Ethics in SciELO Preprints

version 26 jan 2026

As an open science program, SciELO has ethics as a guiding principle. In SciELO Preprints, we are working under the guidelines listed below.

First and foremost, all submitting authors must be aware and comply with the following conditions:

  • Documents submitted to SciELO Preprints must be of scientific nature;
  • Research that has human or animal subjects must have approval from the institution’s Ethics Committee;
  • Authors must declare data availability both in submission metadata and PDF file;
  • All authors must declare contribution using either the CRediT taxonomy or ICMJE recommendations both in submission metadata and PDF file;
  • All authors must have an ORCID profile listed in the PDF file.

We’ll also soon be asking authors to declare AI usage.
No submission gets accepted for posting without any level of triage. Preprints submitted to SciELO Preprints go through up to three levels of quality control.

  1. Compliance with norms regarding authorship, approval by an ethics committee, when necessary, and the structure of the document.
  2. Verification on whether it is an original research with authors with academic background for automatic approval.
  3. Moderation done by a SciELO journal editor, who evaluates if the manuscript is acceptable for peer review of a typical SciELO journal in the area of the manuscript.

Preprints posted in SciELO Preprints may also be reported to SciELO Ethics in case of suspected violation and will be investigated by the committee, with the possibility of requiring an erratum, a partial or full retraction.
With this, the development of ethics guidelines exclusive for preprints by COPE would be greatly appreciated as a means for us to further develop and refine our guidelines.