Politics

Peer Review Process

Initial review

Once the submission is received, it will undergo an initial review, in which the assigned editor will evaluate whether it responds to the thematic profile of the journal, its relevance and adjustment to the publication standards. The quality of the metadata and the functional ORCID identifier (complete data of all authors) will also be taken into account as well as the presence of the complementary files (Publication Authorization Letter, Originality Form and WAME Manuscript Checklist).

Peer review

The editor, after approval of the proposal to initiate the editorial process, will assign the review to a pair of referees, under one of the following modalities selected, according to the authors’ statement:

• Double-blind: the evaluators ignore the identity of the authors and vice versa
• Open: the evaluators know the identity of the authors and vice versa, being able of exchanging each other. This review will only be done if the authors give their approval.

The arbitration of articles has two proposals: first, to decide whether or not to publish the evaluated article; and second, to ensure that adequate scientific critique is carried out. The authors must evaluate, in terms of recommendations, several opinions on the research results they present.   For this purpose, there are reviewers with experience in the different specialties and topics, who will determine both, the validity of the ideas and the results, and their impact on the world of the medical sciences.

After the article has been evaluated, the editor of the journal will send a communication to the authors about the acceptance of the work for its publication in the journal.

Rejection decisions are final and the author is free to submit the work to the criteria of another publication.

Accepted papers may require clarifications during the editing process, which will be requested directly by the Editor.

About the evaluation system

Once the initial review of the paper is performed, this is accepted and goes to reviewers

or is rejected, or initial modifications are asked. In the latter case, the paper is reviewed again, accepted and passed to reviewers, or it is rejected. This initial review and   acceptance or rejection must be done in a term of 4 to 6 weeks.

If the work is accepted and passed to reviewers, these will have a term of 1 week to accept the review. If they have not responded within a week, the application is sent again.  If a week later there is not response, the application is canceled and a first application is sent to other referee.

Once the request has been accepted, the referee will have 3 weeks to review and make a suggested editorial decision. If after 3 weeks he/she has not responded, a reminder is sent. If one week later he/she has not responded, the request is canceled and it is send to another referee.

In order to carry out the arbitration, the elements indicated in the guidelines for the evaluation of articles according to their typology must be taken into account. These guidelines are made up of two parts: one, related to the quality criteria of the evaluated article; and the other, referred to the final opinion of the referee. In the comments, the referee may reflect both, the arguments on the evaluation of each question and incorporate some recommendations about the content.

The results of the review process will be evaluated by the editor, who will prepare the opinion (conclusions) based on the opinions issued by the selected referees, or, if necessary, will decide to send the work to another specialist. Any duly justified decision will be communicated in writing to the author as soon as possible and may consists of:  a) accepting the paper without modifications; b) approving the work subject tominor changes (publishable with modifications); c) returning the work for major changes and new revision (re-evaluable); d) not accepting it for publication (unpublishable).

When major or minor changes to the work are requested, if the author agrees to continue the process, he/she must comply with the requested modifications in a term of two weeks; if he/she does not agree, he/she must scientifically justify the reasons. In these cases, the authors are obliged to respond with the requested speed. The lack of response by the authors may result in the article being removed from the editorial process and archived. 

Accepted papers may require clarifications during the editing process, which will be requested directly by the editor. Non-response by the authors may result in the exclusion of the article from the issue for which it was scheduled. If it is maintained, the authors should also correct the first proofs within a maximum period of 1 week from the request, otherwise it is understood that they accept the corrections made by the editorial staff. After this stage, Revista Médica Electrónica is entitled to make any editorial adjustments and modifications it deems appropriate to ensure the highest quality of the publication.

Deadline for publication of submissions

Revista Médica Electrónica must publish the accepted manuscript within a period of less than one year from the date of submission to the journal, although the result of the first evaluation will be made whiting a period of no more than 60 days.

Final clarification

The composition of each ordinary issue will be based on to editorial criteria, in order to balance the relevance and originality of the contributions with the variety of contents addressed.

