Good practice code

The Trabajo y Seguridad Social Journal. CEF, through its ethics and good practice code, is committed to maintaining the highest ethical standards. For this reason, any party involved in the authorship or submission of manuscripts (whether Research Studies, Academic Projects and Contributions or Bibliographical Reviews), as well as in their management and subsequent dissemination (whether authors, members of the publishing team or reviewers), will be obliged to comply with this code of ethics.

1. Publishing team

The publishing team of the journal, together with management and the coordinators, are responsible for its contents. They are therefore committed to ensure its scientific quality and to avoid malpractice in the publication of research results. This responsibility involves observing the following principles:

The director of the journal and the editor-in-chief shall be responsible for the publishing and technical decisions regarding the content of the journal.
The publishing team will carry out publishing tasks in accordance with the publication's policy.
Editors should process manuscripts promptly, informing the author of the status of his/her article at different stages of the publishing process.
Editors must be impartial when managing the works proposed for publication and respect the intellectual independence of authors, as well as their right to reply in the case of negative evaluations.
Editors and, ultimately, the director of the journal will be the only persons responsible for the acceptance or rejection of a manuscript. Their decision will be based on the reports obtained from peer review, but they may also reject papers for other reasons (inadequacy in meeting the scientific objectives of the journal, evidence of scientific fraud, excessive self-citation, lack of quality, breach of the artificial intelligence (AI) policy by the author(s) etc.).
The publishing team should not handle an original when there is a conflict of interest. Specifically, he/she must refrain from managing an original when any of the following situations are present: a relationship of kinship, friendship or manifest enmity, being part of the same research group, participating or having participated in the direction or co-direction of a doctoral thesis in the last ten years, having defended a doctoral thesis under the direction or co-direction of the author(s) of the manuscript in the last ten years, collaborating or having collaborated in publications or patents in the last five years, collaborating in other economic or scientific-technological activities, having a contractual relationship or sharing funds or national or international research projects (from public or private entities), or of any other nature, in the last three years.
The publishing team will also refrain from selecting evaluators who are affected (or may be affected) by any of these situations.
The publishing team is obliged to keep the texts received and their content confidential until the moment of publication.
No member of the publishing team may use data, arguments or interpretations contained in unpublished papers submitted to the journal for his or her own research, except with the express written consent of the authors.
Editors must ensure that the published papers have been evaluated by two specialists in the field and that the review has been carried out using the double-blind method (anonymity of those who have carried out the work and the evaluation). When one of the two evaluations is negative, a third report will be requested.
The publishing team will value and appreciate the contribution of those who have collaborated in the evaluation of the papers submitted to the journal. Likewise, it will agitate for academic authorities to acknowledge peer review activities as part of the scientific process and will dispense with those who conduct low quality, incorrect and disrespectful evaluations, or those that have been submitted after the established deadlines.
The editorial team will reserve the right to retract articles already published whose lack of reliability is the result of both inadvertent errors and poor scientific practices (data manipulation, plagiarism, self-plagiarism, omission of consulted sources, fraudulent use of AI, etc.). In case of conflict, the journal will ask the author or authors relevant explanations and evidence to clarify the problem and will make a final decision based on these. In this case, the retraction of the article will be published in the «Notices» section of the journal's online platform. In addition, a retraction statement signed by the editors of the publication will be included, which will be added ahead of the published version of the article. In said published version a watermark will be included indicating «Article retracted». Likewise, the journal will notify the retraction to those responsible for the institution to which it belongs to the author or authors of the article.
On the other hand, if serious errors or methodological problems were detected in an already published article that would be necessary to correct, the appropriate corrections will be made and the version of the article will be updated on the online platform. In addition, such major corrections will be announced under the heading «Erratum» in the «Notices» section of the magazine's online platform.
The conflict of duplicity, caused by the simultaneous publication of an article in two journals, will be resolved determining the date of receipt of the work in each of them. For articles containing data from studies or research involving human participants or based on clinical trials, editors shall ensure that the privacy rights of human subjects are respected. Editors may ask the authors for evidence on ethical issues (e. g., how informed consent was obtained from research participants) if doubts arise or if specific clarifications are needed. Privacy rights of human subjects must always be respected. Appropriate consents, permissions and authorizations must be obtained when an author wishes to include case details or other personal information, or images of patients or any other person in this publication. Authors are required to retain written consents and, upon request, editors may ask for copies of consents or proof that consents have been obtained.
Editors should ensure that articles involving human participation or those based on clinical trial reports explicitly mention compliance with the Declaration of Helsinki on Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects. To this end, editors should ensure that authors include in their work a statement that all procedures were carried out in accordance with relevant laws and institutional guidelines.
Editors shall evaluate the "Declaration of Artificial Intelligence Use" provided by the authors of the articles and reserve the right to request additional information regarding the use of AI.
The journal's publication rules for originals (regarding the characteristics of the work, format, image resolution, bibliographic reference system, etc.) will be made public.

