Focus and Scope

Synthesis is a semi-annual journal published by the Área Filología Griega of the Centro de Estudios de Lenguas Clásicas, Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad Nacional de La Plata. It publishes original works on all areas included in the concepts of Greek Philology, Philosophy and Literatures, and its reception in later authors.

The title is abbreviated as Synthesis, and this should be used in bibliographies, footnotes, legends and bibliographical references.

 

 

 

Open Access Policy

Synthesis is an open access journal licensed under  Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 4.0 International.

The acceptance of manuscripts by the journal will mean, in addition to the electronic publication, the open access under Creative Commons (CC) Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.es), as well as the incorporation and diffusion of the whole text through the institutional repositories SEDICI  (http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/) y  Memoria Académica  (http://www.memoria.fahce.unlp.edu.ar/), and in all the specialized databases the publishers considered adequated for its indexing, in order to increase the journal visibility.

 

 

Plagiarism Policy

The policy of the journal is to publish original works, written by those who declare their authorship, and unpublished works, which may not have been previously published in any print or electronic medium.

Given the limitations of automatic plagiarism detection programs with the Spanish language and in order to respond to broader aspects that are recorded as plagiarism practices - including translations, fragmentation of results or "salami slicing", duplication, among others - the journal implements a specific procedure to prevent it, namely:

1. At the time of submission of an article, authors are asked to state that the article has not been previously published or sent to other journals for evaluation. In addition, they are asked to state that they are following the Author Guidelines, which state that the articles to be applied for must be original.
2. When it is received -and before starting the evaluation process-, internet search tools are used, in order to track other works of the authors and compare the title, fragments of the abstract, the methodological section and the results of the article presented for revision, in order to corroborate the originality and avoid plagiarism practices.
3. When sending it out to evaluate peer reviewers, evaluators are also asked to pay attention to possible indicators of plagiarism, as they are the ones who know the sources and literature on the subject.

The magazine considers the practices listed and explained below as plagiarism:

1. Direct plagiarism. You commit this type when:
   a. There is omission of the authorship and what has been taken from another text is not indicated with quotation marks.
   b. Minimal changes are made to the text of another (sentence structure is modified, lower case is substituted by upper case or vice versa, synonyms are used, etc.) and it is presented as original.
2. Plagiarism for the improper use of paraphrase is commited when:
   a. Although authorship is noted, the original text is reproduced with a few changes that are not paraphrases.
3. Complex plagiarism using a reference is committed when:
   a. The original authorship reference exists, but the pages of the source are indicated with inaccuracy.
   b. Paraphrasing in which long texts are summarized, but with little or no indication that they correspond to paraphrases.
   c. Absence of quotation marks in words and phrases of the original text that are reproduced textually.
4. Plagiarism with loose quotation marks is performed when:
   a. A textual quotation continues to be reproduced once quotation marks have been closed or previous sentences have been omitted from the same quotation.
5. Paraphrasing as plagiarism occurs when:
   a. There is paraphrasing and the original source reference is not noted.
   b. The paraphrasing is continuous and extensive, no material is added that allows interaction or enriches the information, even though the source is mentioned.
   c. Academic works - which require original thoughts and critical reflections on other people's points of view - become texts that do not surpass the repetition of other academic texts.
   d. Paraphrased passages are not clearly identified as such.
   It's not considered plagiarism when:
   e. It doesn't dominate the work of the writer.
   f. It is used to allow the author to interact critically with another person's views.
   g. The argument of the original text is rewritten in different words.
6. The "self-plagiarism" or recycling fraud, is committed when:
   a. The appearance of a job is changed and presented as if it were a different job.
   b. The indication that the work is being recycled is omitted, i.e. that it is a previously published work but with corrections or new additions.
   It's not considered self-plagiarism when:
   a. Previous work is the basis for a new contribution, and key parts must be repeated to explain and defend the new arguments.
   b. The author believes that what he has already said cannot be said in a better way for the new publication.
   c. The repetition does not exceed 30% of the original work.

 

 

Ethical Aspects and Conflict of Interest

The publication of Synthesis is the collective result of the work and effort of authors, editors and evaluators who are interested in the development of science for social and cultural development. For this reason, and within the framework of the open access policy promoted by the National University of La Plata, the journal will not charge authors any fee for publication, and articles will be immediately available in Open Access.

The editors of the magazine undertake to avoid the existence of any conflict of interest between the actors involved in the production. Any text submitted will be evaluated for its intellectual content, avoiding interference in the process of the authors' ethnic or national affiliation, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, or political philosophy. Similarly, external evaluations that place any personal position on the quality of work will be rejected.

