Research ethics

Ethical and Social Commitment to Diverse and Vulnerable Populations

Principle. We uphold an operational ethical and social commitment to research involving diverse and vulnerable populations. This commitment translates into enhanced ethical requirements, which are verifiable in the manuscript, the pre-submission checklist, and the peer review rubric.

General Ethical Standards. For all studies, we require compliance with the discipline’s ethical standards: informed consent appropriate to the participants’ profile; approval by a research ethics committee with a verifiable institutional code; adherence to the Declaration of Helsinki, the APA Code of Ethics (https://www.apa.org/ethics/code), and applicable national and international regulations based on the type of research and the countries where the research was conducted.

Enhanced Ethical Standards. For studies involving vulnerable or marginalized populations, we additionally require:

Specific approval from the ethics committee for that population, not generic project approval.
Consent procedures appropriate to the population: assent from children and adolescents with consent from their legal guardians; accessible language for people with cognitive disabilities; translation into indigenous languages or other non-Spanish languages when appropriate; special procedures in contexts of asymmetrical power relations.
Strengthened measures for anonymization and protection of confidentiality: anonymization of identifiable data, complete concealment of faces in photographs when published, protection against indirect identification of individuals or communities.
Return of results to the participating community when applicable, especially in research involving Indigenous peoples, ethnic communities, victim populations, and communities in conditions of structural vulnerability.

Operational definition. We define vulnerable or marginalized populations as: children and adolescents; people with disabilities or severe mental disorders; persons deprived of liberty; victims of armed conflict, sociopolitical violence, or gender-based violence; indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant communities, Raizal and Palenquero communities, the Romani people, and other ethnic minorities; migrant, refugee, or forcibly displaced populations; people living in extreme poverty or facing structural social exclusion; LGBTIQ+ individuals in contexts of discrimination or violence; older adults who are dependent on care or institutionalized; people living on the streets; sex workers; individuals with problematic substance use; people with serious, terminal, or stigmatized illnesses; students, patients, employees, or any population in a relationship of subordination or dependence with respect to the researcher. This list is illustrative: the editorial team evaluates other situations of vulnerability on a case-by-case basis.

Non-stigmatizing language. The manuscript must use respectful language when referring to people or communities in vulnerable situations (https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language). The author guidelines provide specific examples (hyperlink to the “Author Guidelines” document).

Commitment to open science

Principle. We adopt the open science model as our editorial standard. Compliance is made visible through a system of badges awarded after editorial verification and displayed on the cover of each published article.

Mandatory availability of statements. Each empirical manuscript must include, as specific sections within the body of the article, the following statements:

Data availability. Indication of where the study data are located, in accordance with one of these closed options: (a) data deposited in a public repository with a DOI; (b) data available as supplementary material to the article; (c) data available upon reasonable request to the authors; (d) data not publicly available due to ethical or legal restrictions, with explicit justification.
Availability of analytical methods. Indication of the availability of scripts, analytical code, or syntax used, in accordance with the same adapted closed options.
Availability of materials. Indication of the availability of instruments, protocols, stimuli, or any other materials used in the research, in accordance with the same adapted closed options.

Pre-registration and publication of protocols. We welcome and promote the pre-registration of studies and the publication of research protocols in recognized repositories in accordance with the FAIR principles (https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/). When a study has been pre-registered, authors must indicate this in the manuscript with the registration identifier or URL.

Badge System. Diversitas awards the following badges, which are displayed on the cover of the published article:

Open Data: study data publicly deposited in a reliable repository, accessible and reusable.
Open Materials: research materials publicly deposited in a reliable repository.
Open Code: analytical code publicly deposited in a reliable repository.
Pre-Registered: study pre-registered prior to data collection, with verifiable consistency between the pre-registration and the published manuscript.

Badges are awarded following editorial verification of compliance with the criteria. The author guidelines specify the recognized repositories and verification procedures (hyperlink to the “Author Guidelines” document).

Legitimate restrictions. We recognize that the public availability of data may be ethically inappropriate or legally impossible in certain cases (sensitive data from vulnerable populations, restrictions by ethics committees, contractual restrictions, protection of community identities). In these cases, authors explicitly justify the restriction, which does not affect the manuscript’s eligibility for publication but does affect eligibility for the Open Data badge.

Commitment to Publication Integrity

Regulatory Frameworks. We adhere to the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics; https://publicationethics.org/) guidelines on all matters of publication integrity, including authorship, conflicts of interest, retractions, and corrections. We adopt the ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors; https://www.icmje.org/) authorship criteria and the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CrediT; https://credit.niso.org/) for the operational definition of individual contributions.

