Focus and scope

The journal publishes articles related to outpatient health care. Priority is given to content related to the Latin American region, primary health care, and evidence-based practice.

Frequency of publication

The journal is published quarterly. From 2019, however, individual articles are published as they are completed and added to the table of contents of the current volume in a continuous publication mode. The first issue opens on 1 January and closes on 31 March, the second issue opens on 1 April and closes on 30 June, the third issue opens on 1 July and closes on 30 September, and the fourth issue opens on 1 October and closes on 31 December.

ISSN

1851-9776 (online)

Indexing

The journal is indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Google Scholar, Latindex, and LILACS.

Confidentiality and Responsible Use of AI Tools
The use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools by the editorial team is always subject to strict criteria of confidentiality, security, and human oversight. In all cases, the journal guarantees that:

• Complete manuscripts, sensitive data, identifying information, or unpublished content should never be submitted to generative AI platforms.
• Any content processed through AI tools is limited to brief, decontextualized, and non-identifiable excerpts, used solely for operational or linguistic purposes.
• Editorial decisions, scientific evaluations, and the handling of manuscripts are carried out entirely under the responsibility of the editorial team.
• The AI tools (such as ChatGPT or similar) are used in controlled sessions, without persistent storage or reuse of processed data.
• These practices align with the principles of editorial ethics promoted by COPE, ICMJE, and WAME, aiming to enhance the efficiency of the editorial process without compromising its integrity or the trust of authors and reviewers.

 

Editorial Policies

Evidencia adheres to the principles and guidelines established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). Both international organizations promote standards of excellence, transparency, and accountability in the editing and publication of academic work.
This dual adherence implies that all parties involved in our editorial process—authors, reviewers, editors, and members of the editorial team—are committed to upholding the highest ethical standards at every stage of scientific communication, from authorship to dissemination of results.

On this basis, the journal defines its editorial policies according to the following fundamental principles:

• Fair and transparent recognition of authorship and intellectual contributions.
  Responsible declaration and management of actual or potential conflicts of interest.
• Willingness to correct, clarify, or retract published work when errors or misconduct are identified, thereby promoting post-publication transparency.
• Commitment to transparency in the use, availability, and management of research data.
• Implementation of impartial, confidential, structured, and scientifically based peer review processes.
• Active prevention of plagiarism, duplication, and other forms of editorial misconduct.
• Respect for ethical principles in research involving humans and animals, including obtaining informed consent and approval by ethics committees.
• Responsible editorial governance, with clear and documented processes.
• Coherent and transparent editorial practices that guarantee the integrity and quality of published content.
• Promotion of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in all aspects of the editorial process.

The following sections outline the journal’s current editorial policies:

1) Access policy

Evidencia is an open access journal that makes all its content freely available on the Internet, allowing any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or use it for any legal purpose, without any financial, legal or technical barriers, other than those that are inseparable from those involved in accessing the Internet itself and the limitations of the stated license of use.

The contents of the journal are under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), with no embargo period. This implies that users can:

• Share - copy and redistribute the material in any way or format
• Adapt - remix, transform, and build from the material

Evidencia cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the terms of the license:

• Attribution - You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if any changes have been made. You may do so in any reasonable way, but not in a manner that suggests that you or your use is endorsed by the licensor.
• Non-Commercial - You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
• Share Alike - If you remix, transform, or build from the material, you must distribute your contribution under the same license as the original.

2) Article processing charges policy

Evidencia, actualización en la práctica ambulatoria does not charge authors any article processing charges (APCs).

3) Copyright policy

Authors retain copyright and grant first publication rights to Evidencia by registering the work under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 Attribution License, which allows third parties to use the published work as long as they acknowledge the authorship of the work and first publication in this journal.
Authors may make other independent and additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the version of the article published in Evidencia (e.g. publication in a book), as long as they clearly indicate that the work was first published in this journal.