Authors and evaluators are asked to state in advance any relevant conflicts of interest they may have, so that they can be taken into account when allocating evaluations. If any conflict should arise after the publication of the contribution, if necessary, there will be a retraction or manifestation of the fact.

A "conflict of interest" is a situation in which an individual's personal interests diverge from his or her responsibilities for the scientific activities he or she undertakes, whether as an author, reviewer, or member of the editorial board, which may influence his or her critical judgment and the integrity of his or her actions. Conflicts of interest can be:

• Economic: when the participant (author/reviewer/editor) has received or expects to receive money for activities related to the research and its dissemination.
• Academics: when reviewers or editors adhere to a particular methodological or ideological trend in such a way that they may be biased to evaluate the work of others. For this reason they are asked to express themselves beforehand.
• Personal or work relationships: when the participants (authors/reviewers/publishers) have some kind of friendship, enmity or work relationship. To avoid this, editors should take into account funding sources and author affiliation to choose evaluators who do not belong to those specific circles.

International guidelines

Based on an analysis of the specific problems of scientific publishing practice, various international organizations have taken on the task of agreeing on criteria and generating guides and documents that provide support to both editors and authors, among them:

• COPE | Committee on Publication Ethics
• International Committee of Medical Journal Editors
• Council of Science Editors
• Office of Research Integrity (ORI) | U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

The editors of the journal will consider guidelines and guides that have been agreed upon at the international level to solve the specific problems of scientific publishing practice. The instructions given by COPE | Committee on Publication Ethics will be taken into account. Guidelines from other internationally recognized organizations such as the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, the Council of Science Editors and the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) will also be considered | U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

Authors, researchers and reviewers are invited to familiarize themselves with the international guidelines linked to ethics in publication, specifically those linked below, in order to avoid faults that could be generated by their ignorance.

COPE | Committee on Publication Ethics

Provides guidelines to follow in the following cases:

1. What to do if you suspect that a publication is redundant or duplicated
   a. Suspicion of redundant publication in a received manuscript
   b. Suspicion of redundant publication in a published article
2. What to do if you suspect plagiarism
   a. Suspicion of plagiarism in a received manuscript
   b. Suspected plagiarism in a published article
3. What to do if you suspect data has been invented
   a. Suspicion of invented data in a received manuscript
   b. Suspicion of data invented in a published article
4. Changes in authorship
   a. The corresponding author requests to add an additional author before publication
   b. The corresponding author asks to delete an author before publication
   c. Request to add an additional author after publication
   d. Request to delete an author after publication
5. What to do if you suspect the existence of anonymous authors, guest authors, or gifted authorship
6. How to detect problems with authorship
7. What to do if the reviewer suspects that there is an undisclosed conflict of interest in a received manuscript
8. What to do if a reader suspects an undeclared conflict of interest in a published article
9. What to do if you suspect an ethical problem in a received manuscript
10. What to do if you suspect that a reviewer has appropriated an author's ideas or data
11. COPE's handling of complaints against publishers

International Committee of Medical Journal Editors
Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publications
Last update: December 2017

Council of Science Editors
CSE's White Paper on Promoting Integrity in Scientific Journal Publications
Last update: May 2018

Office of Research Integrity (ORI) | U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
Avoiding plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and other questionable writing practices: A guide to ethical writing
Last update: 2015

 

 

Data Availability Policy

Synthesis promotes the transparency and reproducibility of the published research so that other researchers can replicate the studies described in these articles, either to corroborate or refute the obtained results, under the provisions of the Argentinian National Law No. 26,899 on Open Access Institutional Digital Repositories.

To promote the reproducibility of results, the journal requires authors to make available the data sets used to perform the research described in their articles without restrictions. In case of limitations for ethical or legal reasons, authors shall indicate how other researchers should proceed to access such data.

Any information and research data sent to Synthesis shall be uploaded and made available in SEDICI, the repository of Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP), to increase compliance with the FAIR principles: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (it should be possible to find and access data, which should be located in systems capable of interoperating, and people should be able to reuse them in other investigations).

Authors are encouraged to store data in SEDICI, or any other research data repository (for example, FigShare, Mendeley Data or Zenodo), before sending their contributions to the journal. When the article is submitted, this would allow simply mentioning the URL where the research data are located.

Authors are requested to use formats that maximize data accessibility and reusability (for example, regarding tabular data, using a spreadsheet is suggested). If necessary, it is recommended that, together with the data, they publish the algorithms or pipelines that must be used with the data for their correct interpretation.

 

 

 

Frequency

Synthesis  appears twice a year, since 2021 published in February and August .

Born as an annual publicatiom, from June 2017 to May 2019,  Synthesis became a semi-annual publication with two issues a year (June and December).