JHCEP emerges from the collaboration of five open minded women (academic researchers, teachers and health educators), who will select the authors’ contributions without distinction of sex, skin colour, sex orientation, religious or political preferences.

This journal endorses the principle of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child.

The Editors express their support to vaccine diffusion, recognize the right of any women to freely decide about practice of abortion, and think that a dying woman or man has the civil right to choose the way and the time he/she will die.

Concerning research ethics, JHCEP adheres to the World Medical Association (WMA) Declaration of Helsinki, a statement of ethical principles for biomedical research involving human subjects, including research on biological samples of human origin and other identifiable data (https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki/)

Concerning publishing ethic, JHCEP shares the principles of AlmaDL Journals Code of Ethics, which is inspired by the guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), in particular to the COPE Core Practices and its Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing (https://publicationethics.org/guidance?f%5B0%5D=topics%3A23). People involved in the editorial process (editorial team, authors, reviewers) must know and apply the rules contained in this document.

Particularly, JHCEP states the following principles.

1. Duties of editors, reviewers and authors

1.1. duties of editors

Decisions on publication: Editors’ decisions to accept or reject a paper for publication is based on the paper’s importance, originality, clarity, and the study’s validity and its relevance to the remit of the journal. The submission to the Journal it is also based on an anonymous single blind peer review by an expert reviewer. The editorial board is bound by the legal provisions in force concerning defamation, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

The Editors have the ultimate responsibility for deciding whether a manuscript submitted to HCEinP should be published, guided by the policies of the Journal as determined by the Journal's Editorial Board and constrained by the legal requirements in force regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

Fairness and non-discrimination: Publication is based on the scientific value, relevance, and originality of the content of the article without discrimination on grounds of sex, race, religion, ethnic origin, citizenship, sexual orientation, gender identity, age or political orientation of the authors. A description of peer review will be communicated to the authors, and editors are ready to justify any important deviation from the described processes.

Privacy, prohibition of use or disclosure: Editors have a system to ensure that material submitted to our journal remains confidential while under review and guarantee that peers’ reviews at our journal is fair, unbiased and timely. Appropriate reviewers that can judge the work free from disqualifying competing interests are selected for submissions.

The Editors will make the decision to publish, taking into account the suggestions of the peer reviewers. They will not disclose any information about a manuscript under consideration to anyone other than the authors, reviewers, and potential reviewers. In addition, the editors will make every effort to ensure the integrity of the blind review process by not revealing the identity of the authors of a manuscript to the reviewers of that manuscript and vice versa.

When evaluating a manuscript for publication, in addition to the usual criteria relating to the rigour of the manuscript, the quality of its presentation and its contribution to the body of scientific knowledge, the editors will also look for evidence, where appropriate, that the authors have adhered to the DMA Declaration of Helsinki in the conduct of their research.

The editors will be guided by the COPE Guidelines for Retracting Articles in considering retractions, expressions of concern and corrections of articles. They are committed to working closely with research organisations and institutions in accordance with COPE's Advice on Cooperation between Research Institutions and Journals on Research Integrity Cases.

Conflict of interest: If a previously undeclared conflict of interest comes to light, the journal will retract the article, review its ethics policy and, if necessary, revise it to make it more stringent. In this situation, the journal will ensure that this is adequately documented in the published manuscript.

If a thorough investigation by the journal and/or the relevant institutional body reveals that the results or conclusions of the article have been compromised to the point of being unreliable as a result of a conflict of interest, the author may be required to publish a statement of concern or a retraction, also permanently linked to the official version of the article, or to withdraw the article.

1.2. Duties of Authors of articles submitted to the Journal

Scientific originality: The Authors guarantee that the article submitted for evaluation is unpublished, scientifically original and not submitted simultaneously to other journals. Manuscripts under evaluation should not be submitted to other journals for publication. They also warrant that the sources of any ideas and/or words in the manuscript that are not their own have been properly acknowledged by appropriate citations and/or quotations, in accordance with the HCEinP Citation Policy.

Authors must explicitly state whether they have used any kind of IA to write the article and, if so, how it was used (for linguistic review, bibliographic searches, etc.).  In the case of scientific research, the manuscript should contain sufficient detail and references to enable others to reproduce the work. Study protocols for original works must be authorised in advance by the authors' ethics committees of reference, and research must be conducted according to ethical standards with specific reference to the Declaration of Helsinki for clinical research, the AERA and BERA guidelines for educational research.

Fabrication of results and fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behaviour and may result in rejection or retraction of a manuscript or published article. Authors must include a statement at the beginning of the manuscript either stating that there is no conflict of interest or describing the nature of any potential conflict. All sources of financial support for the research should also be disclosed in the manuscript.

