About the Journal
Objective and coverage area
The Legal Medicine Magazine of Costa Rica is a non-profit scientific-academic journal with national and international impact, both access and publications are completely free.
It¨´´s objective is to disseminate the knowledge and experience obtained in the areas of Legal Medicine, Forensic Pathology, Occupational Medicine, Forensic Psychology and Forensic Anthropology, Forensic Dentistry, Microbiology, Ballistics, Fingerprinting, Biology, and Forensic Entomology, Forensic Genetics, Law Criminal, Criminalistics and in all areas related to forensic science. The journal is published semiannually electronically.
Publishing Entity
The publication of the Journal is in charge of the Costa Rican Association of Professionals in Legal Medicine and Related Disciplines of the Judicial Power (ASOCOMEL), located in San Joaquín de Flores, Heredia, Costa Rica.
The target audience of the publication is professionals and students involved with Legal Medicine and all Forensic Sciences.
Sponsor Entity
Its publication and financing are the responsibility of the Costa Rican Association of Professionals in Legal Medicine and Related Disciplines of the Judiciary and therefore the publication is autonomous. Does not obey or is governed by provisions of any other entity, company or institution.
Appointment of the Editorial Board and the Scientific Council of the Journal
The members, both of the Editorial Board and the Scientific Committee, are appointed by the Costa Rican Association of Professionals in Legal Medicine and Related Disciplines of the Judiciary.
If in the judgment of the Costa Rican Association of Legal Medicine Professionals and Related Disciplines of the Judiciary, any of the members of the Editorial Team of the Journal does not comply with the tasks assigned as expected, or when one of the members voluntarily requests it, it may be removed and replaced.
Ethical considerations
The magazine is governed by the highest ethical considerations and adheres to the postulates and guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
In the event that it is demonstrated that an article published by this Journal presents plagiarized information or data and results that are altered and incorrect, the Editorial Board will have the power to eliminate the questioned article from the publication. If someone knows of a similar event, he can express it to the Editorial Board of the Magazine by email: editormedicinalegaldecostarica@gmail.com
COPE's role is to assist editors of scholarly journals and publishers/owners - as well as other parties, such as institutions and funders, albeit less directly - in their endeavour to preserve and promote the integrity of the scholarly record through policies and practices that reflect the current best principles of transparency and integrity. COPE’s new recommendations are intended to reflect these aims, in a practical way. COPE has therefore reviewed the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Editors and Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers and consolidated them into one, much shorter, document entitled “Core Practices”. [Available to download as an A4 poster.] Connected to each of these core practices will be hyperlinks to the detailed documents and resources COPE already publish, which are arrived at through extensive consultation, and which we will be building into a comprehensive, yet responsive library. The full range of COPE resources can be found here. .The Core Practices are applicable to all involved in publishing the scholarly literature: editors and their journals, publishers (and institutions).
COPE's Core Practices should be considered alongside specific national and international codes of conduct for research and is not intended to replace them.
Background to why the Code of Conduct for Journal Editors has been replaced with the Core Practices.
COPE Guidelines can be downloaded in https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines
Principios de Transparencia y Mejores Prácticas en Publicaciones Académicas (Latin American Spanish)
Download "Journals’ Best Practices for Ensuring Consent for Publishing Medical Case Reports: guidance from COPE" [PDF, 250 KB. December 2016]
Copyright
The authors who publish in this journal accept the following terms:
-The authors retain the copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication with the work with simultaneous Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the authorship of the work and the initial publication in this journal.
-The authors may enter into additional contractual agreements separately for the non-exclusive distribution of the published version of the journal's work (for example, publishing it in an institutional repository or publishing it in a book), with recognition of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are allowed and motivated to publish their work online (eg, in institutional repositories or on their website), as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as previous and major citations of published works.
For more information go to: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0
Open access policy
The intellectual property of accepted works belongs to their authors, however access to them is totally open and free, so they can be reproduced totally or partially with the only limitation of recognizing the authorship and the source of publication (Revista Medicina Legal of Costa Rica), as long as said exploitation does not have a commercial nature. This journal provides immediate free access to its content under the principle that making research available to the public free of charge, which fosters a greater exchange of global knowledge. Open access offers unlimited access to scientific information and makes it possible for anyone to use digital information without restrictions. Thanks to this access, high costs and copyright are no longer an obstacle to the dissemination of scientific information.
File system
This magazine uses the LOCKSS system to create a distributed file among the participating libraries, allowing these libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for preservation and restoration purposes.
Review policy
The process of acceptance of originals requires prior review and approval by peers, for which the journal has the collaboration of external evaluators unrelated to its editorial team and the publishing institution.
The sending and receiving of a scientific article does not necessarily imply acceptance of it for publication in the Legal Medicine Journal of Costa Rica (hereinafter referred to as "the journal").
When an article is accepted for publication, it must comply with all the standards of the Journal, have an adequate level and scientific quality and include the improvements proposed by the peer reviewers, if they are indicated.
The order of revision shall correspond to the order in which they are accepted for review. The articles must be sent through the digital platform, temporarily they can be sent to the email: editormedicinalegaldecostarica@gmail.com.
Review of articles by external peers
The scientific articles sent to the journal must go through a series of processes prior to its publication.
In the first instance, the articles will be reviewed by the Editorial Board, who will verify that they comply with the format of the journal and are in accordance with what is requested in the authors' guide. If there is any inconsistency or if something is missing from the article, it will be returned to the author for correspondence so that it completes what is necessary.
If the article fully complies with the publication norms indicated in the author's guide, it will be evaluated by the Scientific Committee to verify the quality of the scientific content and that the topic is in accordance with the objectives of the journal. Subsequently, the format and subject will be assigned for revision by two external reviewers, who will be proposed by the Scientific Committee. The work of the reviewers is free and there is no payment for this work. The time allotted to the reviewers will be three weeks to express their opinions and recommendations, if after the three-week period there is no response by the assigned peers, a change of reviewers will be made to do the work.
When the process with the reviewers is complete and they gave their approval to accept the article, it is the Scientific Committee that revises them and issues criteria for their publication. Thirdly, finally the Editorial Board reviews the works and approves or rejects them according to the criteria of the Scientific Committee and the reviewers.
The evaluation will be carried out in a double blind manner, that is, neither the peer reviewers will know the name of the author or authors, nor will the authors know to whom their article was assigned.
The articles can be rejected, accepted subject to modification or accepted without modification.
If the article is accepted with modifications, the author must make the improvements requested by the reviewers and the Journal within a prudential period of no more than four weeks, or attach any additional material and information requested to verify the validity of the results of the review. study. If the author does not send the requested additional material or corrections, the article will not be considered for publication.
Results of the peer review
For an article to be published it must be accepted with a positive opinion from the two reviewers. If it were the case that one opinion is positive and the other negative, it will be necessary a third reviewer who will establish the jump-off.
It is the responsibility of the Editorial Board who will finally accept or decline the articles, supported by the opinion of the Scientific Committee and the reviewers, as mentioned above.
The decisions of the Editorial Board on the publication of a particular article are unappealable.
The thematic content of the works published in the Journal will not be modified by this and the authors will give their approval to the final article before being published.
The articles published in the journal may be included in various portals, repositories, databases, libraries or other registration systems that the Editorial Board deems appropriate, provided they are free, freely accessible and non-profit.