2. Authors and co-authors

Authors retain the copyright and assign the right of first publication to the journal, which will publish the article on the internet on the journal's website (https://revistas.cef.udima.es/index.php/rtss/index), under the terms of usage and distribution license of the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Authors must sign the letter of originality and granting of right of first publication which is available on the publication's website.
Authors are and remain primarily responsible for the content and statements made in their article in order to avoid conflicts of interest between theTrabajo y Seguridad Social Journal. CEF and any third parties or institutions.
In the event that an article has been written by several authors, the author who is listed as responsible for the work must ensure that none of the signatures of those responsible for the work has been omitted, nor added others that are not, avoiding fictitious or gift authorship, which is a bad scientific practice. Likewise, he/she must also guarantee that those who sign it have reviewed and approved the final version of the work and that they give their approval for its possible publication.
In the list of authors signing the article, only those individuals who have contributed intellectually to the development of the work should be included. In other words, merely participating in data compilation or being involved in a technique is not sufficient criteria for being listed as an author of an article. In general, to be considered an author of an article and to be listed as such, three minimum requirements must be met:
- Participation in the conception and execution of the work that has resulted in the final article.
- Involvement in manuscript writing, as well as any subsequent revisions that have taken place.
- Approval of the final version that will be published.
The authors must appear in the article in strict order of importance based on their specific contribution to the work. If any changes occur during the review process, they must be communicated to the editor in writing. This document must be signed by all authors involved.
Authors must declare the exact origin of the content of the work (doctoral thesis, research project, teaching experience, etc.).
The authors must include information about their specific contribution to the article in the curriculum vitae that will be attached at the end of the document.
Authors must disclose to the editor any possible conflict of interest. When there is a commercial, financial or personal link that may affect the results and conclusions of their work, the text of the work must be accompanied by a statement of these circumstances (described in section 1 of this document), which will appear in the published version of the article.
Authors must indicate, in a clear and concise manner, all sources of financing granted for the study, stating the private or public entity responsible for said financing and the identification code of such financing, when it exists. This information will appear in the published version of the article and in the journal's metadata.
Authors must ensure that their manuscripts contain original results, data, ideas and/or interpretations, and that they have not been copied, invented, distorted or manipulated. In addition, they have an obligation to review and ensure the accuracy and validity of the results before submitting the manuscript to the journal.
In accordance with the Policy on the use of artificial intelligence (AI), authors must explicitly declare the use of AI tools in the preparation of their work and cite the tools used in the references section. All submissions will be subject to AI analysis and detection tools (e.g., Turnitin) to ensure ethical and transparent use. Fraudulent use of AI will result in corrective measures, such as the retraction of the article and disqualification of the author from future publications.
Authors undertake not to send articles that have been previously published or are in the process of being evaluated by another publication or medium. Articles resulting from papers presented at scientific congresses that have not been published or are only accessible in proceedings books may be submitted, specifying at the time of sending the paper to the journal, its origin.
Authors shall undertake not to plagiarize or appropriate the texts of others without the prior consent of their creators and without citing the source, even if the permission has been expressly granted by the latter authors.
Authors must also commit themselves to submit other texts already produced by themselves, ensuring that there is no more than 20% coincidence between a previous work and the one submitted. Editors of the journal will check each article with anti-plagiarism software (Turnitin). If they detect coincidences of more than 20%, they will review the sources of the text in depth and will send a report to the author indicating the definitive rejection of the work or the possibility of rewriting it, properly citing the sources.
Authors will be legally responsible for not infringing copyright by requesting the necessary permissions for the reproduction of cited texts, figures, graphs, tables, photographs, etc., which must bear their corresponding source of origin. When images are included as part of the research, an appropriate explanation of how they were created or obtained shall be provided, insofar as this is necessary for their comprehension.
Excessive self-citation, citing sources without having consulted them, adding cited texts that do not contribute to the content of a manuscript with the sole purpose of increasing the citations of an author or a journal, making erroneous interpretations of other works consulted, releasing scientific results before peer review, hiding data and methods that allow reproduction of the experiments used, including privately obtained information that cannot be verified, etc., will be considered to be irregular practices.
In those articles that contain data from studies or research in which individuals have participated, or those based on clinical trials, authors will ensure that the privacy rights of the participants are respected. To comply with this requirement, authors will have to attach a written statement that they obtained the informed consent (free and voluntary) from the individuals involved in the study for experimentation with human subjects. Privacy rights must always be respected. Appropriate consents, permissions and authorizations must be obtained when an author wishes to include case details or other personal information, or images of patients or any other person in this publication. Authors are required to retain written consents and, upon request, editors may ask for copies of consents or proof that consents have been obtained.
If the article involves the participation of individuals or is based on clinical trial reports, authors must ensure that the work described has been carried out in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki on Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects and will have to include in the article a statement that all procedures were performed in accordance with relevant laws and institutional guidelines.
It is recommended that authors incorporate, where appropriate, a sex/gender analysis that addresses the relevance of these variables in the design of their research, methodological approach, results, discussion and limitations, and conclusions of their study.
When the author discovers a serious error in his/her work, he/she must communicate it to those in charge of the journal as soon as possible, in order to modify his/her work, withdraw it, retract it or publish a correction or erratum. If the possible error is detected by any of the members of the publishing team, authors will be obliged to prove that their work is accurate.

