ETHICS POLICY

Ethics Statement and Prevention of Publication Malpractice

CerebrIQ International Journal (CRQIJ), an annual journal founded in 2025 and published by DB Ediciones, maintains a strong commitment to the highest ethical standards in academic publishing. To preserve the integrity of the editorial process, the journal adheres to the COPE Code of Conduct and the guidelines established by the ICMJE, ensuring that research conduct, presentation, review, and publication practices are carried out with strict ethics. Below are the essential ethical principles. For further details, it is recommended to consult the official COPE and ICMJE documentation.

Editorial Board Responsibilities

Editorial independence and objective evaluation
The editorial board must evaluate manuscripts solely based on their academic quality, originality, clarity, and relevance to the scope of the journal, without considering personal factors such as race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or institutional affiliation of the authors. Editorial decisions must remain free from external influence, including governmental or institutional pressures, and rest exclusively with the Editor-in-Chief.

Confidentiality
All information related to submitted manuscripts will be treated with the utmost confidentiality. Access to details of the editorial process will be restricted exclusively to the corresponding author, reviewers, and essential editorial staff.

Conflicts of interest and transparency
Unpublished information contained in manuscripts must not be used for personal or financial gain without the express written consent of the authors. If a conflict of interest arises between an editor and the authors, institutions, or funding sources of the article, the editor must withdraw from the evaluation process and delegate this responsibility to another member of the editorial board.

Ethics in scientific publishing
All research must comply with the applicable ethical regulations of the corresponding region or country, and it is the authors’ responsibility to obtain the necessary authorizations before carrying out the study.

When manuscripts include images of participants, their identity and privacy must be protected. In this regard, CRQIJ adopts the ICMJE Recommendations for the preparation, submission, editing, and publication of scholarly work, available at the following link: ICMJE Recommendations.

Research Involving Humans and Animals

Studies involving experimentation on humans or animals must adhere to the ethical standards of the Declaration of Helsinki, available in both English and Spanish.

Authors must obtain informed consent from all participants and explicitly state this in the manuscript.

Randomized clinical trials require approval from a Clinical Research Ethics Committee (or its local equivalent), must declare funding sources, and be registered in public clinical trial databases such as ClinicalTrials.gov.

Conflicts of Interest

All authors are required to disclose any financial or personal relationships that may influence the development, analysis, or publication of the study. If no conflicts exist, the following statement must be included in the corresponding section of the manuscript:

"Conflicts of interest: none."

If any conflict exists, authors must report it in the relevant section and attach the Conflict of Interest Statement using the format proposed by the ICMJE, available at the provided link. The information in the declaration must match that presented in the manuscript.

Further information on conduct and conflict of interest statements can be found in section II-B-2 of the ICMJE Recommendations, accessible at: ICMJE Recommendations.

Funding Statement

Authors must specify the institutions that provided financial support for the research and/or writing of the article, detailing their role in the study design, data collection and analysis, manuscript drafting, and decision to submit it for publication.

If the research did not receive funding, this must be explicitly stated in the corresponding section of the manuscript.