The RDC is guided by the ethical conduct standards outlined in the regulations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (Cope) to establish its understanding of the duties of editors, reviewers, and authors, ensuring ethical standards that reflect the quality of its publications.

 

DUTIES OF THE EDITORS

Fair play and editorial independence: the final decision to publish a material, based on the opinions issued by the ad hoc peer reviewers, is exclusive to the Editorial Team, without external influence.

Confidentiality: only the parties involved in the process (authors, reviewers, and editorial staff) have access to the texts before publication.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest: editors must not use unpublished content from submissions without the express written consent of the author. Editors must refrain from reviewing submissions in which there is any conflict of interest.

Intervention and cooperation in investigations: Editors must take reasonable action within sensible response times when ethical complaints are brought in relation to a submission or published article. 

 

DUTIES OF THE REVIEWERS

Contribution to editorial decisions: the peer review process is essential for the editors' decision-making regarding the publication of an article.

Punctuality: the reviewer who does not feel qualified or available to evaluate should notify the editor and decline the review.

Confidentiality: all submissions must be treated as confidential documents.

Objectivity standards: the reviews should be objective and provide opinions with supporting arguments.

Identification of bibliographic sources: Reviewers should identify relevant works that have not been cited by the author and should also draw the editor's attention to any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript in question and any other published document of which they have personal knowledge.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest: Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential, and not used for personal advantage. Reviewers should not consider submissions in which they have any conflict of interest. 

 

DUTIES OF THE AUTHORS

General rules: authors of original submissions must present an accurate account of the research conducted. The document must contain sufficient details and references to allow others to replicate the research. Fraudulent or intentionally inaccurate statements are unacceptable.

Originality and plagiarism: authors must ensure that their works are fully original. The occurrence of plagiarism is unacceptable.

Multiple, redundant, or competing publications: submitting the same manuscript, or a manuscript that essentially describes the same research, to more than one journal simultaneously, or publishing the same research in different journals, constitutes unethical and unacceptable publishing behavior.

Identification of bibliographic sources: the authors must cite the publications that influenced the determination of the nature of their work.

Authorship: Authorship must be attributed to those who have contributed significantly to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the study reported. The corresponding author must ensure that only appropriate co-authors are included in the article.

Disclosure and conflicts of interest: all authors must disclose in their articles any conflicts of interest and all sources of financial support for the project.

Peer review: the authors must respond promptly to the comments/suggestions/corrections from peer review and to the Editor's requests, returning the material to the RDC within the established deadline.

Fundamental errors in published articles: when an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in their own published article, it is the author's obligation to immediately notify the editors of RDC. 

 

DUTIES OF THE PUBLISHING INSTITUTION

Management of unethical publishing behavior: in cases of scientific misconduct, the publishing institution, the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (Cade), in close collaboration with the Editorial Team, will take all appropriate measures to resolve the situation. This includes the immediate publication of an erratum, explanation, or retraction of the affected work.

Access to the journal’s content: the RDC offers immediate and free access to its content, following the principle of democratization of knowledge. Users may read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link the full texts of articles or use them for any other lawful purpose without asking the prior permission of the publisher or author, as long as they respect the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0) used by the journal. Authors may republish the materials elsewhere, provided that the Editorial Team is informed and only once the material is available on the RDC’s website.