3. Reviewers

Reviewers will act under the criteria of impartiality, objectivity, promptness, confidentiality, respect and acknowledgement of uncited sources. They must work in solidarity with the publishing line drawn and declare possible conflicts of interest. On the other hand, reviewers will be external to the author's institution, as well as to the committees and publishing bodies of the journal. Reviewers' commitments include the following:

To make a fair and objective review of the articles.
To respect the evaluation deadlines established in the journal's publication rules.
To clearly state the arguments for their assessment.
Not to accept any articles for review in which there might be a conflict of interest that would limit their objectivity.
Evaluate the declared use of AI in the study, as well as report any detection of undeclared AI use.
Refrain from using AI to conduct the review without proper oversight and without informing the editorial team.
To refuse to review an article if they do not feel technically qualified.
To maintain the confidentiality of the information and data of the evaluated articles.
To accurately indicate the bibliographical references of fundamental works that may have been overlooked by the author.
To inform the editors of any similarity or overlap of the manuscript with other published works.
To evaluate manuscripts solely on their intellectual content, without regard to the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnicity, nationality, or political philosophy of the authors.
Take gender perspective into account when reviewing manuscripts and writing review reports, considering whether the studies include a sex and/or gender-disaggregated analysis and whether they address its relevance in the research design, results, discussion, and limitations.
Not to use information, data, theories or interpretations of the manuscript for their own benefit or that of others, nor to harm third parties. Only in special cases may they seek the advice of other specialists in the field, and they shall inform the journal's Management of such circumstances.

