Editorial policy:

Manuscripts can be sent all year long. Papers are evaluated as they are received, by the following procedure: a) after receipt of the article, it is communicated to the sender to the email address indicated; b) the Editorial Board decides to reject it (in the case of manuscripts that are not related to our aims and scopes) or to start the external review process, which will be duly communicated; c) anonymous peer-review of the paper by the double blind procedure (if the reviews are discrepant the Editorial Board could send the paper to an additional reviewer) conducted by experts in the field concerned; d) in view of the reports of the evaluators, a final judgment will be drawn up by the Editorial Board on whether to accept for publication or to reject the manuscript, which will be communicated to the author. 

During the review process, the authors will address the suggested changes and resubmit the work to the reviewers. This process will be repeated until the reviewers accept the work. Should the two reviewers reach differing conclusions, a third reviewer will be assigned to evaluate the manuscript.

Authors can file a formal appeal request against the Editorial decision provided that it meets the requirements and it follows the procedure explained in the policy of appeals of the RVOP. The appeal shall only be considered by  and the decision on the appeal shall be final.

In light of the Referee's reports, the Editorial Board may adopt one of several resolutions and will notify the author:

• Publishable as it is (or with minor modifications).

• Publishable after its revision.  In such cases, publication will be conditional upon the author making any changes requested by the referees or the Editorial Board. The maximum time limit for making such changes is one month. The author must attach a letter explaining the changes made and how they meet the requirements of the reviewers and the Editorial Board. The proposed changes may include the adaptation of studies to another section. This process may be repeated until the referees consider the article publishable or unpublishable.
• Unpublishable, but with the possibility to rewrite and resubmit the work. In this case, to resubmit a new version of the paper does not guarantee its publication but only the beginning of a new process of assessment. 
• Not for publication.

This process has an average duration of 16 weeks from the receipt of the manuscript by the Technical Secretary (rvgpop@ivap.eus ) until it is published. During this time, authors are asked to avoid postulating their manuscript in other journals.

The Journal does not charge author processing or submission charges. Authors will not have to pay any amount for the publication of their article. In fact, the magazine will pay a total of 450 euros for each published article.The editing costs will be assumed by the IVAP and the transfer of the intellectual property rights by the authors to the IVAP will be remunerated to authors in accordance with the fees provided in the current regulations.

The Basque Journal of People & Public Organizations’ management is committed to maintaining the ethical standards featured in this text in its editorial policy. These principles take as a reference the guidelines published by COPE (Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Members of the Editorial Board). For this purpose, all parties involved in the process -members of the Editorial Board, members of the Advisory Board (referees) and authors- must know and abide by the following principles:

Members of the Editorial Board:

The Editorial Board will decide whether or not to publish submitted papers after consulting the reports of the referees and will only take into consideration the relevance, originality, clarity and suitability to the Journal’s subject matter of the manuscripts. Non-discrimination regarding the race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnic origin, country of origin, nationality or political orientation of the authors will be guaranteed. The Editorial Board must offer mechanisms for appeal against editorial decisions.

Members of the Editorial Board and other staff associated with the journal will preserve unfailingly the anonymity of all the persons involved in the process of evaluation of papers ant they will guarantee that the materials sent by authors will be properly handled, avoiding its disclosure beyond those involved in the evaluation.

Members of the Editorial Board must report if there’s a conflict of interest regarding the decision to publish a paper. In such case, they will abstain from the decision-making process.

The Editorial Board shall publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies should they be necessary.

The Editorial Board commits to constantly improve the Journal regarding the quality of its articles, its indexation and visibility. To that end, the opinions of the authors, referees and Advisory board shall be requested.

If, as a result of the evaluation process, the Editorial Board would receive serious allegations about malpractice or misconduct by the authors, they will be given the opportunity to offer the appropriate explanations.

Authors:

The authors shall be held liable for the content of their manuscripts and they must indicate that they are the authors. They must justify, when applicable, the reasons for possible changes in the authorship of the text, always before the last review round.

Authors must ensure that the content of the paper submitted to the journal is original and unpublished. If some sections of the paper have been published, this situation must be reported to the Technical Secretary to study the possible impact on intellectual property. Likewise, they must ensure that their work is not the result of partial or complete plagiarism of another one, and that they have not omitted intentionally bibliographic citations.

Authors should ensure that, at the time of submitting a manuscript for its consideration by the Journal, it is not being assessed at the same time in other publications.

