Editorial Policies
Editorial Process and Peer Review System
RICIT submits all manuscripts to a double-blind peer review process: neither does the author knows the identity of the reviewers, nor does the reviewers know the identity of the author. This confidentiality is maintained throughout the entire editorial process.
All peer reviewers invited by RICIT are external to the Universidad de Especialidades Turísticas (UDET) and are not members of the journal's editorial team. Their selection considers their proven research experience in the manuscript's subject area, the absence of conflicts of interest with the authors, and their independence from the internal editorial team. The final editorial decision on the publication of each manuscript rests with the Editor-in-Chief, who will make it consider the reviewers' reports and the Editorial Committee's criteria.
Process Phases
The process comprises four phases. The estimated total time, without delays, is approximately three months.
Phase 1 – Reception and preliminary editorial review. Upon receipt of the manuscript in OJS, the corresponding author is notified. The Editor-in-Chief verifies compliance with formatting standards and thematic relevance (approximately two weeks). Section editors assess whether the content meets the minimum conditions to advance to external peer review (approximately two weeks). Manuscripts that do not pass this phase are returned with an explanation of the reasons.
Phase 2 – External peer review. The manuscript is sent to two external peer reviewers with a two-week deadline. Once the reports are received, the author is notified within a maximum of three business days. The author has two weeks to submit the revised version; if the depth of the revisions warrants it, an extension may be requested before the deadline.
If one or both reviewers decline the review, an alternative reviewer is assigned (estimated additional delay: two weeks). When reports are contradictory or insufficient, a third deciding reviewer is appointed (estimated additional delay: two weeks). In cases where reports diverge, the Editor-in-Chief analyses both reports and makes the final decision with appropriate justification.
Phase 3 – Academic validation and style editing. The Academic Editor verifies that the corrections have been satisfactorily addressed (approximately one week), and the editorial team reviews the text for linguistic and scientific style (approximately two weeks).
Phase 4 – Production and publication. Proof copies are sent to the author for review and approval within five business days. Once approved, the corresponding author signs and submits the Copyright Transfer Agreement. Finally, the article is typeset and published on the OJS platform.
Possible Reviewer Decisions
Reviewers may issue one of the following decisions: accept without changes; accept with minor revisions; revise and resubmit (major revision, with a new round of peer review); or reject. Rejection of a manuscript does not allow resubmission of the same work.
Instructions for Peer Reviewers
Upon accepting the invitation, the reviewer commits to submitting their report within a maximum of two weeks. If this is not possible, the editorial team must be notified in advance. The evaluation report should include: (a) general comments on the manuscript as a whole; (b) specific observations by section, with reference to the corresponding page and paragraph. Suggestions should be constructive and aimed at improving the work; criticism should be directed at the content, not at the author.
Reviewers must declare any conflict of interest before accepting the evaluation and must refrain from participating when there is a personal, institutional, or financial relationship with any of the authors. The manuscript's information is strictly confidential and may not be used for personal purposes. If during the review there are signs of plagiarism, fabricated data, or any ethical irregularity, the reviewer must immediately notify the Editor-in-Chief.
Open Access Policy
RICIT is an open-access journal. All its contents are available free of charge and immediately to any reader, without the need for subscription or prior registration, through the OJS platform.
This journal does not charge any fees to authors: there are no submission fees, no article processing charges (APC), no accelerated review fees, nor any other charges related to publication. Access to published content is also completely free for readers. The journal does not plan to establish any charges of any kind in the future.
Authors retain their moral rights over their work and grant the journal a non-exclusive publishing license. They may deposit their articles in institutional or personal repositories (self-archiving), both as preprints and as published versions, always citing RICIT as the source of publication.
License
All articles published in RICIT are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence, which allows sharing and adapting the material under the following terms:
- Attribution: appropriate credit must be given to the original author(s), the source indicated, and a link to the licence provided.
- Noncommercial: the material may not be used for commercial purposes without the express authorization of the author(s).
- Share Alike: if the material is remixed or transformed, the derivative works must be distributed under the same CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence.
For enquiries about special uses or exceptions to the licence, write to: ricit@udet.edu.ec
Editorial Ethics Code
RICIT's ethical policies are based on the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the principles of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), where applicable.
For the Editorial Team
The Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Committee are responsible for the final decision on the publication of all manuscripts received. The evaluation of manuscripts will be based solely on their intellectual merit, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnic origin, nationality, or political affiliation of the authors.