Publication Frequency

Revista Médica Electrónica follows a continuous publication model, that is, it adds articles to the volume throughout the period.

Open Access Policy

This journal DOES NOT APPLY CHARGES FOR PROCESSING OR PUBLICATION OF ARTICLES. This journal does not offer subscription. It complies with the declaration of open access to information and its texts are available on its website. This journal provides immediate free access to its content under the principle of making freely available the research results and other scientific articles included in its sections to readers, in addition to supporting the flow of information necessary for a greater exchange of global knowledge.

The journal uses the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.It allows: 

• Copy and redistribute the published material in any medium or format.
• Adapt the content.

This will be done under the following terms:

• Assign the  credits to the authors and indicate if changes were made, in which case it must be in a reasonable manner.
• Non-commercial use.
• Acknowledge the journal where it is published.

The copyrights of each article are maintained, without restrictions.

Archiving

This journal uses the LOCKSS and CLOCKSS systems through SciELO to create a distributed archive among participating libraries, allowing these libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for preservation and restoration purposes.

The LOCKSS (Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) system (Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe), developed by the Stanford University Libraries in 1999, provides libraries and publishers with low-cost, open access tools to collect, preserve and provide their readers access to reliable and persistent digital content, based on the principle that “many copies keep things safe”; that is, the idea is to multiply copies of documents and locate them in geographically dispersed locations to ensure that even if one is lost or damaged, the others ensure that no work is left without replicas. Each archives is continuously validated against records from other libraries, so any damaged or lost content can be restored using those registers or the journal itself.

Open Journal System also supports the CLOKSS system (Controlled Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe).to ensure a permanent and safe archive for the journal. CLOCKSS is based on the open codex software developed at the Stanford University Library, which allows libraries to preserve selected web journals by regularly checking registered journal websites for recently published content and archiving it. Each archive is constantly validated against other library caches, and if it is detected that content has been corrupted or lost, the other caches or the journal are used to restore it.

About the publication of the issues

Revista Médica Electrónica follows a continuous publication model, that is, it adds articles to the volume throughout the period.

Submission

The authors interested in submitting papers to the journal should register on the platform (http://revmedicaelectronica.sld.cu/) as readers and authors. Thanks to the facilities provided by the Open Journal System (OJS), the authors will be able to upload submissions and follow up the different phases of the editorial process.

As part of the process of submitting papers to publish, the authors will fill in metadata in OJS and upload the main document and complementary documents to the journal.

All manuscript must necessarily conform to the publication guidelines. Otherwise, they may be rejected without peer reviewing.

 Metadata

Metadata are the minimum indispensable information to identify a publication. Metadata are very important in the digital environment, as they help to improve the structure of the information by describing and cataloging it, as well as improving its retrieval.

On the website of the journal (http://revmedicaelectronica.sld.cu/index.php/rme/index), the metadata of each of the authors and the metadata referred to the article should appear:

• Full name(s) (Jose Alberto and not Jose A.);
• Individual e-mail (must be a functional e-mail and be checked periodically);
• ORCID identifier (it is not enough to have a registration number, the author’s full details must also appear in the corresponding ORCID registration page and be accessible);
• Institution. The institutional information will include, in this order, the official name of the institution, province and country of the authors;
• Conflict of interest. Declare that no conflict of interest exists. Conflicts of interest include, but are not limited to, financial, personal, politics or religious;
• Title, abstract and keywords in Spanish;
• Then, at the beginning of the page, the language of the form is changed to English, and the title, abstract and keywords are entered in this language. 

