Complaints and Appeals Policy

The journal Science portal will assist and resolve arguments or appeals related to non-compliance with any of the practices described in the editorial process involving authors, reviewers and editorial team.

When appeals refer to the non-publication of a document, the arguments will be thoroughly evaluated without implying a commitment to publish.

When appeals refer to cases of plagiarism, the journal will use the plagiarism tools at its disposal to confirm the case. If this is not sufficient, it will resort to the opinion of an external evaluator.

When appeals refer to the results of peer review, the author's arguments will be analyzed and if necessary a new reviewer will be requested to define the result.

When appeals refer to the conduct of members of the journal's editorial team, they will be dealt with by the members of the scientific committee.

For any of the cases described above, or even if there are complaints from readers, the interested party should send a letter to the Editor of the journal to the e-mail eespinoza@institutojubones.edu.ec. The letter should state the issue, duly motivated and justified. Once the letter has been reviewed and it has been observed that it has the elements that justify the complaint, the Editor will respond and resolve it. If the case warrants it, the legal processes of the Editorial Board of the Instituto Superior Tecnológico Jubones and the Copyright Law of Ecuador will be followed.

Post-publication discussions and corrections

In accordance with generally accepted standards of academic publishing, Science portal does not alter articles after publication:

"Articles that have been published should remain extant, accurate, and unaltered to the greatest extent possible."

In cases of serious errors or (suspected) misconduct, Science portal publishes corrections and retractions (expressions of concern).

Corrections

In cases of serious errors that materially affect the article (but do not completely invalidate its results) or significantly impair the reader's understanding or evaluation of the article, the journal Science portal publishes a correction note that is linked to the published article. The published article will not be modified.

Retractions (expressions of concern)

According to the "Retraction Guidelines", Science portal will withdraw a published article if:

- there is clear evidence that the results are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g., data fabrication) or honest error (e.g., calculation error),
- the results have been previously published elsewhere without adequate cross-referencing, permissions, or justifications (i.e., cases of redundant publication),
- constitutes plagiarism,
- reports unethical research.

An article is retracted by publication of a retraction notice that is linked to or replaces the retracted article. Science portal Journal will make every effort to clearly identify a retracted article as such.

If there is an ongoing investigation that could result in the retraction of an article, Science portal may choose to alert readers by publishing an expression of concern.