About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Persona y Bioética is a scientific journal focused predominantly on circulating the results of academic research, teaching and social outreach through articles, essays, reports and other works that are oriented towards the search for truth and emphasize respect for the supreme dignity of man, unconditional protection and promotion of human life in all its dimensions, and a commitment to future generations.  The journal’s efforts in this respect are consistent with the principles of the Department of Bioethics at the Universidad de La Sabana School of Medicine.

Persona y Bioética encourages the development of knowledge and the very foundations of bioethics by lending its own particular perspective to consideration of the critical issues that arise out of scientific and technological progress. Based on interdisciplinary studies, it prioritizes finding solutions to the problems that infringe most on the defense of life and human dignity. In doing so, it places special emphasis on the philosophical aspects of human life; on the different situations that create ethical problems in clinical practice; on technical, scientific and technological innovations; on bio-legal questions; on the relationship between bioethics and society, on caring for the environment; and on analyzing the issues contained in universal declarations related to bioethics.

Persona and Bioethics has been published since July 1997. It is an interdisciplinary medical-health journal dedicated to the health sciences and biotechnology in health, specifically the biomedical sciences, ethics and biomedical ethics.

Persona y Bioética is for readers who are interested in bioethical issues and, particularly, for researchers. It provides them with informed and qualified opinions on the meaning of their work and the ethical care it demands. Through its philosophy and reasoning, the journal also endeavors to strengthen the work of bioethical committees and to be a teaching resource.

Persona y Bioética is recognized as a highly qualified medium for information and consultation, thanks to its scientific validity and standing in the field of bioethics in Latin America.

Peer Review Process

Contributed articles are reviewed by the Editorial Committee, which verifies compliance with all the criteria specified in these instructions. The author(s) will be informed if any of these requirements are not met.

After being reviewed by the Editorial Committee, the article is sent to at least two peer experts who will evaluate its scientific and academic merit. The identity of the author is not disclosed to the peer reviewers, nor does the author know the identity of the peer reviewers. Once these outside academic peers have submitted their comments on the article, a decision is made either to accept it with modifications, to accept it as submitted initially, or to reject it.

All contributed articles are evaluated pursuant to the international ethical standards for scientific research adopted at the Second World Conference on Research Integrity held in Singapore on July 22 -24, 2010.

The journal notifies the author within 60 days. Once an article has been accepted for publication and the necessary changes or clarifications have been made, it is sent for proofreading.  The author’s particular style is respected in the proofreading process, which addresses form, not content.

Publication Frequency

Biannual publication January and July

Open Access Policy

This journal offers free and immediate access to its contents based on the principle that making research available to the public without charge supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Declaration of Originality

Authors must complete and sign the declaration of originality, which must be added to the submission files as a PDF file. The signature can be an image of your signature or, if you have an electronic signature, that is also valid.

Sponsors

Content Permanence

CrossMark Policies

What is CrossMark?

It is a Crossref initiative identified with the brand’s flagship icon:

This method guarantees that the reader is accessing the current version of a publication, as long as it displays the CrossMark logo. Click on the logo to access the version history and find information regarding minor or major changes to the published versions. It is also linked to the DOI, ensuring the stability and permanence of updates over time.

In this journal, we upload the PDFs available to the public in two instances:

  1. when the editorial process ends, with the approval of the author and editorial team,
  2. when the last modifications are made to that PDF as a result of a design review for printing purposes.

Adding the CrossMark icon commits our journal to and makes it responsible for notifying and updating readers about any change in an article.

What kind of changes and updates are part of the CrossMark version history?

  • Addendum: Secondary documents that provide additional information about what has been published. It mainly presents other results. The content added will be specified.
  • Correction: New versions with minor changes that do not affect the meaning of the paper, such as typos or otherwise. Any version update due to this type of modification will be informed.
  • Duplicate: If a paper is already published in another medium or republished either due to technical errors or operational accidents, it will be clarified publicly. The appropriate files will be modified and updated in the CrossMark versions.
  • Erratum: Articles for which, after digital or physical publication, significant errors in the writing, images, tables, graphs, references, or otherwise are reported in the available version. The erratum will be specifically mentioned and corrected for the new version.
  • Rectification (corrigendum): When the author of the published article reports errata, the rectification and appropriate corrections will be explained.
  • Elimination: At the relevant authorized party’s request, all available content will be eliminated. Only the article’s citation information and an explanation will be included on the article page and the different means of accessing the content.
  • Retraction: At the relevant authorized party’s request, a statement of the retraction and, where applicable, the party’s note about the retraction will be posted on all the means of access to the article provided by the journal. The stipulated texts and the note will be retained on the article data page. The title will change to “Retraction: <article title>” and the PDF will have a watermark on all pages where the retraction is announced. The same applies to other versions in the reading formats that the journal may have (HTML, XML, ePub, etc.). For further information on the COPE policies we follow, click here.