Documents to be uploaded to the journal

1. Main document
   Supplementary files:
   a) General data page
   b) Letter of authorization for publication
   c) Charter of compliance with ethical principles for publication
   d)Originality form
   e) Database in Excel and/or SPSS (in origi

General data page (upload as a complementary file)

• The marking of the type of article must be aligned to the right and in size 12.
• Title in the original language: up to15 words, do not use the words “Title”, do not use quotation marks or period, should be in bolds, size 14 and centered. It should be concise, understandable and informative. It should not include acronyms or abbreviations. If names of institutions are used, they must be the official ones.
• The translation of the title should be placed on the next line, in bold and centered. 
• Full names and surnames of all authors, one bellow the other, ordered according to their participation. Each author should have a number or character in superscript format, indicating his or her affiliation. The number of authors to declare will be in correspondence with the type of article.
• The ORCID identifier will be placed near each author’s name as a mandatory element. It is not enough to have a registration number; the author’s full data must appear in the corresponding ORCID registration page (www.orcid.org).
• Institutional affiliations of each author (NO POSITIONS OR TEACHING AND/OR CATHEGORIES). They are placed below the group of authors. At the beginning of each affiliation will be the number or character in superscript that relates it tone or more authors, following the scheme: university/hospital/polyclinic/other institution. City, country.
• Author for correspondence: indicates the e-mail (phone number is optional) which facilitates contact by the editors by courier service.
• The abstract should come after the affiliation of the authors, justified, in size 12. The word “Abstract” should be in bold, without a colon. The text should begin in the following paragraph, in size 12. For structured abstracts (Introduction, Objective, Methods, Discussion, etc.), each title of the section should be in bold, followed by a colon. The text of each section of the abstract should appear in separate paragraphs.
• Keywords should be after the abstract, in size 12. The phrase “Keywords:” should be in bold followed by a colon. Each of these words should be separated by a semicolon. They must be concrete and representative of the semantic content of the document, both in the main and secondary contents. There should be a minimum of three key words or phrases and a maximum of six. These represent the entries (descriptors) for the indexing and information retrieval of the article. One or more keywords should appear in the title. It is recommended to use a keyword search engine as Decsfinder (https://decsfinder.bvsalud.org/dmfs), sponsored by Bireme and PHO. They should be uploaded in Spanish and English in metadata.
• The abstract in English —Abstract—, must be justified, in size 12/.The word “Abstract” should be in bold, without colon. The text should follow the typology of the abstract in Spanish. 
• The key words should be after the abstract, in size 12. The phrase “Key words:” should be in bold, followed by colon. Each of the key words should be separated by semicolon.
• Number of words in the abstract: up to 250.
• Number of words of the article without abstract, titles or references: according to the type of article.
• Declaration (contribution) of authorship: it must be according to CRediT taxonomy for original articles and short communications (see the Authorship section in this document).
• Declaration of conflict of interest (if any).
• Statement of sources of financing.
• Statement of agreement or disagreement with the conduct of an open peer review process (whether agree or disagree).
• If the research is a clinical trial, the registration number and where verification of the trial can be performed should be disclosed.

Anti-plagiarism policies

Authors are asked to declare, through the letter of originality, that they own the moral rights over it and it has not been sent for review nor is it published, partially or totally, in any other national or foreign journal. If it has been deposited in a preprint server or in a congress, this must be clarified when sending it. Signatories will be solely responsible for ensuring that their contribution meets those requirements.

This journal uses an electronic match detection system as part of its edition management to ensure the quality of the publication, which contribute to the prevention of possible plagiarism. The articles with a level of coincidence above 50 % will be analyzed in depth.

In the event that plagiarism is proven, the author(s) will be sanctioned for three years (minimum measure) without the possibility of publishing in  Revista Médica Electrónica.

Use of digital identifier

The Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID, Identificador Abierto del Investigador y el Contribuyente) is a unique identifier, composed by 16 digits, which aims to provide researchers with an unambiguous author code that clearly distinguishes their scientific production and avoids confusions related to scientific authorship and the existence of overlapping or similar names; therefore, its use has become a mandatory requirement for scientific publications and communications. 

ORCID also provides a place to register works and other data, which can be shared and linked with other identification systems (ResearcherID, ScopusID, Publons, among others). If you have not yet created your ORCID, you can do so at the following link : https://orcid.org/.

