Medicina & Laboratorio® adheres to the guidelines established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), and the Equator Network (Enhancing the Quality and Transparency of Health Records) to ensure the quality and integrity of manuscripts. It accepts original articles that have not been submitted, in whole or in part, simultaneously to another national or international journal. In all cases, authors must comply with ethical publication practices regarding authorship, duplication of previously published results, plagiarism, manipulation of results, conflicts of interest, and ethical policies for research involving human subjects. Manuscripts that are substantially similar to others already published will be removed from the editorial process. There are no costs associated with publishing manuscripts for authors.


Peer review process

All manuscripts submitted to Medicina & Laboratorio® as part of the editorial process undergo double-blind peer review by external reviewers. These reviewers determine whether articles are accepted, with or without modifications, or rejected. Medicina & Laboratorio® guarantees the confidentiality of this process.


Open access policy

Manuscripts published in Medicina & Laboratorio ® are open access and can be downloaded free of charge through the OJS platform, under the Creative Commons license , specifically the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (BY-NC-ND) license.


Withdrawal policy

Medicina & Laboratorio® publishes retractions following the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) ( https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.1.4 ). Retractions inform readers about erroneous content or data, whether intentional or unintentional, in manuscripts. Retractions apply in cases of proven plagiarism, duplicate publications, use of copyrighted material or material without proper attribution, alteration of research results, and any other demonstrable situation that affects the ethics and integrity of scientific publications, in accordance with the guidelines established by COPE.


CrossMark Policy

The journal Medicina & Laboratorio® uses Crossmark to keep its readers informed of any changes to published articles. Crossmark is a CrossRef initiative that provides a way to locate the official and most up-to-date version of a document. Medicina & Laboratorio® recognizes the importance of maintaining the integrity of academic records for researchers and libraries, and therefore ensures that its electronic archives always contain reliable content. Clicking on the Crossmark icon provides the reader with information about the publication history. Content displaying the Crossmark icon is that published on the journal's website.


Copyright notice

The authorship policy of Medicina & Laboratorio® is based on the criteria established by the ICMJE for attributing authorship to an individual while also assigning responsibility for its publication. To this end, a signed declaration must be submitted to the journal, stating that each author meets the authorship criteria and assumes responsibility for the published content. Additionally, authors are responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce text, tables, or figures from other publications or, failing that, for providing the necessary information to obtain permission through the Editor. The addition or removal of authors is not permitted after the article's editorial process has begun.

Ethical aspects of human studies and confidentiality

For medical research articles involving human subjects and clinical cases, authors must obtain written informed consent from patients for their participation in the study and for the publication, reproduction, and dissemination of the results. Likewise, they must have approval from the Ethics Committee of the institution where the study was conducted, in accordance with Resolution 8430 of 1993 from the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Colombia and under the ethical principles of the Declaration of Helsinki and COPE. They must also have permission to access data from medical records.

Authors are responsible for ensuring the privacy of patients included in research papers or case reports by protecting their identity in both the text and images. They must not use names, initials, medical record numbers, or any other data that could identify the patient in the manuscripts. Medicina & Laboratorio® only accepts original articles with clinical trials that have been registered in accordance with the policies of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the ICMJE. The identification number must be included at the end of the abstract in the manuscript.


Privacy statement

The personal information collected from the authors will be used exclusively for editorial purposes and will not be available to any other person or institution.


Conflict of interest

Medicina & Laboratorio® adopts the ICMJE's potential conflict of interest disclosure form ( http://www.icmje.org/conflicts-of-interest/ ), with some modifications. This form will be sent to the corresponding author once the manuscript has been approved, so that it can be completed and signed by each author. Articles will only be published once all authors' forms have been received.
A conflict of interest is considered to exist when the author had or has economic, professional or personal relationships, at the time of writing or submitting the manuscript, with persons or institutions that may have inappropriately influenced the objectivity or validity of the study, or the analysis and interpretations contained in the text, which must be declared in the manuscript that will be published.

Permits

Authors are responsible for obtaining permission to partially reproduce text, tables, or figures from other publications or, failing that, for providing the basic information to process the permission through the Publisher.