Sources of funding

The journal is financed entirely by the Universidad de La Sabana.

It does not receive advertising, nor does it have a subscription modality.

Author Contribution Statement according to CRediT

CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) aims to recognize each author’s individual contribution to a submitted manuscript. This practice seeks to prevent authorship disputes that may arise during the editorial process with the journal.

Additionally, it avoids the addition of any author who was not previously listed, since the journal will understand that this statement reflects the full list of authors who participated in the preparation of the manuscript.

Through CRediT, authors provide a detailed description of their specific contributions to the manuscript being published, offering transparency to the journal’s editorial team.

Who is responsible for submitting this information?
In the Open Journal Systems (OJS), the author who created the submission account is considered the corresponding author (CA). The CA is responsible for submitting all final information in a PDF file along with the rest of the submission materials.

Which categories are recognized by CRediT?
There are fourteen (14) categories, and each author may be credited with one or more:

  1. Conceptualization: ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims.
  2. Methodology: development or design of methodology; creation of models.
  3. Software: programming, software development; designing programs; implementing code and algorithms; testing code components.
  4. Validation: verification, whether as part of the activity or independently, of the reproducibility/replicability of results, experiments, or other research outputs.
  5. Formal analysis: application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data.
  6. Investigation: conducting the research process, including experiments or data/evidence collection.
  7. Resources: provision of study materials, reagents, patients, lab samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other tools.
  8. Data curation: annotation, cleaning, and maintenance of research data (including software code) for initial and future reuse.
  9. Writing – Original draft: preparation, creation, and/or presentation of the initial draft of the published work (including substantive translation).
  10. Writing – Review & editing: critical review, commentary, or revision of the published work at any stage.
  11. Visualization: preparation, creation, and/or presentation of data visualizations.
  12. Supervision: leadership and oversight in the planning and execution of the research, including mentoring.
  13. Project administration: management and coordination of the research activity.
  14. Funding acquisition: acquisition of financial support for the project leading to this publication.

Example of a contribution statement:
Sergio Roncallo-Dow: investigation, methodology, writing – original draft; Nicolás Mejía-Torres: formal analysis, data curation, visualization, resources; Lilu Dallas: writing – review & editing, project administration.

Ethical Commitment and Use of Artificial Intelligence Policy

The journal upholds a strong commitment to publication ethics, academic integrity, and transparency throughout all stages of the editorial process for any type of document submitted to the scientific journals of Universidad de La Sabana. In alignment with the cases and guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), we have adopted an explicit policy on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the editorial, peer review, and scientific writing processes.

We recognize that AI tools can support tasks such as grammar checking, text analysis, information structuring, or data analysis suggestions. We promote responsible use of such tools, always grounded in the authors’ critical thinking.

The journal does not accept manuscripts in which the writing or analysis has been entirely delegated to AI systems. Furthermore, authors are required to explicitly and transparently disclose any significant use of these tools.

This commitment reflects our mission to safeguard the reliability of published knowledge and ensure that every scientific contribution meets the highest standards of quality and ethics.

Journal Policy on the Use of Artificial Intelligence

The journal publicly declares the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support specific tasks within the editorial and dissemination processes, in line with its commitment to transparency, scientific integrity, and editorial efficiency.

 

Institutional Use of AI

Our editorial team uses AI systems—including language models such as ChatGPT—to support processes such as:

  • Drafting and improving communications with authors, reviewers, and collaborators (e.g., informational messages or reminders).
  • Organizing, normalizing, and standardizing data for publication metadata (e.g., author names, affiliations, ORCID, keywords, among others).
  • Suggesting keywords in Spanish, English, and Portuguese based on disciplinary thesauri and content analysis of the article.
  • Assisting in the creation of short descriptions or promotional texts for institutional channels.
  • Producing support materials such as automated podcasts (derived from scientific articles) using AI-generated voice synthesis tools.

Transparency in Derivative Products

When the journal produces derivative content (such as podcasts, audio summaries, images, or social media posts) involving the use of generative AI, it will be explicitly stated that such content was created with the support of these technologies. This disclosure will be included on the website, in the content description, or in the corresponding promotional materials.

Limitations and Human Oversight

In all cases, AI is used as a complementary tool under the supervision and editing of members of the editorial team. No content is published or disseminated without prior human review to ensure its accuracy, relevance, and quality.

This policy is aligned with the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and will be periodically reviewed to adapt to technological developments and the needs of the academic community.

Channel of request, complaint, claim, congratulation or thank you

Although the journals have their OJS, where it is expected to have all the correspondence of the submissions, it is the responsibility of Universidad de La Sabana to provide them with an institutional space called “Communicate with us: channel of request, complaint, claim, congratulation or thanks” to contact this system of the University.