AUTHORS’ GUIDELINES – PUBLICATION NORMS

Aims and Scope

Suma de Negocios is a Colombian, peer-reviewed, open-access journal of Fundación Universitaria Konrad Lorenz, indexed in Scopus and aimed at the national and international circulation of knowledge. It is open to different disciplinary and methodological perspectives on marketing, business, administrative sciences, and quantitative methods applied to these subject areas.

The specific topics within administrative sciences are:

• Business administration, commercial systems, tourism, finance, banking, public safety and health at work.
• Economics
• Marketing
• Public accounting
• International trade

The journal is intended for professors, researchers, and the general public interested in the areas covered by the publication. Its publication frequency is continuous, in digital format, with two issues published in each volume. SUMNEG content is freely accessible; its production and distribution are non-profit, it is funded by Fundación Universitaria Konrad Lorenz, and it uses publishing formats such as PDF and XML. In keeping with its visibility in Scopus, the journal prioritizes manuscripts with original contributions, methodological rigor, argumentative clarity, and relevance for academic audiences beyond the local context.

Mission

Suma de Negocios, a journal of the School of Business of Fundación Universitaria Konrad Lorenz, aims to publish, within the national and Latin American academic sphere, different disciplinary and methodological perspectives on marketing, business, administrative sciences, and quantitative methods applied to these fields, while also fostering dialogue with international scientific communities and traceability in indexing and citation systems.

Vision

To be a national and Latin American leader in the scientific academic field, so that its main pillars – quality, transparency, and knowledge management for the community – allow it to position itself as one of the best Latin American journals in its category, with editorial standards compatible with international databases, good citation practices, and verifiable ethical processes.

Licensing and Access

Suma de Negocios papers are published under a Creative Commons license (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivativeWorks 4.0 International), which allows the free dissemination of the work, without alterations to the final version, by giving credit to the original authors and without commercial purposes. The journal also has interoperability protocols and allows simultaneous publication in self-archiving systems and institutional repositories. Open-access publication does not entail costs for authors or their institutions.

GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS

PUBLICATION RULES

Suma de Negocios publishes original theoretical and empirical articles in areas related to administration, business, economics, finance, marketing, and related disciplines.

The journal receives the following types of manuscripts:

1. Research article

A document that presents, in detail, the original results of completed research projects. The commonly used structure includes five important sections: introduction, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusions. The manuscript must clearly state its theoretical, methodological, or applied contribution, as well as its relevance to the specialized literature.

The methodology section must cover several essential elements in order to provide a complete understanding of the study approach and execution. At a minimum, the following aspects must be included:

• Data. The nature and quality of the data used must be described in detail, including their source, collection method, time of collection, and inclusion and exclusion criteria. Whenever possible, the availability of the data, the repository, the persistent identifier, or access restrictions must be indicated.
• Type, scope, and design. The type of research – qualitative, quantitative, or mixed – as well as its scope and specific design must be defined and justified.
• Procedure. A detailed description of the process followed during the research must be provided, including data collection, study phases, and any experimental manipulation. The description must be sufficient to promote the replicability or auditability of the study.
• Data analysis. The statistical or qualitative analysis techniques used, as well as the software employed, must be explained and justified. Where applicable, criteria of validity, reliability, robustness, saturation, sensitivity, or verification must be reported.
• Ethical considerations. Key ethical aspects of the study must be addressed, such as informed consent, confidentiality, conflicts of interest, and privacy protection. Studies involving human participants, sensitive data, or interventions must report approval by an ethics committee or explicitly justify why such approval does not apply.

2. Review article

A document presenting qualitative or quantitative systematic reviews of a field in science or technology, with the purpose of accounting for advances and development trends. It is characterized by a careful literature review of at least 50 references. In addition, it must explicitly describe the search strategy, databases consulted, search equations, inclusion and exclusion criteria, period analyzed, and synthesis procedure. The use of recognized protocols, such as PRISMA, is recommended where relevant.

Bibliometric reviews limited to descriptive counts without theoretical, methodological, or critical discussion are not accepted. Mixed bibliometric studies may be considered when they integrate substantive analysis, specialized interpretation, and a clear contribution to the field.

Submission Requirements

Manuscripts must be unpublished and must not be simultaneously submitted for consideration by other publications. If the manuscript derives from theses, working papers, preprints, or preliminary versions deposited in repositories, this situation must be transparently reported in the cover letter.