Authorship Criteria. To be considered an author of a manuscript in Diversitas, a person must simultaneously meet all four ICMJE criteria:

Have substantially contributed to the conception or design of the work, or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of the data.
Have participated in the drafting of the manuscript or in its critical revision with substantive intellectual contributions.
Have approved the final version submitted for publication.
Assume responsibility for the integrity of the work as a whole.

Individuals who contribute to the project without simultaneously meeting all four criteria are acknowledged in the acknowledgments section of the manuscript, with a specification of their contribution.

Statement of Contributions (CRediT). Each author explicitly declares their individual contributions in accordance with the fourteen roles of the CRediT taxonomy: conceptualization; data curation; formal analysis; funding acquisition; investigation; methodology; project management; resources; software; supervision; validation; visualization; drafting the original manuscript; writing, reviewing, and editing.

Changes in Authorship. Any changes to authorship after manuscript submission (additions, deletions, or reordering) require a formal notification to the editorial team signed by all individuals involved, with an explicit justification for the change.

Conflicts of interest. Authors must declare any conflict of interest relevant to the interpretation of the manuscript: financial (employment, consulting, shares, fees, royalties, patents); institutional (study funding, relationships with organizations with a stake in the results); personal or academic (close relationships with individuals involved, theoretical positions rooted in disputes within the field); role of the funder in any phase of the study.

Similarity and Plagiarism Check. Each manuscript received is checked against similarity and plagiarism detection tools. Manuscripts whose analysis shows substantial overlap with previous literature are returned to the authors with a request for revisions or rejected, depending on the extent and nature of the overlap.

Use of generative artificial intelligence. Generative artificial intelligence cannot be considered an author of a manuscript. Authors must explicitly declare the use of any generative AI tool at any stage of the research or manuscript drafting process. Peer reviewers must declare its use in preparing their review and maintain the confidentiality of the manuscript.

Management of ethical incidents. Ethical incidents—plagiarism, fabrication or falsification of data, duplicate or redundant publication, authorship disputes, undeclared conflicts of interest, retractions, and corrections—are managed in accordance with COPE protocols.

Non-discrimination in editorial decisions. Editorial decisions are made exclusively based on the scientific rigor and academic contribution of the manuscripts, without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious beliefs, ethnic origin, nationality, political philosophy, theoretical position, level of education, or institutional affiliation of the authors, or of the individuals or communities participating in their research.

Rights Policy

License. Diversitas operates under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. This license allows third parties to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and to use it as a basis for derivative works, provided they acknowledge the original authorship, do not use it for commercial purposes, and distribute derivative works under the same license.

Assignment of Economic Rights. Through the formal instrument of assignment of economic rights (Assignment of Economic Copyright Rights in favor of Santo Tomás University, hyperlink to the document “Letter of Introduction to the Editor and Declarations”), the authors assign to Santo Tomás University, in full, irrevocably, and without any limitation, including territorial limitations, free of charge, the economic rights of authorship derived from the manuscript accepted for publication. The assignment covers the authorization to copy, reproduce, distribute, publish, and commercialize the manuscript by any means, electronic or reprographic, as well as its dissemination in the databases and indexes where the journal is indexed.

Moral rights of authors. Authors retain their moral rights over the work at all times, in accordance with Article 30 of Law 23 of 1982, Law 1450 of 2011, and Law 1520 of 2012. These rights are inalienable and include, among others, the rights of authorship and integrity over the work.

Guarantee of Originality and Clearance. The authors declare that the content of the manuscript is their own work, is unpublished, is not currently under review by another institution, has not been transferred to third parties, and is not subject to any legal or contractual restrictions that prohibit its publication and indexing. The authors agree to assume liability and responsibility for any claims of plagiarism or judicial or extrajudicial complaints that may arise.

Processing of Personal Data. Santo Tomás University, in its capacity as the data controller, handles the personal data provided by the authors with special care, in accordance with Law 1266 of 2008, Law 1581 of 2012, Decree 1377 of 2013, and any regulations that modify, regulate, or expand upon them. Authors authorize the University to process their personal data for editorial, statistical, control, supervision, indexing, and reporting purposes to academic information systems. Authors retain the right to access, update, and correct their information by contacting the institutional email address [email protected].

Legal Basis. The rights regime is governed by Law 23 of 1982 (General Copyright Regime of Colombia), Law 1450 of 2011, Law 1520 of 2012, Laws 1266 of 2008 and 1581 of 2012 regarding the protection of personal data, Decree 1377 of 2013, the Intellectual Property Regulations of the University of Santo Tomás (Agreement 40 of October 2, 2017), and related Colombian and international regulations regarding copyright.