4) Self-archiving policy

Evidencia, actualización en la práctica ambulatoria encourages authors to deposit their work and research data in institutional repositories, subject repositories, preprint and postprint servers, blogs, and other electronic media. Authors are also encouraged to disseminate their work through social media.

5) Authorship and contributions policy

To ensure appropriate attribution of credit and responsibility, Evidencia, actualización en la práctica ambulatoria adopts the ICMJE criteria to distinguish between authors and contributors.

Authorship criteria

To qualify as an author of a manuscript, an individual must meet all four of the following criteria:

1. Have made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data.
2. Have drafted the work or revised it critically for important intellectual content.
3. Have approved the final version to be published.
4. Have agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work and be available to address questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of it.

Acknowledgement of contributions

Individuals who made significant contributions but do not meet the four authorship criteria should not be listed as authors, but should be acknowledged, either individually or grouped under a collective heading (e.g., Clinical Investigators or Participating Researchers), with their permission.

Contribution statement and corresponding author

The corresponding author is a member of the author group designated to maintain communication with the journal throughout the editorial process (submission, review, editing, and publication). This person ensures that all authors meet authorship criteria, approve the final version, and are kept informed about the status of the article. The corresponding author must identify each author and contributor at the time of submission, detail individual responsibilities, and ensure all authors receive copies of editorial correspondence.

Any request to modify authorship after submission or publication must be accompanied by a written statement from all involved authors justifying the change.

The journal also recommends the use of the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) to provide a standardized description of each author’s specific contributions, thereby promoting transparency and clarity in the attribution of responsibilities.

6) Data privacy policy

The names and email addresses provided to this journal will be used exclusively for its stated purposes and will not be made available to third parties or used for any other purposes.

7) Conflict of interest policy

Evidencia, actualización en la práctica ambulatoria promotes transparency and integrity throughout the editorial process. Authors, reviewers, and editors are required to declare explicitly any actual, potential, or perceived conflicts of interest that could influence—or appear to influence—the preparation, evaluation, or publication of a manuscript.

What is considered a conflict of interest? A conflict of interest exists in a manuscript when a participant in its preparation, review, or publication—author, reviewer, or editor—has ties to activities that may inappropriately influence their judgment, regardless of whether or not such judgment was actually affected. The most common conflict of interest involves financial relationships with pharmaceutical companies (e.g., through employment, consultancy, stock ownership, honoraria, expert testimony), either directly or via immediate family members. However, conflicts may also arise from personal relationships, academic rivalry, or intellectual passion.

Author’s declaration

All authors must complete a conflict of interest statement at the time of manuscript submission. If no conflicts exist, a statement such as “The authors declare no conflicts of interest relevant to this work” must be included. If conflicts are present, they must be detailed in the declaration and in a specific section of the article. The journal reserves the right to request clarification or additional information from the authors.

Reviewers and editors

Reviewers must inform the journal if they perceive any potential conflict of interest that could compromise the impartiality of their evaluation, and should decline participation if appropriate.
Editorial team members must also refrain from involvement in editorial decisions regarding manuscripts where they have a conflict of interest.
If an undeclared conflict of interest is identified at any stage of the editorial process, the journal may reject or retract the manuscript.

8) Plagiarism policy

Evidencia, actualización en la práctica ambulatoria publishes both original works (original research, systematic reviews, clinical vignettes, patient-oriented evidence summaries, and narrative reviews/updates) and commented summaries of studies previously published in peer-reviewed journals, often in languages other than Spanish. In all cases, manuscripts must meet originality standards in writing, analysis, and interpretation, and must properly acknowledge all sources.

The journal is firmly committed to publication ethics and has established an active plagiarism detection policy applied throughout the editorial process.

What is considered plagiarism? Plagiarism includes any act involving the full or partial presentation of others’ ideas, data, images, or text as one’s own, without proper attribution. This includes, but is not limited to: Copying and pasting text fragments without citing the source or using quotation marks/citation format (omission of authorship). Extensive paraphrasing without clear reformulation or proper citation. Reusing one’s own previously published text (with substantially equivalent format and content) without disclosure or adequate referencing (self-plagiarism)(see duplication policy).  Presenting as original a summary or translation of a previously published article, without crediting the source. In the case of summaries and commentaries published in this journal, reproduction of key content from the original article is allowed, provided proper references are included and the content is re-elaborated critically with added interpretation.

