically.
Key recommendations for conducting an ethical, constructive and effective evaluation:
1. Evaluate the work as it is, not as one would personally do it.
The role of the reviewer is to assess the strength and contribution of the manuscript received, not to suggest completely new research. No research is absolute in itself and it is not up to the reviewer to propose lines of study that go beyond what is proposed in the article. Instead, if appropriate, clarifications or, in duly justified cases, additional analyses on data already obtained may be suggested.
Drafting of the evaluation: The recommendation usually formulated is that of the golden rule for these cases “review for others as you would want others to review for you.”
2. Avoid comments on how the research would have been done personally.
Each researcher has his or her own methodological and conceptual approach. The reviewer's comments should focus on the consistency, validity, and relevance of the study as presented. While it may be useful to suggest improvements, recommendations should be aimed at strengthening the work, without imposing personal preferences. When responding to these suggestions, authors should always be polite, reasoned and grateful, even when they decide not to accept them.
3. Suggested references: an optional contribution, not a mandatory requirement
The reviewer may suggest bibliographical references that he/she considers relevant and useful for the evaluation.
4. Ethics and responsibility of the reviewer
We recommend that peer reviewers be trained in good peer review practices and avoid making evaluations based solely on intuition. There are multiple resources on the peer review process that can be useful to strengthen your role as peer reviewers. A well-founded peer review process not only improves individual articles, but also contributes to the development of science as a whole.
5. Recognition of peer reviewers
Despite its limitations, peer review is an essential mechanism for scientific quality. A well-conducted evaluation has a positive impact on the improvement of manuscripts and the advancement of knowledge. For this reason, we express our appreciation to all peer reviewers who perform this work with rigor and honesty. Their contribution is invaluable to the scientific community.
* Text based on articles by Lluís Codina.
Links of interest
- School of Peer Reviewers Portal where you can find a series of small articles about the tasks of peer reviewers.
- Scholary Peer Review | Clarivate /Web of Science (online training, free of charge): Courses on basic peer review skills.
- Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers | (COPE | Committee on Publication Ethics)
- How to do a peer review | Springer
- Peer review | Lluís Codina: entries on the general functioning of peer review as well as guidelines on how to conduct a peer review | (COPE | Committee on Publication Ethics). [go up]
Each of the authors appearing in the manuscript is responsible for making a significant and identifiable contribution to the published article (design, analysis, and interpretation of results).
The Journal adheres to the ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors) definition of authorship.
All authors must meet the four criteria to define authorship.
- To have have contributed substantially to the conception or design of the work; or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work.
- To have drafted the article or revised it critically for important intellectual content.
- To give final approval of the version to be published.
- To agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are are appropriately investigated and resolved.
Before publication, the corresponding author must sign a statement confirming that all the authors who appear in the manuscript meet the authorship criteria.
If the participant does not meet all four authorship criteria but has made a sufficient contribution at some stage to the development of the study to deserve mention within the publication, the name may appear at the end of the article in the appropriate acknowledgments.
Changes in authorship:
If after submission in the system a change in authorship is generated (addition, deletion or changes in the order of authors) the corresponding author must send a form with the new data to be analyzed by the Editor-in-Chief of the journal ¨[link to download]. [go up]
RHIBA is committed to publishing quality research and transparency of reviewing and publishing, free of influence. Authors, reviewers, and editors must declare their conflicts of interest.
Conflicts of interest may be in the role of the author, reviewer, or editor affecting the manuscript in the writing, review, or publication process when they have links to activities or relationships that may improperly influence their judgment.
Authors must declare at the end of the paper the presence of conflicts of interest, detailing what they consist of (employment, consultancies, stocks or options, fees, patents, and paid expert testimony).
RHIBA adheres to the ICMJE definition of conflict of interest, and articles should be published with statements or supporting documents of:
- Relationships and activities of the authors; and
- Supporting sources for the work, including names of sponsors along with explanations of the role of those sources, if any (in study design; data collection, analysis, and interpretation; report writing); any restrictions regarding submission of the report for publication; or a statement that the source of support had no such involvement or other limitations regarding the publishing; and
- If the authors had access to the material, the nature and extent of such access, and whether access is ongoing.
When prospective authors have financial ties to disclose, journal editors decide whether or not they are relevant to the topic.
Editors must declare their conflict of interest upon receiving the manuscript for reviewing, declining to do so, and clarifying the reason for the perceived problem. [go up]
Originality and no previous publication
Authors must submit a statement of authorship and conflicts of interest and ensure that the manuscript has not been previously published or submitted for simultaneous consideration to another journal.
Editors make decisions about the manuscript considering originality and no previous publication. The Journal will not accept any manuscript published elsewhere in whole or in part, except for the presentation of research as abstracts at scientific meetings, publication of results in government agencies to meet legal requirements, or urgent public health needs. In these cases, the authors should explicitly clarify it at the bottom of the article or in the cover letter. Preprints are also accepted. Pre-publishing a primary research manuscript means storing it in pre-publishing servers, institutional repositories, author sites, and open communications between researchers, either on community pre-publishing servers or pre-publishing comment platforms, before formal peer review in a journal. Authors should mention prepublication details, including DOI and licensing terms. If the article goes for publication, the author(s) should update his/her/their registration by referring to the published paper, DOL, and the URL link to the version of the article posted on the journal website. Prepublications may appear on the reference list of articles submitted for review.
The Journal may publish articles from international institutions (WHO, PAHO, or similar) that authorize free reproduction. In well-justified situations, it might evaluate papers previously published in other media. In that case, the authors must have the approval of the editors of both journals. [go up]
Ethical considerations/patient consent for related material
The Journal is committed to high integrity and ethical publication. It adheres to the standards published by COPE-Committee on Publication Ethics on Ethical Conduct and Good Publication Practices.
All research studies in humans or animals must comply with the local, regional, and national regulations governing the authors' country. In human research studies, the authors must adhere to the Declaration of Helsinki (WMA - The World Medical Association-WMA Declaration of Helsinki - Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects) and have a protocol approved by the local, regional or national ethics committee. Animal research studies should comply with the institutional and national standards of care and use of laboratory animals (see: https://accountablejournalism.org/ethics-codes/consensus-author-guidelines-on-animal-ethics-and-welfare-for-editors). Animal research studies should comply with the institutional and national standards of care and use of laboratory animals.
In case of any material (image/video/clinical case/other) where the patient can be related, he or she must sign the corresponding consent. [go up]
The Journal considers plagiarism and self-plagiarism as serious unethical misconduct in scientific research, and the editors are those required to detect them. We consider plagiarism to be "copying in substance the works of others, giving them as one's own," in the words of the Real Academia Española, both in text and ideas. [upload]. The same criterion applies to the manipulation of quotations and the falsification or fabrication of data.
To deal with these situations, if detected, there are the COPE guidelines regarding "allegations of misconduct" and the ICJME recommendations for corrections, retractions, and editorial expressions of concern.
Simmilarity check (a service provided by Crossref and developed by iThenticate) is used to match jobs received for evaluation. [go up].
The Open Journal System is compatible with the LOCKSS system, which guarantees the permanent and reliable archiving of the articles published in the Revista del Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires. In addition, the journal is hosted on a server, where its information and contents are updated, preserved and protected.
The complete volumes are stored in the institutional repository TROVARE. [go up]
The HIBA Journal incorporates interoperability protocols that allow its contents to be harvested by other distribution systems. Journals published through OJS (Open Journals System 3.3 LTS) incorporate the OAI-PMH (Open Archive Initiative-Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) interoperability protocol that allows different formats for metadata to be obtained.
Protocol: OAI-PMH Version 2.0.
Metadata formats: Dublin Core; MARC; MARC21; RFC1807.
Path for harvesters: https://ojs.hospitalitaliano.org.ar/index.php/revistahi/oai [go up]
The Journal may include advertisements approved by the Editorial Committee and the Instituto Universitario Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires authorities. Under no circumstances will they accept advertisements for products that are harmful to our health.
Advertising will not influence the content of the articles or editorial decisions.
The articles requested by the Journal will be of academic interest and may be related to current topics. The papers will be peer-reviewed and must comply with current publication standards. [go up].