Ethics of scientific publishing: initiatives and recommendations

The growing importance of scientific publications of quality, their impact on society in general and on authors’ processes of scientific recognition, as well as journals needing to have international visibility, may increase the number of conflicts of interests among editors, authors and reviewers of scientific publications. The aim of this article is to review recommendations of existing ethics codes. Major international initiatives, their sponsoring entities and specific recommendations made to the different agents of the process are analyzed. The review reveals that the degree of awareness about the ethics of the publications in each discipline and each country depends on tradition, associations, the established reputation and the degree of internationalization of the journals that make up each scientific field