The editorial team will maintain absolute confidentiality about submitted manuscripts and will not reveal information about them to anyone outside the editorial process. Under no circumstances will the content of unpublished manuscripts be used for personal purposes without the written consent of the author(s). The Editor-in-Chief will act promptly on any complaint of scientific or editorial misconduct, following COPE protocols.
For Authors
Contributions submitted to RICIT must be original and unpublished. Works submitted to the journal may not be simultaneously submitted for evaluation to another scientific publication; this is a reprehensible practice in the context of the dissemination of specialized scholarship.
Authors are responsible for the accuracy of the data, statements, and references contained in the manuscript. Authorship must reflect substantial intellectual contributions; participation exclusively in obtaining funding, data collection, or general supervision of the research group does not justify authorship. Upon submitting a contribution, authors are required to explicitly declare the absence of conflicts of interest and to mention the funding sources of their research.
When authors detect a significant error in a published work, they are obliged to notify the Editor-in-Chief and will initiate the correction or retraction process.
Regarding the number of authors, research articles, case studies, and methodological articles admit a maximum of four (4) authors. Reviews and essays admit a single author. In all cases, each listed author must have participated in the work to a sufficient degree to take public responsibility for its content.
Contributions containing manifestly racist, sexist, or any other content that violates the fundamental rights of persons will not be accepted.
The following conduct constitutes serious ethical violations and will be handled in accordance with COPE protocols, potentially resulting in rejection of the manuscript, retraction, notification to the authors' institutions or disqualification from future submissions: total or partial plagiarism (including self-plagiarism), fabrication or manipulation of data, fraudulent authorship (gift, ghost or honorary authorship), simultaneous submission to multiple journals, failure to declare relevant conflicts of interest, and falsification of affiliations or academic credentials.
For Peer Reviewers
By accepting the invitation to review, peer reviewers commit to producing a rigorous, objective, and constructive assessment of the manuscript within the established deadline. Criticism will be directed at work, not at the person(s).
Reviewers will treat manuscripts with absolute confidentiality and will not use their content for personal purposes. They will declare any conflict of interest before accepting the evaluation and will refrain from participating when there is a personal or professional relationship with any of the authors. Reviewers will identify relevant published works not cited by the authors and will notify the Editor-in-Chief of any indication of plagiarism or misconduct.
Artificial Intelligence Use Policy
In line with the Declaración de Heredia (2023) and COPE guidelines on artificial intelligence in scientific publications, RICIT establishes the following policy:
Authors who have used generative AI tools (ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude, or others) in the drafting, translation, analysis, or revision of the manuscript must explicitly declare this in the Methodology section or in the Acknowledgements, indicating the tool used and its specific purpose. AI tools cannot be listed as authors or co-authors, as authorship implies intellectual and public responsibility for the content, a condition that automated systems cannot fulfil.
Authors are responsible for verifying the accuracy, originality, and integrity of all content generated with AI assistance, including data, citations, and bibliographic references. The use of AI to generate data, results, or substantial analytical sections without explicit declaration constitutes a serious ethical violation and may lead to rejection or retraction of the manuscript.
Anti-Plagiarism Policy
RICIT applies a systematic similarity detection protocol to all manuscripts received. Detection takes place in Phase 1 of the editorial process, before submission to peer review. No manuscript will advance to external evaluation without having passed this filter.
The journal uses Plagiarisma as its primary detection tool. The criteria for action are as follows:
- Similarity index up to 10%: the manuscript advances normally to the evaluation process.
- Similarity index between 11% and 30%: the Editor-in-Chief analyses the source of the matches. If they correspond to correctly attributed citations or other justifiable elements, the manuscript may advance with observations to the author.
- Similarity index above 30%: the manuscript is rejected, and the author is notified with the similarity report. The incident is recorded.
These percentages are indicative. The final decision on whether a similarity constitutes plagiarism always rests with the Editor-in-Chief, who will consider the context and the correct attribution of sources. If plagiarism is detected in an already published article, the retraction protocol will be activated.
Policy on Corrections, Errata, and Retractions
RICIT is committed to maintaining the integrity of the published scientific record, applying COPE guidelines on corrections and retractions.
Errata
An erratum will be published when a minor error is detected in a published article — for example, typographical or formatting errors — that do not affect the conclusions or integrity of the work. The error will be corrected in the original article on the OJS platform with an indication of the date of correction.
Corrections
A correction will be published when an error made by the authors or the editorial team affects the understanding or reproducibility of the work but does not invalidate its main conclusions. The correction will be published, linked to the original article, with a clear indication of what was corrected, why, and on what date.