It is not enough to have a registration number; the  specialty, expertize, institution where researcher works, province and country must also appear, as well as the publications and events in which the researcher has participated. Names and surnames must appear in full. To edit the ORCID registry and complete data, just follow the hyperlink send by ORCID or enter the webpage with the username and password chosen by the proper author. 

Papers that do not comply with these guidelines will be rejected.

About authorship

Revista Médica Electrónica, in accordance with the recommendations for the conduct, reporting, editing and publication of scholarly works in medical journals, published by the International Committee of Medical Journals Editors (www.icmje.org), considers an “author” to be one who meets all of the following criteria:

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the research/scientific work; or the acquisition, analysis and interpretation of the data;
2. To write/prepare the final report or critically review its content;
3. Approval of the final version of the report to be published;
4. To be responsible for all aspects of the work to ensure that questions regarding the accuracy or completeness of any part of the work are properly investigated and resolved.

Changes in authorship will not be accepted once the paper has been uploaded to the journal’s platform, neither in the order nor in the number of authors or their contribution.

Authors of papers of Revista Médica Electrónica in the sections original articles and short communications should define the authorship contribution of the different authors of the paper according to CRediT taxonomy (Contributor Roles Taxonomy).

CRediT includes 14 functions that could be used to represent those typically performed by contributors to academic scientific production. The roles describe the specific contribution of each contributor to scientific output.

Each role is defined in the following way:

• Conceptualization – ideas; formulation or evolution of the overall objectives and goals of the research;
• Data curation - management activities to annotate (produce metadata), clean data and maintain research data (including software code, where necessary to interpret the data themselves) for initial use and subsequent reuse;
• Formal analysis – application of statistical, mathematical, computational or other formal techniques to analyze and synthesize study data;
• Funds acquisition – acquisition of financial support for the project leading to this publication;
• Research – conducting a research and research process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection; 
• Methodology – methodology development or design; modeling;
• Project managing – management responsibility and coordination of the planning and execution of the research activity;
• Resources – provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory specimens, animals, instrumentation, computational resources and other analytical tools;
• Software – programming, software development; design of computer programs; implementation of computer codex and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components;
• Supervision – supervising and leadership responsibility for planning and execution of research activities, including   external mentoring to the main team;
• Validation – Verification, either as part of the activity or separately, of the general replicability of the results/experiments and other research outcomes;
• Visualization – preparation, creation and/or presentation of published work, specifically the visualization/presentation of data;
• Writing – original draft – preparation, creation and/or presentation of published work, specifically the writing of the original draft (including substantive translation);
• Writing – reviewing and editing – preparation, creation and/or presentation of published work by the members of the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision – including the pre- or post-publication stages.

The CRediT taxonomy provides a way to encode contribution information within article XML files.  It identifies the specific nature of an individual contribution with respect to the available research material. Its purpose is to provide transparency in scholars’ contributions to published work by academics, to enable ameliorated systems of attribution, credit and accountability. The aim of this recommendation is to promote transparency of the contribution information in the article XML and to ensure that contribution types are encoded in a machine-readable way and optimized for reuse.

Authorship roles will be identified in the order shown below, including each author/s in the role/s that correspond to him/her, and omitting the roles that do not apply in each case.

Example:

Authorship contribution

Author (full name): conceptualization, formal analysis, research. 