The journal publishes articles in Spanish, English, French, and Portuguese. The manuscript is expected to be written in clear, precise, and careful academic language. When the article is submitted in English, it must have sufficient linguistic quality for evaluation by international peers.

All original articles must have a maximum length of 6,500 words, including title, abstracts, references, figures, tables, appendices, and supplementary materials. Articles with a maximum of five authors are accepted. The inclusion of authors must correspond to real, verifiable, and substantive contributions to the manuscript.

The journal does not accept manuscripts prepared exclusively by undergraduate students. When articles derive from degree projects or training processes, they must include the participation of at least one researcher, professor, or professional with verifiable research experience.

Manuscript Preparation

Authors must use the journal’s official templates:

• Author information must be completed in the cover page template, or author note.
• The organization and structure of the article must follow the manuscript template.

The official templates are available here.

Cover Page (Separate File)

1. Type of article: research article or review article.
2. Origin of the article: indicate in one paragraph whether the article is the product of research, a degree thesis, among others, and whether or not it received funding.
3. Title in the original language of the text, as well as in Spanish and English.
4. Full names of the authors.
5. Standardized institutional affiliation, city, and country.
6. Institutional email address of the corresponding author.
7. ORCID code for each author.
8. Author contribution statement, using the CRediT taxonomy.
9. Acknowledgements, where applicable, only on the cover page and never in the anonymized version.
10. Colombian authors must include the link to their CvLAC profile with current information on their institutional affiliation. They may register there to create their account.

Anonymized Manuscript

The main document must not contain information that allows the authors to be identified.

1. The submitted manuscript must be double-spaced, except for tables, and written in Times New Roman 12. Margins must be 3 cm on each side and the page number must be placed in the upper right corner. The use of the journal’s official template is recommended in order to reduce formal adjustments at the editorial stage.
2. It must begin with the title, followed by the resumen and abstract, keywords, and JEL classification. Any reference in the text, notes, acknowledgements, self-citations, or file metadata that may identify the authors during double-blind review must also be removed.
3. The article title must have a maximum of 12 words, be explanatory, and capture the essence of the work. It is recommended to avoid abbreviations, vague formulas, and titles that are excessively local or merely descriptive without conceptual contribution.
4. In all cases, a resumen in Spanish and an abstract in English of a maximum of 250 words must be presented, even when the article is submitted in another language. Resúmenes and abstracts must be structured with the following sections written explicitly: (i) Introduction/objective, (ii) Methodology, (iii) Results, and (iv) Conclusions. They must also explicitly state the main contribution, the novelty of the study, and, where applicable, its theoretical or managerial implication.
5. Five or six keywords must be included, in Spanish and English, related to the content of the article, as well as four JEL descriptors (https://www.aeaweb.org/econlit/jelCodes.php). The use of standardized terms comparable with the international literature and useful for article retrieval in databases is recommended.
6. The entire document must be written in strict accordance with APA 7th edition in Anglo-Saxon style. This includes writing style, citations, sections, tables, figures, and bibliographic references. References must include DOI or URL where applicable, and consistency between in-text citations and the final reference list must be verified.
7. All tables and figures must be submitted in their original editable format, must be cited in the text, and must include their respective sources. Figures must have sufficient resolution for editing and publication, and tables must not be presented as images whenever they can be delivered in editable format.
8. If copyrighted material is used, authors are responsible for obtaining written authorization from the rights holders.
9. Footnotes must be exclusively explanatory or clarifying; they must not include bibliographic references.
10. When equations are used, they must be numbered consecutively and in square brackets ([1], [2], [3]…). Mathematical symbols must be clear, legible, and correspond to the equations.
11. When acronyms first appear, their full meaning must be written followed by the acronym in parentheses; subsequently, only the acronym should be used. Technical terms or acronyms must be defined when they are first cited.
12. The minimum number of references for research articles is 25, 30% from the last two years, and for review articles it is 50 references from the last five years, 30% of which must correspond to the last two years. Bibliographic selection must meet criteria of relevance, timeliness, geographical diversity, and dialogue with international literature; irrelevant citation and unjustified self-citation are not encouraged.
13. Where applicable, the manuscript must include a statement on the availability of data, code, instruments, and materials, indicating whether they are public, restricted, or not shareable, as well as the respective justification.
14. Authors are responsible for ensuring language accuracy, citation precision, source traceability, and coherence among objectives, method, results, and conclusions.