Retractions
A published article will be retracted when significant plagiarism or data fabrication is confirmed, when results have been previously published in another journal without disclosure, when the authors are not legitimate, or when serious errors invalidate the main conclusions of the work.
The retracted article will remain accessible on the OJS platform with a clearly visible retraction notice, together with the formal retraction document explaining the reasons. Articles will not be deleted from the record.
The procedure is as follows: the Editor-in-Chief receives the notification, opens an internal investigation with a 30-day deadline, notifies the authors and their institution if the cause is confirmed, publishes the notice on OJS, and notifies the relevant indexing services.
Copyright and Self-Archiving
Authors retain their moral rights over their work under the terms established by Ecuadorian legislation (Ley Orgánica de Cultura, 2016) and applicable international regulations. By signing the Copyright Transfer Agreement, authors grant RICIT and the Universidad de Especialidades Turísticas a non-exclusive licence to publish the article, distribute it under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence, maintain it in digital repositories, and include its metadata in indexing services.
RICIT allows and encourages self-archiving by authors in institutional or subject repositories, both as preprints and as published versions (editorial version), always citing the source and under the terms of the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence.
Digital Preservation Policy
The long-term preservation of content published in RICIT is an institutional responsibility of the Universidad de Especialidades Turísticas. The policy aims to guarantee integrity, authenticity, accessibility, and continuous availability of published articles.
The journal uses the PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN), a preservation network developed by Public Knowledge Project that distributes copies of content across multiple archival nodes through the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Safe) program, guaranteeing decentralized preservation and permanent access to content.
Additionally, the UDET Systems Department performs weekly backups of the OJS platform, including the database, content files, and system configuration. Articles are preserved in multiple formats: PDF, HTML, and EPUB. Original editable files are kept by the Editor-in-Chief in secure institutional storage.
Responsibility for digital preservation rests jointly with the Editor-in-Chief and the UDET Systems Department. The Editorial Committee will annually review this policy.
Editorial Openness
At least two-thirds of the members of RICIT's collegiate editorial bodies belong to institutions other than the Universidad de Especialidades Turísticas (UDET). The composition of the Scientific Committee and the group of Co-editors is international, with representatives from universities in Argentina, Spain, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, and Ecuador external to UDET, which guarantees the scientific independence of the journal from the publishing institution.
The updated list of editorial team members, with their full institutional affiliations (institution, city, country) and ORCID identifiers, is available in the Editorial Team section of the journal's website.
Indexing and Information Services
RICIT is included in the following selective indexing services, directories, and databases:
- DOAJ – Directory of Open Access Journals
- Latindex – Catálogo 2.0
- Dialnet – Portal de difusión de la producción científica hispana
- ERIH PLUS – European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences
- LatinRev – Red Latinoamericana de Revistas de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales
- Latinoamericana – Asociación de Revistas Académicas de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales
- LIVRE – Portal de Revista Latinoamericanas
The journal only declares verified and active indexings. If at any time an index is withdrawn or not renewed, this list will be updated within no more than 30 days.
Frequency of Publication
RICIT is an annual journal. It publishes one issue per year on 10 December, covering January–December of the corresponding year. For example: No. 20, January–December 2026.
Compliance with the declared frequency is an institutional commitment of UDET. Should exceptional circumstances prevent publication on the scheduled date, authors and indexing services will be notified at the right time.
Interoperability and Access Formats
The journal implements the OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative – Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) protocol for the exchange of metadata with other systems. Metadata are encoded in the Dublin Core 1.0 standard. The OAI-PMH access address is: publicaciones.udet.online/index.php/ricit/oai
Each article is simultaneously published in three formats: PDF (reference version for citation and download), HTML (online reading version with hypertext), and EPUB (version for mobile devices). Each article includes complete metadata on its OJS page: title, authors with affiliation, abstract, keywords, dates of receipt and acceptance, and bibliographic references.
Statistics and Value-Added Services
RICIT provides download and view statistics per article, available on each article's OJS page. Additionally, it publishes an annual statistical summary with information on manuscripts received, evaluated, accepted, and rejected, average evaluation time, and geographical distribution of authors.
Each article includes on its OJS page a citation reference in APA 7th edition format. RSS and Atom feeds are available for readers and systems to subscribe to the journal's news. RICIT maintains an active presence on its own social media profiles, linked from the journal's main website.
