Varia Historia is committed to meeting and upholding standards of ethical behavior at all stages of the publication process.

The following members compose Varia Historia’s editorial board organizational structure: editor-in-chief, editorial and advisory committees. These members came from different universities, in several countries, and work together with the authors and anonymous peer reviewers in order to guarantee the quality and the relevance of the journal contents, and to meet expected ethical standards in all stages in their involvement from submission to publication of an article.  Below is a summary of our key expectations of editors, peer-reviewers and authors:

1. ETHICAL EXPECTATIONS

Varia Historia Editor’s responsibilities

To assume complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article based only on the paper’s importance, originality, clarity, relevance, and appropriateness to the mission of Varia Historia.

To dialogue with the members of the Editorial and the Advisory Committee about the journal’s policies, challenges and targets, looking for a very collective effort to improve the journal’s quality.

To strive meeting the needs of readers and authors, constantly a) improving the journal; b) ensuring the quality of the material they publish; c) championing freedom of expression; d) maintaining the integrity of the academic record; e) always be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.

To act in a balanced, transparent and fair way while carrying out their expected duties, without discrimination on grounds of gender, sexual orientation, religious or political beliefs, ethnic or geographical origin of the authors.

To ensure confidentiality mechanisms of all the submission process, managing blinded manuscripts, and preserving the anonymity of reviewers.

To handle submissions of special issues in the same way as other submissions, so that the articles are considered and accepted solely on their academic merit and without personal influences.

To publish guidance to authors on everything that is expected of them in our homepage. These instructions to authors are regularly updated and must inform the steps of the evaluation procedures.(See http://www.variahistoria.org/instructions)

To act if they suspect misconduct to both published and unpublished papers, following the orientations by COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics), giving authors a reasonable opportunity to respond to any complaints. All complaints are investigated no matter when the original publication was approved. Documentation associated with any such complaints are retained.

Authors’ responsabilities

To sign a publication agreement stating they own the manuscript. Intellectual property rights of third parties must be respected. To send permissions for the use, reproduction and publication of charts, graphs, maps, diagrams, photographs, etc.  Each author who signs the article should have significantly contributed to it.

To present their articles following the standards available in Instructions for Authors (http://www.variahistoria.org/instructions )

To provide a list of references, also indicating financial support.

To indicate the institutional or private location of all the historical documents quoted in the article, as well the complete archival references.

To guarantee the article (or a significant part of it) has not been published elsewhere, and is not under consideration or accepted for publication elsewhere.

To know and accept the rules of the Creative Commons License Attribute BY. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode

To meet the expectations of Varia Historia of receiving original articles, with no plagiarism, no fraudulent data, and no least publishable unit. 

To notify promptly the journal editor if a significant error in their publication in identified. To cooperate with the editor to publish an erratum addendum, corrigendum notice, or to retract the paper, where this is deemed necessary.

Peer reviewers’ responsibilities:

To be aware of any potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, the authors and/or the research funders, if necessary withdrawing their services for that manuscript.

To review the manuscript objectively and constructively, avoiding hostile or inflammatory comments, in a timely manner.

To maintain the confidentiality of any information supplied by the editor or author, without retaining or copying the manuscript.

To not use information obtained during the peer-review process for their own or any other person or organization’s advantage, or to disadvantage or discredit others.

To alert the editor to any published or submitted content that is substantially similar to that under review.

Publisher’s responsibilities

(Varia Historia is published by the History Master and Doctoral Program of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil).  

To indicate the Editor-in-Chief.

To monitoring the suitableness of the editorial practices of the journal.

To provide good conditions for the maintenance of the academic record’s integrity.

2. PROCEDURES FOR DEALING WITH UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR

Complaints received by the journal will be evaluated and answered by both the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Board. These members are responsible for the proper investigation of eventual problems.

Evidence should be gathered, while avoiding spreading any allegations beyond those who need to know.

Minor misconduct might be dealt with without the need to consult more widely. In any event the author or the reviewer should be given the opportunity to respond any allegation.

The Editorial Board, and the Coordinator of the History Master and Doctoral Program of the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil should investigate eventual complaints against the Editor-in-Chief).

Outcomes (in increasing order of severity, may be applied separately or in conjunction):

·      Informing or educating the author or reviewer where there appear to be a misunderstanding or misapplication of acceptable standards.

·      A more strongly worded letter to the author or reviewer covering the misconduct and as a warning to future behavior.

·      Publication of a formal notice detailing the misconduct.

·      A formal letter to the head of the author’s or reviewer’s department or funding agency.

·      Formal retraction or withdrawal of a publication from the journal.

·      Reporting the case and outcome to a professional organization or higher authority for further investigation and action.