The Portuguese Journal of Social Science (PJSS) is committed to ensuring the highest standards of ethics in publishing in a responsible, respectful and transparent manner. The ethical guidelines of the PJSS follow The Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), available at: http://publicationethics.org/.
Responsibilities and duties of the Editors
The Editors of the PJSS are responsible for deciding the publication of submitted manuscripts based on the journal’s submission guidelines and the peer-review process. In this context, the Editors have the duty of:
- ensuring the scientific quality of the papers;
- handling the papers impartially, evaluating them based solely on their content, originality, scientific relevance, fit to the journal and overall academic merit, regardless of any elements of characterisation of the Authors, such as their age, gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnic origin, disability, social class, nationality, religion, political beliefs or institutional affiliation;
- respecting the scientific autonomy and independence of Authors and Guest Editors;
- selecting reviewers with the most suited profile in terms of topic and/or analytical approach to evaluate the articles;
- safeguarding a fair, unbiased and timely evaluation of the manuscripts by the Reviewers;
- keeping confidentiality and anonymity throughout all steps of the peer-review process regarding both Authors and Reviewers (double-blind peer review);
- maintaining a prompt, good and transparent communication with Authors, Reviewers and Guest Editors, providing them all the information they need;
- resolving any reclamations or act on the suspicion of misconduct following the COPE guidelines;
- publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies whenever necessary.
Responsibilities and duties of the Guest Editors
The PJSS regularly publishes special issues and thematic sections. These issues/sections are organised by Guest Editors, who are responsible for:
- writing the introduction to the issue/section.
- defining the topic of the thematic issue/section;
- preparing a call for papers and/or invite Authors to contribute;
- providing Authors all the information about the scope of the issue/section;
- organise the peer review process, with the support of the Editors and the Editorial Committee, selecting suitable Reviewers to the articles’ focus and managing the deadlines for the delivery of the referees’ reports;
- establishing a timeline for all stages of the issue/section preparation, including article submission, peer review, final decision and delivery of the finished issue/section;
Responsibilities of the Authors
The Authors who submit their work to the PJSS have the following responsibilities:
- the submitted manuscript must present original work not published elsewhere or submitted concurrently to other journals;
- submitted manuscripts must follow the PJSS submission guidelines;
- Authors must provide accurate and rigorous information about all stages of the work, including the data, the sources they used, the research process and the results;
- plagiarism, in all its forms, manipulation, distortion or falsification of data, and fraudulent information are unacceptable practices and are considered a serious violation of ethics;
- all sources used in research, including the work of other researchers and previous publications, should be given proper credit and duly referenced in the manuscript;
- authorship must be based on significant contributions both to the research (in terms of conception, design, execution, analysis) and to the elaboration of the manuscript (writing process). Other forms of contribution that do not qualify as authorship should also be acknowledged;
- all Authors must agree with the final version of the article and its submission;
- all sources of financial support must be acknowledged;
- any conflicts of interest that can have an impact on the evaluation of their submission or on the interpretation of the manuscript should be disclosed;
- when Authors identify a serious error or inaccuracy in their published article, they have the obligation to notify the Editors, so that the article is modified, withdrawn, retracted, or so that a correction or erratum can be published.
Responsibilities of the Reviewers
The reviewers assist the Editors, through the evaluation of the submitted articles, in making editorial decisions. This important role requires them to:
- inform the Editors if any plagiarism, manipulation, distortion or falsification of data, and fraudulent information is detected. They must also draw attention to similarities between the text under review and other published articles or papers being reviewed in other journals.
- when invited, decline the invitation to review if they do not consider themselves qualified to evaluate the manuscript and if they are unable to complete the task within the proposed deadline;
- when invited, decline the invitation to review if they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative or intimate relationships with the authors or the institutions they represent (in case they are able to identify them, even though the review process is anonymous);
- deliver the evaluation report within the agreed time not to compromise the review deadlines. If they feel unable to meet the stipulated deadline, they should promptly notify the Editors;
- handle the submitted manuscripts confidentially, during and throughout the review process;
- abstain from disseminating and using any kind of information from the text under review for their own benefit or that of others;
- base their evaluation of the papers exclusively on their scientific quality and merit;
- provide the Authors clear arguments to support their assessment, comments and suggestions;
- write the evaluation report in a constructive manner, respecting the intellectual autonomy of the authors, without adopting a hostile position or tone, and helping them to improve the text (if that is the case);
- guarantee that relevant work already published on the subject is cited;
On the use of AI
The Portuguese Journal of Social Science (PJSS) acknowledges the potential of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, such as large language models (LLMs) or multimodal models, in enhancing creativity for authors (exploring ideas), finding data, sources and references (searching), supporting authors writing in a non-native language (language improvement), and adjusting the contents and the references to the guidelines (formatting).
However, a key principle of PJSS, in line with the scope and role of social sciences in general, is the value of human critical reflection, analysis and creativity, which is what, ultimately, produces authorship.
As such, Authors who choose to use AI Generative tools are accountable for a responsible use, which implies safeguarding the originality, validity and integrity of their manuscripts. They are expected to:
- confirm the contents’ accuracy;
- critically review all outputs;
- ensure that there is no violation of the journal’s guidelines, policies and Declaration of Ethics and Good Practices, namely in terms of authorship, plagiarism and false information;
- acknowledge the use of AI tools, making a statement (in the Methods or Acknowledgments section) that should include the Generative AI tool used, how it was used and for what purpose.
Reviewers should not use Generative AI tools to summarise the papers under review and to generate the evaluation report. It is not permitted to upload unpublished manuscripts (or parts of it) into Generative AI tools.
This is in line with COPE´s position on AI and authorship, available here.
However, the journal’s position may change as the issue becomes more relevant. To this end, it is essential to monitor advances in understanding the impact of emerging technologies on scientific research, data analysis processes and the preparation of manuscripts for publication.
Portuguese Journal of Social Science 