4. Conflicts of interest

The editorial team should not manage an original when there is a conflict of interest. Specifically, you must refrain from managing an original when any of the following situations occur: kinship relationship, friendship or manifest enmity, being part of the same research group, participating or having participated in the direction or co-direction of a doctoral thesis in recent ten years, have defended a doctoral thesis under the direction or co-direction of the author or authors of the manuscript in the last ten years, collaborate or have collaborated in publications or patents in the last five years, collaborate in other economic or scientific-technological activities, have a contractual relationship or share funds or national or international research projects (from public or private entities), or of any other nature, in the last three years.

The authors must disclose any possible conflict of interest to the editor. When there is a commercial, financial or personal link that may affect the results and conclusions of your work, the text of the work must be accompanied by a declaration stating these circumstances, that will appear in the published version of the article.

No reviewer will accept articles for review in which there could be a conflict of interest that limits their objectivity.

5. Identification, prevention, and response to bad practices

In order to ensure the integrity of the editorial process and the reliability of published content, the journal maintains an active policy for the prevention, detection, and management of misconduct (for example: plagiarism, self-plagiarism, data fabrication or manipulation, fictitious or gift authorship, concealment of conflicts of interest, duplicate publication, fraudulent or undeclared use of AI tools, etc.).

5.1. General principles

Under no circumstances shall members of the editorial team (editorial board; scientific committee; reviewers; editorial and coordination staff) encourage misconduct of any kind or knowingly allow it to occur.
The editorial team shall promote the prevention of malpractice by informing authors and reviewers of the ethical standards required and by ensuring compliance with the journal’s editorial policies and publication guidelines.
Reviewers and members of the scientific committee will be asked to remain alert to possible indications of misconduct and to report them to the editorial team for assessment and, where appropriate, further action.

5.2. Receipt and handling of complaints or suspicions

Suspicions of non-compliance may be reported to the editor via the journal’s official email address: revistatss@udima.es
Where reasonable grounds exist, the editor(s) shall initiate the appropriate proceedings and, when necessary, seek the collaboration of the editorial team, the scientific committee, and/or external specialists.

5.3. Investigation and procedural safeguards

The incident shall be fully documented, retaining all relevant records and, insofar as possible, recording the pertinent factual elements (who, what, when, where, and why).
The editor(s) shall contact the author(s), granting them the opportunity to respond and to provide explanations and/or supporting documentation.
Particular care shall be taken to distinguish cases of honest error from those revealing a deliberate intention to deceive or to circumvent the rules of the editorial process.

5.4. Editorial measures

When misconduct is confirmed (or when there is consistent evidence thereof), or when substantive corrections are required, the editorial team shall act in accordance with COPE recommendations and flowcharts, applying -depending on the severity of the case and the stage of the editorial process- one or more of the following measures:

Rejection of the manuscript or withdrawal of the article under review.
Request for correction (including an Erratum where appropriate) and updating of the published version.
Publication of an editorial note (e.g., a warning or an expression of concern) when the evidence is inconclusive but there are reasonable grounds for concern.
Retraction of the article, in accordance with the journal’s policies, when unreliability results from malpractice or from errors that substantially invalidate the content. Where appropriate, the journal may also inform the author’s affiliated institution and adopt preventive measures regarding future submissions (e.g., temporary submission restrictions), without prejudice to any legal actions that may apply.

NOTES. Without prejudice to the provisions set out in Section 5, any suspected non-compliance with this policy may be reported to the editor via e-mail at revistatss@udima.es, who will examine such reports. If necessary, he/she may refer them to the Publishing Committee for review and subsequent recommendation(s).

If it is determined that an editor has violated the ethics and good practice code of the Trabajo y Seguridad Social Journal. CEF, the matter will be referred to the Publishing Committee.

If it is determined that an author has violated the ethics and good practice code of the Trabajo y Seguridad Social Journal. CEF, the publication reserves the right to impose sanctions, which may include the withdrawal of a submitted article, its rejection, or even the retraction of a published article.

In addition to its ethical assessment, improper conduct may result in the infringement of the rights of third parties, for which the Centro de Estudios Financieros reserves the right to take appropriate legal action.

This good practice code largely reproduces the Good practice guide of the periodic and unitary publications of Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.