• Compliance with the Code of Ethics.
  By submitting a manuscript, authors declare that they have read and accepted the ICONO14 Code of Ethics and editorial integrity policies. They also undertake to act in accordance with COPE's Core Principles and any COPE guidance applicable to authors and publications. Any circumstance that may constitute a conflict of interest or potential ethical breach, or may affect the assessment of the manuscript, must be disclosed in the "Comments for the editor" field of the submission.
• Favourable certification from the Research Ethics Committee of the reference institution.
  To comply with international standards of good research practice, in cases where the research involves human participants and/or their personal data — such as observational, psychological or behavioural research on humans, participation of students awaiting assessment by one of the project researchers, use of personal data or similar — researchers must hold the favourable certification of good practice issued by the Research Ethics Committee, or equivalent body, of the institution or institutions where the study was carried out. The reference code and approval date of the corresponding ethics committee must be stated in the manuscript.
• Originality of the article.
  All submitted materials must be original (unpublished — including in another language — and not under review at other journals), and written in Spanish, English or Portuguese. For these purposes, works previously published in conference proceedings shall not be considered unpublished and will be rejected.
  
  Prior deposit in open repositories and preprints. In line with the journal's open science principles, works that the authors have previously deposited as preprints in open-access repositories may be submitted, whether institutional (university archives, BURJC Digital…) or thematic/generalist (Zenodo, arXiv, SocArXiv, SSRN…), provided that said works, neither wholly nor partially, have been submitted to and/or published in scientific journals or any other publication system. For these purposes, depositing a preprint in an open-access repository is not considered prior publication. In such cases, authors must indicate the existence of the preprint (link and DOI, if available) in the "Comments for the editor" field of the submission process. For full details, see the Preprint policy.
  
  In the case of manuscripts derived from academic works such as doctoral theses, authors must indicate this circumstance for assessment in the "Comments for the editor" field of the submission process.
• Single case studies (case reports).
  ICONO14 does not accept manuscripts based exclusively on a single case study (case report) when they consist of merely descriptive analyses. Single case studies will only be considered for publication if they explicitly justify their scientific relevance and provide a clearly grounded theoretical or methodological contribution with demonstrable transferability.
• Declaration on the use of Artificial Intelligence.
  In line with COPE recommendations, authors must explicitly declare the use of any Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool or application in the preparation, analysis or revision of their manuscripts. This declaration must be made: 1) In the "Methodology" section of the manuscript, indicating the phases in which it was applied and the instruments used; 2) In the "Comments for the editor" field during the submission process.
• Rights over third-party materials.
  Where an article includes materials subject to third-party intellectual property rights — such as audiovisual fragments, images, screenshots, reproductions of works, source code, data or any other content not created by the authors — the latter must declare and evidence the legal basis supporting their use. In particular, authors shall confirm that each third-party material used in the article falls under at least one of the following situations:
  
  a) The work is in the public domain.
  b) The work is published under an open licence (Creative Commons or another free licence) whose terms are complied with.
  c) The use is covered by the right of quotation for research and criticism purposes, pursuant to Article 32 of the Consolidated Text of the Spanish Intellectual Property Act (Royal Legislative Decree 1/1996), Article 10 of the Berne Convention, and/or equivalent provisions of the legislation of the country of origin of the material.
  d) The authors hold express authorisation from the rights holder.
  
  Mandatory declaration and indemnification. By submitting the article, the authors declare that the use of all third-party materials complies with the above conditions, and assume full liability for any third-party claim relating to intellectual property rights over the materials included in the article, expressly indemnifying ICONO 14, its editorial team, the publishing entity and the co-publishing institutions against any liability in this regard.
  
  In the case of audiovisual research articles and interactive multimedia research articles, given that the use of third-party materials is inherent to the format, section C (Contribution and limitations) of the research statement must include a specific declaration on the legal bases applied. See the additional requirements on the Article types page.
  
  Note: ICONO 14 does not provide legal advice on intellectual property. Authors are responsible for verifying the applicable legislation in each case. In the event of any doubt regarding the lawfulness of a specific use, they are advised to consult the legal service of their institution or a specialist professional.
• Currency of the research.
  Where research data obtained by any data collection method are presented, these must be recent; studies with data more than two years old will be rejected. This shall not apply to replication studies.
• Self-citations.
  Self-citations shall not exceed 2.
• Currency of references and citations.
  Cited references must demonstrate a knowledge of the essential theoretical bases and key works on the subject matter in the theoretical framework, but, especially in empirical studies, the state of the art and the discussion must take into account the most recent works (last 5 years as a reference).
• Author contributions.
  All authors signing the article must have made a substantive contribution to the research in accordance with the criterion established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), considering that:

  Each author is expected to have made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data; or the creation of new software used in the work; or to have drafted the work or substantively revised it. Additionally, to have approved the submitted version (and any substantially modified version that involves the author's contribution to the study). Also, to agree to be personally accountable for the author's own contributions and to ensure that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work, even those in which the author was not personally involved, were appropriately investigated, resolved, and the resolution documented in the literature.

  Accordingly, authorship shall correspond to one or more of the roles defined by the CRediT project of CASRAI.
  