If the author or authors are aware of conflicts of interest, actual or potential, in the evaluation process of their manuscript, they must report such situation to the Technical Secretary. In this sense, the will have the right to inform, in writing and in a well-founded way, to the Technical Secretary on conflicts of interest with members of the Editorial Board of the Journal or potential referees.

Authors have the right to know the content of the reviewers' evaluations and must make the corresponding improvements or changes if the result of the evaluation is "publishable as it is" or "publishable after revision"

For the purpose of integrity of the double-blind process authors should avoid any mention that could lead to their identification, including an excessive self-quoting. If they are made, it should be made in a sufficiently neutral way so that the reading of the text during the blind assessment does not allow them to be identified as self-citations.

Authors undertake to comply with journal’s style and publication standards.

Referees:

After agreeing to review an article, referees must respect the agreed time periods; if they are unable to meet a deadline they should give the Technical Secretary sufficient prior warning of this. The maximum timeframe for submission of the review is one month. It is imperative that reviews are submitted on time so that the Editorial Board can provide a prompt response to the authors.

Reviews must be conducted in an objective, confidential and impartial way.

Referees agree to offer precise bibliographical details on important texts on the subject matter that the author may have omitted.

If the review of an article supposes a conflict with the referee’s own interests, the referee must report it and reject the review proposal.

Evaluators should inform the Technical Secretary of any situation regarding the manuscripts evaluated that, in their view, transgresses the ethical policy of the journal and / or basic standards of scientific production, such as plagiarism, dishonest presentation of results, fabrication, falsification, manipulation and / or omission of evidence.

It is recommended that referees keep their reviews concise and constructive. They should begin by identifying the strengths of the article, before addressing any criticisms and identifying areas for improvement. Referees should consider their role as informed readers that encourage authors and help them to take their work to a higher level. They should provide authors with ideas about how to address shortcomings in order to develop their work, trying to understand their perspective, even if it differs from their own. Reviews should recommend reasonable improvements in a polite and impersonal tone. It is essential to exercise professional courtesy by considering what the evaluator would like to receive in an article of their own. Please be advised that ad-hominem comments will not be tolerated.

Referees will take into account the specific aspects of the field in which they are specialists when reviewing manuscripts, using their expertise to provide comments on the manuscripts.

There is no need to point out small edition or typing errors: our Technical Secretary will ensure those errors are remedied during the typesetting stage. Our rigorous review process ensures that manuscript reviewers can concentrate exclusively on the scientific research.

In the event that referees inappropriately request the citation of their own published articles (or those of their collaborators) or of the journal, these may be revoked and replaced during the review.

Referees are entrusted with the handling of submitted articles on the premise that they are dealing with confidential communications. Consequently, they must refrain from discussing the review or disclosing its content to third parties. Referees should also refrain from using their knowledge of the work they are reviewing to promote their own personal interests.

Referees will be asked to complete an assessment questionnaire to review the scientific rigor, quality, originality and the information upon which hypotheses are based; the validity of the theoretical and/or empirical data and their interpretation; the opportunity and relevance of the study for the discussion within the area of research; the presentation and wording of the text; and the adequacy of the quoted bibliography in the manuscript. One section of the questionnaire will consist of completing a succinct evaluation report on the manuscript. The review reports will be checked to ensure a constructive assessment of the quality of the manuscripts to the authors.

The recommendations for completing the assessment report are as follows:

• Summarize the article in a short paragraph.
• Comment on your main impressions over the article, including if it is innovative and interesting, if it has enough impact and if it adds information to the knowledge base.
• Ideally, when commenting use short paragraphs and well defined.
• Indicate to the Editorial Board the section in which the manuscript belongs.
• Please ensure that the article meets the Journal's standards for publication.
• Please provide specific comments and suggestions, for example whether the title accurately reflects the content or the summary is complete and self-contained.
• Review the graphic summaries or highlights.
• Please ensure that any commentary is fact-based and does not speculate about the motivations of the author.
• Carefully review the methodology, statistical errors, results, conclusion/discussion and references.
• Consider comments on the presentation of the data in the article, the sustainability and reproducibility of any methodology, the analysis of those data and whether the conclusions are supported by the data.
• Please inform the Editor if plagiarism or research falsification are suspected or any other ethical concerns arise, providing as much detail as possible.
• Please be aware of the potential bias when reviewing manuscripts. Unconscious biases can lead to adopt questionable decisions with a negative impact on the academic publishing process.
• While subsequent revisions of the paper may raise new questions, please ensure that you include the key points to provide all necessary feedback to the authors in the initial report.
• Be sure to conclude the report with a clear recommendation to the Editorial Board. As the individual with expertise in the area covered by the article, your guidance is invaluable.