Procedures for preventing plagiarism

Upon submission, authors must declare that:

• The submitted work is original and has not been published or is under review elsewhere.
• They have read and complied with the Author Guidelines, which state that submitted manuscripts must be original and written by the authors themselves.
• All sources used have been fully and accurately cited.
• For commented summaries, they have adhered to the required format of critical re-elaboration and included the proper reference to the original article.

Plagiarism detection procedures

During the initial editorial evaluation, the Editorial Committee reviews all manuscripts for signs of plagiarism, using:

• Critical reading by editors and peer reviewers.
• Manual searches for textual matches in digital sources (Google, Google Scholar).
• Specialized similarity-detection software that compares manuscripts against a wide database of academic articles and websites (e.g., PlagiarismDetector.net free version).

If suspected plagiarism is detected, the editorial team may:

• Request clarification or justification from the authors.
• Request a revised version.
• Reject the manuscript.

9) Ethical considerations policy

All original research involving humans—whether clinical, observational, qualitative, or otherwise—must comply with current ethical and legal standards in the country of origin, as well as with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki and the Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences (CIOMS) guidelines.

Approval by independent ethics committee

All primary research must have prior approval from an independent ethics committee. Authors must explicitly declare this approval, including:

• Name of the approving committee.
• Protocol number or approval reference.
• Date of approval.

This information must be reported under “Ethical Considerations” in the Materials and Methods section, as well as in the Ethics, Conflicts of Interest, and AI Use Form.

If the authors consider formal ethics approval unnecessary (e.g., literature reviews), this must be clearly justified in the manuscript.

Informed consent of participants

In all research involving human participants, authors must ensure informed consent was obtained, according to the ethics committee guidelines. The consent process must be explicitly stated in the manuscript’s “Ethical Considerations” section. Consent forms should not be submitted with the manuscript, though a model form may be included as supplementary material.

Privacy, confidentiality, and consent for publication

Authors are responsible for protecting participants’ privacy, dignity, and confidentiality. Identifiable personal data (names, initials, images, videos, or other identifiers) must not be included unless:

• The information is essential for scientific understanding of the article, and
• Explicit, written, informed consent for publication has been obtained.

If there is any doubt about identifiability, confidentiality must prevail. Responsibility for obtaining, storing, and safeguarding consent lies solely with the authors.

10) Peer review policy

Evidencia, actualización en la práctica ambulatoria applies external peer review for manuscripts submitted to the following sections:

• Updates
• Patient-Oriented Evidence (POEMs)
• Clinical Vignettes
• Original Research
• Systematic Reviews

Once a manuscript passes the initial editorial screening, it undergoes external peer review based on transparency, fairness, and scientific rigor.

Reviewer selection

Reviewers are selected by the handling editor based on expertise, academic background, and thematic relevance, and must not be members of the Editorial Committee. At least two external reviewers will have access to all relevant materials, including supplementary files.

Process

The journal follows an open peer review model: reviewers may know the authors’ identities and affiliations, and authors may know the reviewers’ identities. Reviewers’ contributions are institutionally recognized through certificates and an annual acknowledgment article.

Evaluation and editorial decision

Reviewers evaluate manuscripts for:

• Relevance to the journal’s scope.
• Methodological and argumentative soundness.
• Clarity of presentation.
• Originality and contribution to knowledge.

Structured review forms guide this process. Reviewer feedback must be constructive, specific, well-argued, respectful, and helpful to editors and authors. Confidentiality must be preserved, and reviewers must not share manuscripts or contact authors directly.

Each review round has a maximum time frame of three weeks.

