Proceso editorial

All material intended to be published in the Colombian Journal of Gastroenterology must be submitted by the corresponding author via the website of the journal (www.revistagastrocol.com). The Verification Checklist and the Originality, Assignment of Rights, and Authors’ information forms (FT-021, FT-022 and FT-055, respectively) must be duly completed and included in the submission, since they are required for the publication and registration of all papers accepted for publication in the Journal. The verification list and these forms are available at www.revistagastrocol.com and below these guidelines.

Once the submission containing the original article is made, the Editorial Assistant of the Journal shall verify that it complies with the submission requirements established in the Guidelines for Authors, that the submission metadata were properly completed, and that the Originality, Assignment of Rights and Authors’ Information forms were included. If any of the requirements are not met, the article will be sent back to its author or authors with the respective explanation. If the submission is approved after the initial verification process is completed, the Editor of the Journal or its Editorial Committee will decide whether the paper meets the criteria to be reviewed by external peer reviewers who have expertise in the topics addressed by the paper; these reviewers are selected and then asked to peer review the paper in case said criteria is met. The Journal uses a double blind peer review process, which means that the authors’ identities are concealed from the reviewers, and vice versa.

Peer reviewers agree to:

1. Ensure peer-review confidentiality and abstain from disclosing details of a paper or the review during or after the review and publishing processes.
2. State all potential conflicts of interest and seek advice from the Journal in case they are not sure if a particular situation or condition can be a potential conflict of interest.
3. Inform the Journal about any, real or suspected, dishonest conduct, including:

• Suspected redundant publication (salami publishing).
• Suspected plagiarism.
• Suspected made-up data.
• Suspected undisclosed conflict of interest.
• Suspected ethical issue.

The Colombian Journal of Gastroenterology fully rejects plagiarism practices and uses the Ithenticate plagiarism detection software for its detection. This program compares the contents of the paper with a database of publications and generates a similarity report, highlighting the percentage of overlap between the paper and published material. Instances of content overlap are analyzed in detail to identify suspected plagiarism cases in accordance with the editorial policies of the journal.

External peer reviewers are asked to review the paper within 20 working days using an evaluation form that allows them to reach one of the following editorial decisions: accepting the paper for publication as it was submitted (i.e. without any adjustment or modification); accepting the paper for publication as long as modifications and adjustments are made, and rejecting the article for publication. The Editorial Committee, based on the comments and opinions of the peer reviewers, shall make a final decision regarding the publication or rejection of a paper. Comments and recommendations made by external peer reviewers will be informed to authors. Once the peer reviewers’ comments have been sent to authors, they must answer to all of them individually, and make the necessary adjustments and modifications and send back the adjusted version of the paper within 90 calendar days. In case this deadline is not met, the Editor of the Journal shall assume authors are no longer interested in the publication process and the submission shall be rejected. Once the paper has been adjusted, the Editor shall verify that all modifications and adjustments made are in compliance with the reviewers’ recommendations and requests, and if they are, it will be submitted to the Editorial Committee, which will make a decision regarding its publication in a future issue of the Journal. This decision will be informed to the authors of the article.

The editorial decision regarding the publication or rejection of a paper, which is based on the recommendations of the external peers, will be informed to authors via Email. In case of rejection, the decision is final.

Once an article has been accepted for publication, and the edition and proofreading stages have been completed, a PDF version of the paper will be sent to authors for a final and exhaustive review. Authors must send back this version stating they agree with the publication of said version as it was sent to them or if modifications are needed, which shall be clearly described in the PDF. In case authors fail to reply to this request within 48 hours, the Journal will assume they agree with the publication and printing of the PDF version sent to them. The Colombian Journal of Gastroenterology will establish the necessary mechanisms to avoid or solve possible conflicts of interest between authors, evaluators and/or the editorial team.

As soon as an article approved for publication is assigned to an issue of the Journal, it is sent to a professional translator hired by the Association to be translated into English. At the final stage of the publication process, and once all contents of an issue have been decided, the Editorial Assistant verifies that the submission metadata of each paper is complete, uploads the final PDF versions of the articles to their corresponding submission in the website of the Journal, and activates the DOIs of both the issue of the journal and each of the articles included in it, thus making the publication of the issue effective. Then, the information is entered in the Publindex website, and the marking process of the articles for Scielo, REDIB and Redalyc is initiated, respectively.