Ethics Policy and Good Editorial Practices

"Arguments" observes compliance with various ethical practices in scientific publishing. Our policy addresses the following aspects:

Authorship: In line with the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), our policy considers that only individuals who have met the following four requirements regarding the research and its report are entitled to sign as authors: (a) have substantially contributed to the idea and design of the research, as well as to the analysis of the data; (b) have contributed to the writing of the manuscript or its critical review; (c) have approved the final version of the manuscript (the one submitted to the journal); (d) agree to be responsible for the content of the manuscript and its consequences. It is important to emphasize that all four elements must be present in the person(s) signing as author(s). The journal reserves the right to request authors to detail their participation and to publish this information—if warranted—on the title page of the article.

Conflict of Interest: These are circumstances in which a researcher's interests or relationships (financial, personal, professional, etc.) are likely to affect their professional performance, for example, by generating a bias that distances them from objectivity. If any of these interests or relationships exist, the authors are obligated to explicitly state their nature and ensure that they did not affect their work. This declaration will accompany the final publication of the article.

Extraneous Material: In the manuscript, literal quotations, text fragments, ideas, etc., will naturally be accompanied by the corresponding references (see Anti-Plagiarism Policy).

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI): The journal does not accept articles generated by AI, not even in cases where such authorship or co-authorship is stated. While it is true that AI can be useful as a sort of assistant for various tasks that may be involved in the preparation of a scientific article or research, it is also true that it is a still novel technology, the applications or consequences of which are not yet clearly understood. In general, the journal may tolerate the use of AI in some of the tasks mentioned above, provided that such use does not undermine ethical principles surrounding scientific research and publication (such as authorship or co-authorship). We invite authors to be transparent about their specific cases if their manuscript has made use of any AI. Any cases that warrant it will be evaluated by the members of the editorial board.

Errata, republications, and retractions: In the event that an already published article presents any type of inaccuracy, the journal will take one of the following actions, depending on the nature of the error:

Retraction: This applies when (i) very serious errors are detected in the article that affect its original meaning, its conclusions (all, most, and the most important ones), or its proposals, among others; (ii) serious ethical violations are detected in the research (fabrication or falsification of data, plagiarism, violation of ethical criteria for working with humans or animals, undeclared conflicts of interest, among others); (iii) fraudulent editorial processing is detected (flawed or manipulated peer review, fragmented or duplicate publication, authorship disputes, copyright infringement, among others). All retractions will be preceded by an investigation conducted by the journal or a third party. In the case of third parties, they can raise their concern by sending a letter to the editor expressing