At the end of their evaluation, reviewers must recommend:
a) Accept
b) Accept with revisions
c) Reject

The responsible editor considers reviewer reports, their coherence, and technical relevance, and makes the final decision. In case of conflicting reviews, additional reviewers may be invited, or decisions may be deliberated internally with the Editor-in-Chief.

Editorial team’s role

While peer review is essential, the journal is not obliged to send all manuscripts to external review or to follow reviewers’ recommendations automatically.
The Editor-in-Chief has final responsibility for editorial decisions, which may also take into account timeliness, thematic relevance, originality, and alignment with the journal’s scope.

The journal reserves the right to reject a manuscript at any stage prior to publication, even after acceptance, if concerns arise regarding scientific integrity, ethical compliance, or originality.

11) Inclusive and non-sexist language policy

Evidencia subscribes to policies promoting the use of inclusive and non-sexist language, endorsing communication strategies that foster accessibility, equity, respect, and inclusion for all people, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, disability status, ethnic origin, religion, or other characteristics.

Evidencia deems the use of labels to designate groups of people inappropriate, as such labels may perpetuate stigmatization and/or discrimination. For example, we consider it inappropriate to use qualifying adjectives to refer to people with diabetes, hypertension, epilepsy, or other conditions.

While the journal does not consider the use of the generic masculine inherently inappropriate or always discriminatory, it recommends inclusive linguistic formulas whenever they do not alter meaning or impair readability. For example, the use of generic nouns (person, patient), collective nouns (population, community), abstract nouns (leadership, authorship), gender-neutral pronouns (who, anyone), and neutral adjectives (different, variable) is encouraged.

Evidencia will not use the replacement of -o/-a with the suffixes -e or -x, nor the @ symbol.

Note: Some aspects of this policy (such as the discussion of grammatical gender, and the rejection of substitutions like -e, -x, or @) apply specifically to the Spanish language and may not be relevant to English usage.

12) Policy on the use of artificial intelligence

Evidencia adheres to ICMJE recommendations on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in manuscript preparation and to World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) recommendations regarding chatbots and generative AI in scholarly publishing. The journal views AI-based technologies as assistive tools that may support various stages of research and publication, without substituting human responsibility and provided that the principles of accountability, transparency, academic integrity, and respect for copyright are upheld.

Given that these tools can generate erroneous, biased, or fabricated content, human supervision and validation are required. AI systems will not be recognized as authors of manuscripts, reports, or editorial decisions, and their use must be transparently disclosed.

Guidance for authors

Acceptable practices for the use of AI as a writing assistant in scientific texts include:

• Creating outlines or concept maps to structure the article or as a starting point for drafting.
• Generating initial titles or abstracts as a draft.
• Rewriting sentences or performing grammatical/style corrections.
• Consulting synonyms, definitions, or lexical suggestions to improve clarity and coherence.
• Preliminary translation into the journal’s publication languages (with subsequent human review to ensure conceptual and terminological fidelity).
• Support for programming, analysis, technical coding, or data transcription.
• Creation of images, figures, and audiovisual material.

Authors who use AI in manuscript preparation must disclose the model used in the cover letter and in a specific note at the end of the manuscript.

Unacceptable uses of generative AI for authors

The following uses of AI are inappropriate and contrary to good editorial practice; detection may lead to editorial rejection, retraction, or ethical sanctions:

• Delegating the substantive drafting of the manuscript autonomously to an AI model without human review, validation, and reworking by the author.
• Generating data, results, figures, interpretations, or claims via AI without empirical basis or technical verification.
• Including bibliographic citations that are unverifiable, non-existent, or fabricated (“hallucinations”).
• Automatically rephrasing third-party texts without understanding the content, which can result in conceptual errors or plagiarism.
• Automatic translation without human review by the author.
• Incorporating AI-generated text without attribution of its origin or without sufficient reworking, infringing authorship and originality principles.
• Entering sensitive information (from patients, research participants, non-public datasets) into AI platforms without explicit consent or privacy safeguards.

Guidance for reviewers

Acceptable uses of AI as an assistant in peer review—provided integrity and confidentiality are not compromised—include:

• Support in drafting the review report.
• Structural organization of observations and suggestions.