Integrating the work: If an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in a published article by him or her, it is the author's responsibility to notify the editors immediately and to cooperate with them in correcting or, if necessary, retracting the article.

Authorship and copyright: The authors accurately write down the list that reflect who did the work, the share of each Author must be correctly and clearly indicated: authors should be listed in the article in order of their contribution to the article, and all authors take responsibility for their own contributions.

Only those individuals who have made a substantial contribution should be listed as authors; those whose contributions are indirect, or minor should be listed in an "Acknowledgments" section at the end of the article, immediately preceding the list of references. Since 2025, JHCEinP asks to authors to signed a Publish agreement.

Authors of a manuscript agree that if the manuscript is accepted for publication, their work will be copyrighted under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence (Creative Commons by Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence). This licence allows authors to retain copyright and allows anyone to download, remix, transform and build upon the material, but not to distribute the modified work, which can't be used for commercial purposes anyway.

Authors are responsible for obtaining written permission to include in their articles any images or artwork for which they do not hold the copyright, or to adapt such images or artwork for inclusion in their articles. The copyright holder must be explicitly informed that the images or artwork will be made freely available online as part of the article under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence.

Conflicts of interest: Authors must have no conflicts of interest that could have influenced their results, conclusions or interpretations, and are expected to declare any real or potential conflicts of interest. Authors must also declare the financial backers, if any, of the research or project from which the article is derived.

1.3. Duties of reviewers

Contribution to editorial decision: Peer-review is a process that helps the Journal's editors to assess the scientific quality of proposed articles and also allows the author to improve their contribution. Reviewers carry out their review without any economic obligation. A reviewer who does not feel adequate or sufficiently qualified for the task of reviewing the research in the manuscript, or who feels unable to review it within the specified timeframe, must notify the journal management as soon as possible and withdraw from the review process. Reviewers who have accepted a manuscript assignment are normally expected to submit their review within two weeks. If reviewers identify ideas or concepts in the manuscript that are not appropriately attributed to their authors, they should bring this to the attention of both the editors and the authors. They should also highlight any concerns they may have about the ethical acceptability of the research reported in the manuscript.

Fairness and objectivity: The peer review must be carried out in a fair and objective manner. Referees are asked to give adequate reasons for their assessment of the article submitted. Any personal judgement of the author is inappropriate: it is not permitted to criticise or offend an author personally. Comments must be technically well formulated and cannot be construed as criticism of an ideological nature or, in any case, contain scientific or cultural assumptions of a personal nature. They are encouraged to express their views clearly and to explain and justify any recommendations they make. They should always try to give constructive feedback to help the authors improve their work, even if they do not think the manuscript is publishable.

Conflict of interest and disclosure: Information, knowledge and data obtained by reviewers through the peer review process must be kept confidential and not used for personal gain. They must not be shown to or discussed with anyone. Reviewers are required not to accept for reading articles for which a conflict of interest arises due to previous specific collaborative or competitive relationships with the Author (unknown in itself but nevertheless identified by deduction) and/or connections with authors, entities or institutions related to the manuscript. Reviewers are free to decline invitations to review manuscripts because of their current workload, but they should not accept manuscript review assignments for which they feel unqualified or for which they may have a potential conflict of interest.

2. licence, copyright, data policy and open access policy

Licence and copyright: By submitting a manuscript, authors certify that their work has not been published previously, is not under consideration for publication elsewhere, and has been approved for publication by all authors and by the appropriate authorities, tacit or explicit, of the institutions where the work was carried out. You have secured the right to reproduce any material already published or copyrighted elsewhere.

By submitting a manuscript, authors agree to this copyright statement: the copyright of the article remains with the authors. Authors grant our journals a licence to publish the article and to identify themselves as the original publisher and grant any third party the right to use the article freely, provided that the original authors are acknowledged, and the appropriate citation details are given. The article will be distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. Unless otherwise stated, related published material is distributed under the same licence.

In addition, everyone is free to share - to copy, distribute and transmit the work - to remix - to adapt the work under the following conditions: the original authors must be credited; any reuse or distribution must make clear to others what the licence terms of this work are; any of these conditions may be waived if the copyright holders give permission.

Nothing in this licence affects or restricts the moral rights of the author. The complete legal code of this licence.

Open access policy: The Journal provides immediate open access to its contents on the principle, shared by the University of Padua, that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

This journal is published under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. Consequently, authors retain copyright and allows anyone to download, remix, transform and build upon the material, but not to distribute the modified work, which can't be used for commercial purposes anyway. As the author has chosen to publish the scientific results under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence, he/she has agreed to share the work on the condition that the original authors are credited. For any other information: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.en