  The order of authorship shall follow the SDC approach (Sequence Determines Credit), whereby the first author is the one who has made the most significant contributions to the research, and the remaining authors appear successively to the right indicating decreasing contributions.
• Time between publications and submissions.
  An author who has published in ICONO 14, regardless of their position in the author list, may not publish again until at least two new volumes have been published after the volume in which they published. For example, if they published in the 2023 volume, they may not publish again until the 2026 volume. Manuscripts received in shorter intervals will not be sent for review.
  No more than one manuscript may be submitted simultaneously for review, even if to different Thematic Sections.
• Submission language and translation.
  Submissions must be made in one of the following accepted languages: Spanish, English or Portuguese.
  
  If an article submitted in Spanish or Portuguese is accepted for publication, once the final revision of the original text in the submitted language has been completed, the authors must submit a translated version in English. If the article is submitted in English, once the final revision of the original text in the submitted language has been completed, the authors must submit a translated version in Spanish or Portuguese. 
  To ensure translation quality, in accordance with internationally required standards, the translation must be signed by a translator or company holding ISO 17100, ISO 9001:2015 certification or an equivalent accreditation. 
  For such equivalent accreditation to be valid, a document must be attached certifying the translator's recent work, which must be linked to the scientific field. If this requirement is not evidenced, the article will remain pending publication. This requirement shall not apply where the authors are native speakers of the target language.
  Although ICONO 14 does not carry out or manage translations, the following translation companies are listed by way of example, as they hold such certification and may be helpful to authors: AGESTRAD, Tridiom, Start, Trágora.
  Authors will have 15 days to deliver the translation once final acceptance of the text has been notified.
• Author information.
  All authors must complete their profile in full in the journal's three languages, including as a minimum:
  Current affiliation information (linked to the institution where the research was carried out) following the format: Full institution name (Acronym), for example: Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM)
  ORCID identifier, in full URL format, for example: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1102-3144
  Biographical summary of approximately 100 words, following the recommended format: Full affiliation [position, research group name (where applicable), or department (where applicable), centre or institute (full name and acronym, if applicable), parent institution, postal address, city, and country. Contact email]. Main research line(s). Notable project and publication references.
  Where affiliated to an institution, the email provided in the profile must be the institutional one.
• Article metadata.
  
  • All article metadata must be completed in the corresponding submission section, in the journal's three languages (Spanish, English and Portuguese) following the guidelines established in the publication standards.
  • It is very important to complete this information correctly during the submission phase, as otherwise the article will be returned and a new submission will be required.
  • If the research is funded by a supporting agency or private entity, the full reference must be provided (Project title, Funding body/ies, Programme or call, Reference) in the "Supporting agencies" metadata section.
  • Likewise, for research funded by an EU project with an OpenAIRE ProjectID or forming part of Crossref's Funding Data initiative, the reference must be included in the metadata section provided for this purpose, using the agency search tool that integrates the updated information from Funder Registry. If the research was self-funded, this metadata section must state "self-funded".

In accordance with the journal's Policies, ICONO 14 adopts the TOP Guidelines and the FAIR Principles.

Minimum submission requirements

• Deposit in open repositories. Data, code, instruments and supplementary materials must be deposited before/during submission in open repositories that assign persistent identifiers (e.g. DOI). Examples: Zenodo, BURJC Digital, Figshare, Harvard Dataverse, OSF, QDR.
• Mandatory "Data availability" section. Include a section in the manuscript with persistent links to all deposited resources. If the article is accepted, this section will be published as submitted.
• Formal citation. Cite datasets, software and materials in the text and in the reference list with their stable DOI/URL.
• Clear licensing. Recommended: CC BY/CC0 for data and materials; MIT/GPL/BSD for software, unless specific restrictions apply.

Justified restrictions and embargoed deposit

The deposit of data and materials is always mandatory, even where access restrictions exist. If legal, ethical or contractual limitations prevent immediate open access, materials must be deposited under embargo in the chosen repository. In such cases:

• The persistent link (DOI/URL) to the repository must be provided at the time of submission.
• The "Data availability" section of the manuscript must state the duration of the embargo and the expected release date.
• The deposit must include sufficient metadata and documentation even during the embargo period.
• The recommended repositories (Zenodo, BURJC Digital, Figshare, Harvard Dataverse, OSF, QDR) support configurable embargoes.

Code, analysis and materials

• Share code and analysis notebooks (e.g. R/Python notebooks) with README, software version and dependencies.
• Include instruments (surveys, scripts, protocols), variable dictionaries and analysis plan where applicable (pre-registration or analytical plan).

Quick templates for authors

• Open access: "The dataset, code and materials supporting this study are available at [Repository], DOI/URL: [link]."
• Multiple resources: "The underlying resources are deposited at [Repository] with identifiers: [DOI1, DOI2, …]."
• Embargoed access: "The data and materials supporting this study are deposited at [Repository], DOI/URL: [link], under embargo until [date]. Access will be available from that date. Until then, reasonable requests may be directed to the corresponding author [name/email]."

TOP and FAIR compliance

• Review the full policy at Policies and check your TOP compliance level.
• Use FAIR-Aware to verify the quality of metadata, licences and reusability.