Funding and advertising

The Basque Journal of People and Public Organization Management is funded exclusively from the budget of the Basque Institute of Public Administration, an autonomous body attached to the Department of Governance, Digital Administration and Self-Government of the Basque Government, which serves the public administrations of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country.

Publication in the RVOP is free of charge, so authors are not charged for submitting their manuscripts or participating in the editorial process.

The IVAP does not charge readers any fees for accessing the published content.

Open Access and patrimonial rights

The RVOP is in charge of the storage of the manuscripts in appropriate servers and shall ensure the preservation and permanent accesibility to their content. Access shall be open, inmediate and full-text. The IVAP shall retain the patrimonial rights (copyright) upon the published works and it fosters and allows its reuse under the terms of Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license so as to copy, use, communicate, transmit and publicly exhibit them as long as 1) the authorship and the original source of its publication are cited, 2) there is not commercial use, 3) no derivative works license and 4) there is a mention to the licence of use and its specifics.

The RVOP is responsible for storing the works on servers suitable for this purpose and will ensure permanent access to their content; access will be open, immediate and full text. Similarly, it authorises the authors of published articles to follow this practice; authorisation is granted for unrestricted access, respecting in all cases the management of copyright protected by the legal framework in force at the time of publication.

Archiving and digital preservation policy

The journal assigns a persistent DOI (Digital Object Identifier) managed by Crossref to guarantee the identification and accessibility of our articles. RVAP is published using its own open-source system for the management and publication of online academic journals.

RVOP is also preserved in the CLOCKSS (Controlled Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) preservation network, which ensures that articles are preserved and widely available. CLOCKSS is based on the open source LOCKSS software developed at Stanford University Library, which allows libraries to preserve digital journal content by regularly checking their websites for current content for archiving and preservation.

Likewise, the electronic contents of the RVOP journal of are kept in Dokusi, the Single Electronic Archive of the Public Administration of the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, and are permanently preserved. Dokusi is equipped with long-term conservation systems (resealing of documents with electronic signatures, transformation of obsolete formats) that are applied to the documents in custody.

Plagiarism and malpractice:

Plagiarism is defined as: the use or reproduction of expressions and ideas of other authors or papers as an own original work without a correct indication of their origin or without specification of the source; and the abusive use of expressions and thoughts of other authors, even if the source is included.

Scientific malpractice is defined as: the fabrication either in whole or in part of the data from a research included in the submitted manuscript; the forge or the manipulation of the data; authorship conflicts, and fictitious authorship.

The Editorial Board will propose to the management of IVAP the adoption of the appropriate measures in the case of plagiarism or scientific malpractice, in addition to retracting the article. The authors will be responsible either legally or scientifically for the violation of the rights of others or the principles previously enunciated.

Use of artificial intelligence (AI)

Authors

Submitted articles to the journal shall be subjected to an anti-plagiarism tool to ascertain the degree of originality. In the event of articles being deemed unoriginal, authors are notified of this decision along with a detailed report outlining the anti-plagiarism analysis results. On each occasion, the decision regarding potential rejection shall be made by the editors on a case-by- case basis.

Authors may use artificial intelligence, provided that they explicitly state the tool used and its version, the sections elaborated on the basis of AI, the aims for its use and the date of consultation. Authors are responsible for ensuring the rigor and integrity of the submitted work. They must check and verify the information.

It is also necessary to list the tool used in the references section. For instance: Responsible entity (year of edition). Name of the tool in italics (Version) [additional description]. URL.

However, the utilization of AI to create, alter, misrepresent or falsify data as well as to manipulate images and figures is strictly prohibited.

In order to mitigate the risks associated with AI, it is recommended that a tool is used to ensure confidentiality or the anonymisation of data prior to submission.

Referees

In the course of the peer review process, the utilization of generative artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, etc. is to be limited. These tools may be used by referees to improve the quality of the feedback on a peer review report. When submitting a peer review report, referees must declare any use of AI to the Technical Secretary of the Journal.

Regardless of the limited use of AI demonstrated by this example, it is imperative that referees refrain from uploading manuscripts they are evaluating (or any section of them, including figures and tables) to generative AI tools or services. These tools may use the manuscript data for their own training or other purposes which could compromise the confidentiality of the peer review process. Similarly, the peer review process is a human endeavor and the responsibility and accountability for producing a review report rests with those who have accepted the journal’s invitation to review a manuscript submitted to it. This process cannot be delegated to a generative AI tool.