This journal considers that an author of a published work is a person who has contributed significantly intellectually to it. Following the guidelines of the Comittee on Publication Ethics (COPE), to appear as an author the following requirements must be met:

1. Have participated in the conception and design, or in the acquisition of the data, or in the analysis and interpretation of the data of the work that has resulted in the article.

2. Have participated in the writing or critical review of the text.

3. Have approved the version that will finally be published.

To specify the contribution or contribution of each author to the work, it is recommended to use the criteria established by the taxonomy CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy):

• Conceptualization – Ideas; formulation or evolution of the general objectives and goals of the research.

• Data curation; management activities to annotate (produce metadata), cleanse data, and maintain research data (including software code, where necessary to interpret the data itself) for initial use and subsequent reuse.

• Formal analysis; application of statistical, mathematical, computational or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data.

• Acquisition of funds; acquisition of financial support for the project leading to this publication.

• Investigation; conducting an investigation and research process, specifically conducting experiments, or collecting data/evidence.

• Methodology; development or design of the methodology; model creation.

• Project management; responsibility for management and coordination of the planning and execution of the research activity.

• Resources; provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources or other analytical tools.

• Software; programming, software development; computer program design; implementation of computer code and supporting algorithms; Test existing code components.

• Supervision; Supervisory and leadership responsibility in the planning and execution of research activities, including external mentoring to the core team.

• Validation; verification, either as part of the activity or separately, of the overall replicability/reproduction of the results/experiments and other research products.

• Visualization; Preparation, creation and/or presentation of published work, specifically the visualization/presentation of data.

• Writing – original draft; preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically the writing of the initial draft (including substantive translation).

• Writing – review and editing; preparation, creation and/or presentation of published work by members of the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision – including pre- or post-publication stages.

The contribution of each of the authors will be recorded in the document "INFORMATIVE DATA" at the time of sending the manuscript. See Information for authors

The opinions and facts stated in each article are the exclusive responsibility of its authors, as well as the ethical suitability of the article. Furthermore, they must make explicit that the text is their authorship and that the intellectual property rights of third parties are respected. It is also your responsibility to ensure that you have authorization to use, reproduce and print material that is not your property/authorship (charts, graphs, maps, diagrams, photographs, etc.). The authors, when submitting an article, accept that it is original and that it has not been sent for consideration, nor has it been published in any other journal. All of this will be recorded in the document "SIMPLE SWORN DECLARATION" at the time of sending the manuscript. See Information for authors

To eliminate name confusion and ensure proper attribution of publications and citations correctly, this journal requires the ORCID ID for all authorships. Although it cannot guarantee a secure identity on its own, the adoption of ORCID is one more control against author identity fraud.

The most easily identifiable conflicts of interest are economic relationships such as direct employment, payment for consultancies, participation in companies, fees, authorship of patents or payments for conferences. However, there may also be conflicts of interest arising from friendships, intellectual rivalries, academic competitions or beliefs. When submitting an article for publication, all authors are responsible for declaring any financial or personal relationship with any public or private entity that could (intentionally) influence the results of their work. Likewise, authors must declare any non-financial relationship that could cause a conflict of interest in their manuscript (personal, academic, ideological, intellectual, political or religious).

Conflicts of interest, both financial and non-financial, must be communicated at the time of article submission. The idea is not to prevent authors who have potential conflicts of interest from publishing; The point is that such conflicts can be clearly identified, so that readers can judge whether the authors could be affected by any predisposition and this could influence the work.

At the end of the published article a note called 'Conflict of interest' will be included. In case of absence, the note will indicate 'The authors of the article declare that they have no conflict of interest in its preparation'.

Commitment to the editorial process and withdrawal of the manuscript

Commitment to remain in the editorial process. By submitting a manuscript for evaluation in Apuntes de Bioética, authors make a formal commitment to maintain the manuscript throughout the editorial process, except for duly justified reasons. Voluntary withdrawal of the manuscript after peer review has begun—and especially after receiving a favorable publication decision—will be considered a practice contrary to editorial ethics.

Procedures for unjustified withdrawals. If an author decides to withdraw a manuscript without valid justification during the review process or after a favorable decision: