Ethical commitment

Locus agrees with the ethical guidelines and good practices produced by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

To guarantee an editorial policy committed to ethical criteria of publication, the journal seeks to encourage the identification of plagiarism, bad practices, fraud and possible violations of ethics. All parties involved in the publication process (authors, editor, editorial and advisory board, editorial assistants and reviewers) are committed to complying with these standards of ethical conduct.

- To refer explicitly the data acquired and/or analyzed and interpreted from other publications;
- To cite duly and obligatorily any intellectual content of other authors in case of critical review;
- To indicate as an author only the researcher(s) who participated actively and substantially in all stages of the article's research and writing process;

After submission, the Editors will perform the following procedures:

- To request, when relevant, formal explanations about the participation of the authors in the production of the article;
- Not to reveal, to people who are not directly involved in the editorial process, information about a manuscript received;
-To evaluate the manuscript with the anti-plagiarism system, where its textual content will be analyzed, seeking to identify plagiarism, duplicate submissions, already published texts and possible fraud in research. Locus uses iThenticate, Turnitin text similarity check tool, an application trusted by leading researchers, scientific publishers and academics.

- To ask the author(s) for formal explanations about any doubts, problems and/or obscure points arising from this evaluation.

With the results and possible explanations received, it will be up to the Editors and the Editorial Board to decide whether the manuscript will be sent for peer review. After acceptance and before publication, articles can be evaluated again.