ETHICS POLICY

Ethics Statement and Prevention of Misconduct in Publication
Voltarea International Journal (VTRIJ), an annual journal established in 2025 and published by DB Ediciones, reaffirms its commitment to the highest ethical standards in academic publishing. To ensure the integrity of the editorial process, the journal follows the COPE Code of Conduct and the ICMJE guidelines, guaranteeing that the conduct, submission, review, and publication of research are carried out ethically. The essential ethical principles are outlined below. 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 shall evaluate manuscripts solely based on academic quality, originality, clarity, and relevance to the journal’s scope, without considering personal factors such as race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or institutional affiliation of the authors. Editorial decisions shall 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 highest confidentiality. Access to editorial details is restricted to the corresponding author, reviewers, and essential editorial staff.

Conflict of Interest and Transparency
Using unpublished information from manuscripts for personal or financial gain without the explicit written consent of the authors is strictly prohibited. If a conflict of interest arises between an editor and the authors, institutions, or funding sources, the editor must recuse themselves from the evaluation process and delegate responsibility to another editorial board member.

Ethics in Scientific Publication
All research must comply with the ethical regulations in the relevant region or country. It is the authors’ responsibility to obtain the necessary approvals before conducting the study.

When manuscripts include participant images, the protection of their identity and privacy must be ensured. In this regard, VTRIJ adopts the ICMJE Recommendations on the preparation, submission, editing, and publication of scholarly articles, available here: ICMJE Recommendations.

Research Involving Humans and Animals
Studies involving experimentation on humans or animals must adhere to the Ethical Code of the Declaration of Helsinki, available in English and Spanish.

Authors must obtain and explicitly declare informed consent from all participants.

Randomized clinical trials require approval from an Ethics Committee for Clinical Research (or its equivalent under local legislation), declaration of funding sources, and registration 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 conduct, analysis, or publication of the study. If no conflicts exist, the following statement must be included in the manuscript:

"Conflicts of interest: none."

If conflicts exist, authors must report them in the relevant section and attach the Conflict of Interest Declaration using the ICMJE format, accessible here. The information provided must match that presented in the manuscript.

Further guidance on conduct and conflict of interest disclosure can be found in section II-B-2 of the ICMJE Recommendations: ICMJE Recommendations.

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