Prohibited uses in review:

• Delegating the reading or critical analysis of the manuscript to AI.
• Sharing the manuscript with tools that do not guarantee confidentiality.
• Including automatically generated comments in the evaluation.

Reviewers who use AI must inform the handling editor of the model employed, the aspects of the report in which it was used, and confirm that critical judgment and the final evaluation are human responsibilities.

Guidance for editors

The editorial team may use AI tools for operational or support tasks, provided integrity and confidentiality are maintained. Acceptable practices include:

• Drafting standard editorial communications (decision letters, formal emails).
• Assistance with operational or administrative tasks in the editorial process.
• Language/style improvement for editorials, journal announcements, informative sections, or public documents (not for original manuscripts under review).
• Preliminary similarity checks as a complement to antiplagiarism tools or to detect internal inconsistencies—only on brief, non-identifiable fragments and without references or sensitive information—and never as a substitute for peer review or editorial assessment.

13) Duplication policy

Evidencia adheres to recommendations from  ICMJE, COPE, and WAME regarding duplicate and redundant publication. The journal differentiates its policies by manuscript type:

a) Primary publications. Manuscripts in the sections Patient-Oriented Evidence, Clinical Vignette, Original Research, Systematic Review, and Update (all externally peer-reviewed) are considered original.

• Manuscripts that fully or partially reproduce work previously published in another print or electronic venue will not be accepted.
• Manuscripts under review elsewhere at the time of submission to Evidencia will not be accepted. By submitting to this journal, authors commit not to submit the work to another venue (parallel review) during the editorial process.

b) Commented summaries. These articles critically rework already published, peer-reviewed articles to promote knowledge dissemination and continuing education for primary care professionals facing barriers to accessing the literature. They reproduce key content from the source article but always include full bibliographic referencing, interpretive/critical re-elaboration by the summary’s author, and presentation clearly differentiated from the original article.

c) Acceptable secondary publications. Evidencia allows secondary publication in exceptional cases (e.g., authorized translations, dissemination to distinct audiences, or educational purposes), provided both journals’ editors consent, the original source is clearly cited, fidelity to the original content is preserved, and ICMJE conditions are met.

Conditions for legitimacy

Commented summaries in Evidencia are not considered duplication when criteria of transparency, originality of analysis, and respect for copyright are fulfilled.

Prior posting in institutional or subject repositories (preprints) and presentation of partial results at scientific meetings do not constitute prior publication, provided the work has not appeared in a peer-reviewed journal. Prior posting must be disclosed at submission, with verifiable references whenever possible, consistent with the journal’s policies on plagiarism and transparency, in the Ethics, Conflicts of Interest, and AI Use Form.

Publishing a full article as if it were a summary, reproducing extensive fragments without critical re-elaboration, or omitting reference to the source article are unacceptable practices covered by the plagiarism policy.

Evidencia also discourages the unjustified fragmentation of research results (“salami slicing” or “publication fragmentation”), understood as the artificial division of a single study into multiple articles with the sole purpose of increasing the number of publications. Unlike duplication, this practice may be acceptable only if each manuscript presents a clearly distinct research question, objectives, hypothesis, and methodology. It is essential that authors explicitly state in the text when an article derives from a larger study and specify what novel aspects it contributes compared to previous works, in order to avoid the mistaken impression that the data come from different samples. Failure to provide this information may lead to editorial actions, including a request to integrate the results, rejection of the manuscript, or, if already published, its retraction.

14) Research data deposit policy

To promote transparency, validation, and reuse of research—in line with international open science principles—Evidencia recommends that authors of original research deposit generated datasets in reputable, open-access repositories, whether discipline-specific or generalist. Repositories should ideally comply with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable).

If data are deposited, authors must indicate this in the manuscript, including the repository name, access URL, persistent identifier (e.g., DOI), and the applicable license. This information should appear at the end of the article under the heading “Availability of Deposited Data”.

Last updated: September 19, 2025