Ethical Code

The Technical Tax Journal of the Spanish Association of Tax Advisors (AEDAF) commits to maintaining high ethical standards through its code of ethics. Therefore, all parties involved in the creation, submission, management, and dissemination of works or manuscripts, whether research or articles for the journal, including authors, technical team members (editorial board and technical team), reviewers, and the editorial board, must comply with the standards established in this code of ethics to ensure the integrity and quality of the publication.

**Editorial**

The editorial team, Spanish Association of Tax Advisors (AEDAF), provides assistance and technical support to the journal's management, ensuring the proper use of the web platform and maintaining the software up-to-date. It facilitates the submission, evaluation, and publication process of works. Additionally, through the journal's management and technical team, it collaborates in the indexing of the journal and in providing information that contributes to improving its positioning in recognized rankings, increasing the editorial quality, visibility, internationalization, and impact of the journal.

**Editorial Board and Technical Team**

The editorial board and technical team are committed to making decisions about the content of each issue, ensuring to follow principles of integrity, impartiality, and transparency in all stages of the editorial process, in line with the Good Practices Guide of Editorial CSIC.
They will also ensure originality. They are responsible for selecting articles for publication based on the journal's policies and guidelines, respecting legal requirements on plagiarism, privacy, and copyright. They may rely on the advisory scientific board for informed decisions.
The editorial board and technical team evaluate submitted articles according to the editorial line's parameters and must protect the authors' freedom of expression, selecting qualified reviewers to ensure critical, expert, and objective evaluations. They must maintain the confidentiality of the originals, authors, and reviewers throughout the process without discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, religious belief, political affiliation, or disability of the authors. They may reject articles that do not meet formal requirements or address topics outside their scope, communicating their decision within established deadlines.
Confidentiality of received information is guaranteed, and the intellectual property of the authors is respected, following the ethical standards established in the mentioned guide.
The editorial board and technical team commit to promoting diversity of approaches and perspectives in the selection of content, in compliance with the quality standards of the Good Practices Guide of Editorial CSIC.
Quality and continuous improvement in the editorial process are encouraged by applying the evaluation and review criteria of the mentioned guide.
They must avoid conflicts of interest and act rigorously to prevent them. No editor will obtain personal, economic, or material benefits from their participation and must disclose any relationship that may bias their work, recusing themselves when necessary.
In case of significant errors in published articles or suspicions of plagiarism, data fabrication, duplicate publication, or undisclosed conflicts of interest, the editors will review and make decisions according to the guidelines of the Good Practices Guide of Editorial CSIC related to the retraction of published articles to correct the already published scientific production, ensuring its integrity.

**Authors**

Authors must ensure that submitted works are original, do not infringe copyright laws, and comply with the ethical and academic standards established in the Good Practices Guide of Editorial CSIC.
They must guarantee the inclusion of all individuals who have significantly contributed to the work. They must attach a written statement documenting the informed consent obtained from participants in the study, which should be retained by the author. Authors must declare any conflict of interest and all sources of financial support.
Authors are required to adequately cite the sources used, avoid all forms of plagiarism, and respect the intellectual property rights of third parties, as established in the mentioned guide. They must avoid excessive self-citation and citing sources that have not been consulted.
Authors are responsible for providing truthful and accurate information in their works, revealing any conflict of interest that may influence the study's results or conclusions, in accordance with the good practices guide. Articles must accurately describe the research conducted and provide supporting data. Authors should retain raw data and ensure that conclusions consider gender differences where appropriate.
Authors should not submit previously published articles or articles under review elsewhere.
Authors must notify the editorial board and technical team of any significant error in published articles for correction.
The author guidelines for publication (topics, submission of originals, etc.) of works in the journal, as well as the publication process, will be public. Authors are encouraged to follow the journal's presentation and style guidelines, in accordance with the standards of the Good Practices Guide of Editorial CSIC.
Given that this journal is under a 12-month embargo period, once this period has passed, the works will be licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International. Authors, as appropriate, will transfer the copyright and publication rights of their article to the journal through this system, signing a copyright transfer agreement available on the publication's website.

**Reviewers**

The Technical Tax Journal applies a peer review process. The journal's management and the editorial board and technical team make initial decisions on the quality and relevance of the articles and request evaluations from two subject matter experts through the "double-blind" system. If the reports are diverse, a third reviewer will be requested to act as an arbitrator. The editorial board and technical team will send the reports to the authors to improve the document's quality.
Reviewers have the necessary training and experience to critically evaluate the articles submitted to the journal, following the evaluation guidelines established in the Good Practices Guide of Editorial CSIC.
Articles are rigorously and objectively evaluated by experts in the tax field, following the quality and relevance criteria established in the Good Practices Guide of Editorial CSIC.
Reviewers must maintain the confidentiality of the information received during the review process and issue impartial judgments based on the content and quality of the work, following the mentioned guide.
Reviewers are expected to provide detailed and constructive comments that contribute to improving the scientific quality and rigor of the evaluated articles, in line with the Good Practices Guide of Editorial CSIC.
Reviewers must respect the deadlines indicated by the editorial board and technical team in their evaluation process.
They will decline to review an article when they may have a conflict of interest that would compromise their objectivity.
Articles or works should be evaluated based on their intellectual content, regardless of racial, gender, sexual orientation, religious, ethnic, nationality, or political bias.
The final decision on the acceptance or rejection of an article is based on objective criteria and the quality of the work, thus ensuring the journal's excellence and integrity, according to the guidelines of the Good Practices Guide of Editorial CSIC.

If there are indications of non-compliance with any of the above ethical standards, they may be communicated to the management or technical team at rtt@aedaf.es.

If the editorial board and technical team violate any of the standards of this code of ethics, they will be reported to the journal's management.

If an author violates this code of ethics, the management of the Technical Tax Journal may impose the withdrawal of the submitted article for publication, its rejection, or, if applicable, retract an already published article.

If any conduct of the participants in the editorial process results in the intrusion and violation of the rights of third parties or their own, the Spanish Association of Tax Advisors (AEDAF) reserves the right to take and exercise the corresponding legal actions.

**NOTE**: This code of ethics for the Technical Tax Journal of the Spanish Association of Tax Advisors (AEDAF) has been based on the Good Practices Guide for Scientific-Academic Publishing. The publication of journals and books at Editorial CSIC.

Additionally, it also acknowledges and accepts the ethical standards established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (Code of Conduct and Best Practices Guidelines for Journal Editors, COPE) and will ensure that all parties involved in the editorial process are aware of them.

They can be consulted at the following links:
[Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)](https://publicationethics.org)
[Code of conduct and best practice guidelines for journal editors](https://publicationethics.org/files/Code%20of%20Conduct_2.pdf)