Author (full name): methodology, software …

Author (full name): …

Author (full name): …

Acceptance of databases

The Revista Médica Electrónica promotes the openness of research data, so authors are invited to publicly post and reference the data used in their research, so that they can be shared and reused, which favors the transparency and credibility of science. In addition, each original article and short communication may be accompanied by the analyzed database, which may be uploaded as complementary material, in a modifiable format, for Excel (.xlsx or .xls) or SPSS (.sav); at the request of the scientific editor of the RME.
Data may have been previously deposited in SciELO Data, an open data repository that, in specific cases (such as proprietary data or sensitive data) allows you to restrict access to selected files. In doing so, the file will not be accessible or downloadable, but the metadata of the dataset will be visible.
For information on how to prepare data for deposit, see the SciELO Data Research Data Preparation Guide (https://wp.scielo.org/wp-content/uploads/Guia_preparacao_es.pdf).
The sharing of research data is still rare and is directly related to the practices of the research areas. There is more than one reference repository to deposit data; you can consult the repositories accepted by the journal in the Repository List for Research Data (https://wp.scielo.org/wp-content/uploads/Lista-de-Repositorios-Recomendados_pt.pdf).
Access to research data will be reflected by completing the WAME Manuscript Checklist, which should be completed and uploaded as a supplementary file.

About ethical violations

The papers submitted to Revista Médica Electrónica must have been prepared in accordance with the international recommendations on clinical research involving human subjects and laboratory animals (Declaration of Helsinki of the World Medical Association). In addition, they must have been approved by the Ethics Committee and the Scientific Council of the institution. The undersigned authors accept the responsibility defined by the International Committee of Medical Journals Editors (www.icmje.org).

Revista Médica Electrónica promotes good practices based on ethical publication standards among all contributors. Each article that undergoes revision for its publication should comply with the following requirements:

1. In studies where institutional authorization is required, investigators should provide information on their work proposal approval, with the corresponding authorization of the institution prior to the start of the study. The investigation should adhere to the protocol authorized by the institution.

2. Consent: all authors give their consent for the submission and publication of the article submitted to evaluation having completed the complementary document Letter of Authorization for Publication.

3. Originality of the work: the article submitted for review is original, has not been previously published and has not been simultaneously submitted for evaluation to another journal, having completed the complementary document Originality form.

4. Consent to reproduce a work: the article does not include original material copied from other authors without their consent. In case the article contents material from other authors, their consent for its printing and electronic reproduction should be clearly indicated.

5. Previous researches: all the information included in the article submitted to review, which comes from previous studies, has been referred. In case the article submitted is an analysis of a previously published proposal, this must always be cited.

6. Journal archives: the article submitted for review will be kept in the archives of Revista Médica Electrónica.

7. Reviewers: reviewers do not any occupational, academic, or personal relationship with the authors.

8. Ethical principles for the publication: the authors should comply with the ethical principles of publication, which they will reflect when completing the WAME Manuscript Checklist, which must be uploaded as a supplementary file.

9. Informed consent: researchers should explicitly state whether or not they have the written consent of the participants involved in the research.

• For research;
• For recording voices and images in the research.

10. Duplicate publication should not be made. Redundant (or duplicate) publication   is considered to be the publication of an article that overlaps or is substantially coincident with one already published in print or electronic version. For practical purposes, any article that has hypothesis, sample characteristics, methodology, results and conclusions similar or almost similar to a published article, is a duplicate article. If it is republished without the knowledge of the editors, is it is called a duplicate publication. The authors of the duplicate manuscript may be the same, as in most cases, but they may also be different authors that publish the same article without the knowledge of the initial author or authors. The following previous publication are not considered duplicate publications: abstracts and   posters presented at conferences, results presented at scientific meetings, results in databases and clinical trial registries that have not been interpreted, as well as dissertations and theses in university archives.

11. The journal does not allow changes in the order of the authors, nor does it allow adding or removing any of them in the papers once they have been uploaded to the Open Journal System.

12. Researchers should not fabricate data. If researchers discover significant errors in published data, steps should be taken to publicly correct such errors.

13.Allegations of irregularities: allegations of irregularities in the investigation made by identified persons or anonymously, will be investigated only if accompanied by the respective evidence.

14.Image fabrication/falsification and manipulation:  sometimes it is necessary to edit images to reveal certain characteristics; however, inappropriate manipulation of images creates misleading results. Investigators should report when they edit images. They also should follow the recommendations bellow:

• The specific characteristics must not be altered;
• Original unpublished images must also be submitted when any modification    is made to the image intended for publication;
• Adjustments to brightness or contrast can only be used when they are applied equally to the whole image and do not distort the meaning of the image;
• The excessive editing to emphasize an image size is not appropriate.
• If any part of a recording or non-linear adjustments is deleted, it should be indicated in the figure legend;
• Figures should not be constructed from different components; however, if the author considers it necessary, then it should be clearly indicated by dividing lines in the figure and in the legend.

15. Plagiarism: it is the copying or misuse of another person’s intellectual property. Researchers should not present as their own parts of other papers or data. The editors of the journal perform the plagiarism detection process by means of a computer system before being accepted for the editorial process. In addition, the editors will use it before starting the editing and proofreading process of the articles and will check   the bibliographic references to detect possible plagiarism.

16. Duplicate and redundant publication of data: researchers should avoid publishing data that have been previously published as originals.  This does not exclude reediting or republishing data as long as they are accompanied by appropriate acknowledgment.

17.Double submission: authors may not submit a manuscript to more than one journal simultaneously. If the Editorial Committee detects such a situation the manuscript will not be considered for publication.

18.Duplicate the information published in other languages: translations of manuscripts already published will not be considered for publication.

19.Readers are requested to inform in case of detecting plagiarism or duplicate publication, sending the title of the article, name(s) of the author(s), volume, issue, and year of publication to the journal e-mail (rme.mtz@infomed.sld.cu).

Acceptance of preprints

This journal accepts documents previously published in recognized preprints servers (SciELO Preprints, Medxiv, ArXiv, bioRxiv, Plos) and others considered by the Editorial Committee.

If an article is published in whole or in part on the web pages of an event or conference, on a preprint server (SciELO Preprints, PMC, Plos, MedRxiv) or academic social network (ResearchGate), authors should mention in their submission the availability of the document on any of these servers and its exact location when filling out the WAME Manuscript Checklist.

Application of publication charges

This journal does not charge for processing or publication of articles.

About advertisement in the journal

Revista Médica Electrónica does not accept advertisements of commercial products that function as sponsors. However, in the environment of scientific activity, it may publicize courses, workshops and events related to health.

Use of Artificial Intelligence

Significant recent advances in large language models (sophisticated generative artificial intelligence - AI - algorithms trained on massive amounts of language data) have resulted in widely available writing tools, such as OpenAI's popular chatbot, ChatGPT, that can analyze text and produce new content in response to user prompts. This technology has important and immediate implications for academics writing articles and for the journals that publish them.

Large language models have a powerful ability to search and repackage information from their training data set into a wide variety of formats and styles that users can specify. They can be used to generate ideas and outlines for academic manuscripts, or even the full text of articles. Because contemporary AI tools can be remarkably well trained to mimic human speech and writing styles, their results can closely resemble those of a human author and can convey the impression of accuracy and authority, as well as an emotional connection.

 Requirements for reporting the use of AI-assisted technologies in manuscript submissions to RME (based on recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors)

- In the article submission, RME requires authors to disclose any use of AI-assisted technologies in any aspect of the creation of the submitted work.

- Authors should describe the nature of such use in the WAME Manuscript Checklist, as well as in the manuscript itself.

- Artificial intelligence and AI-assisted technologies should not be listed as an author or co-author of a manuscript.

- Artificial intelligence and AI-assisted technologies should not be cited as a reference or other primary source or as an author of a reference.

- Human authors are responsible for any submitted material that includes the use of AI-assisted technologies, including its correctness, completeness, and accuracy.

- Authors must be able to claim that there is no plagiarism in the article, including text and images produced by AI-assisted technologies, and must ensure proper attribution of all material, including full citations where appropriate.

- Peer reviewers should not upload RME manuscripts to software or other AI technologies where confidentiality cannot be guaranteed.

- Even if AI-assisted technologies are used in a manner that can ensure the confidentiality of the manuscript, reviewers who choose to use such technologies to facilitate their review must disclose their use and nature to the RME and are responsible for ensuring that any AI-generated information the content incorporated in reviews is correct, complete, and unbiased.