Final Declarations

• Funding. Authors must indicate whether or not the manuscript received funding. When funding exists, the title of the project, funding or sponsoring entity, natural or legal person that supported the work, project code or identifier, execution period, and funding modality must be reported. If the study did not receive funding, the following statement must be included: “This work received no specific funding from public, commercial, or non-profit agencies.”
• Conflict of interest statement. Authors must declare any relationship or situation that could influence the development, results, or interpretation of the study. This includes, among others, financial, employment, academic, or personal links with organizations or persons that may benefit from the research results.
• Statement on the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and AI-assisted technologies. A mandatory statement on the use or non-use of generative AI must be included. If AI was used, specify the tool, version, exact purpose, and scope of the intervention, and indicate that the authors reviewed and verified all content and retain full responsibility for the manuscript.
• Availability of data, code, and materials. Authors must include one of the following statements, as applicable:

“The data supporting the results of this study are available at [repository], under the identifier [DOI/Handle/URL].”

“The data are available upon reasonable request to the corresponding author.”

“The data cannot be shared publicly for reasons of confidentiality, privacy, institutional agreements, or ethical restrictions.”

“This study did not generate or analyze datasets.”

Editorial Process and Article Review

Manuscripts must be submitted electronically through the ScholarOne Manuscripts platform. There, authors will find the necessary information for submission and the official templates to adjust their manuscript. This system will also allow them to track the status of the editorial process.

Within approximately two weeks, the editorial team will review whether the manuscript complies with the guidelines for authors, verify its thematic relevance, formal quality, originality, methodological consistency, and ethical compliance, and perform the similarity review in Turnitin. The journal may issue an early editorial rejection, or desk rejection, when the manuscript does not meet minimum standards of form, thematic focus, contribution, or rigor.

If the article passes this preliminary stage, the manuscript will be sent to two anonymous national or international reviewers who are experts in the field. Reviewers will conduct a double-blind review considering aspects such as originality, quality, contribution to the field of knowledge, relevance of the topic, clarity of ideas, updated bibliography, and methodological soundness.

Within an average period of 90 days, the result of the article evaluation will be reported: rejected, accepted, minor revisions required, or major revisions required. Editorial timelines are estimates and may vary depending on reviewer availability and manuscript complexity.

Once a decision on acceptance has been issued, authors will have between 15 and 30 days to make the changes, depending on the adjustments requested. In the case of major revisions, the article may be sent back to the reviewers.

After resubmitting their article with the requested changes, authors must attach a detailed response letter addressing each observation made by the reviewers and the editor. It is recommended to present changes in a traceable manner and explicitly justify any suggestions that were not adopted.

If approved, the corresponding author must sign the editorial documents required to continue the publication process. The journal’s indexed status in Scopus does not modify editorial autonomy and does not constitute a guarantee of acceptance. Submission of an article does not obligate the editorial team to publish it.

Ethics and Good Practices

For Suma de Negocios, it is essential to guarantee ethics in each of its publications. Therefore, the editorial board, reviewers, and authors adhere to the guidelines proposed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), including its provisions on plagiarism. The journal also adopts editorial transparency criteria compatible with international indexing standards.

Suma de Negocios identifies the following as bad practices:

• Taking, transcribing, duplicating, or paraphrasing parts of other people’s work and presenting them as one’s own, or omitting the corresponding attribution.
• Citation manipulation: misuse of secondary citations, incorrect attribution, inappropriate application of citation standards, alteration of citations, and excessive or strategic use of self-citations. Coercive or irrelevant citation to inflate indicators is also considered a bad practice.
• Falsification or fabrication of information: altering, including, omitting, or using non-existent data that may affect results or their interpretation.
• Redundant publications: using parts of works already published as if they were unpublished material.
• Violation of privacy: omitting informed consent or making unauthorized use of the name, image, or identifiable information of those who contributed to the research.
• Inclusion of authors who did not participate in the research or exclusion of persons who made substantive contributions.
• Use of artificial intelligence tools to fabricate data, citations, references, results, evaluations, or misleading images.

Editorial Ethics

Suma de Negocios (SUMNEG) will not publish works conducted without the necessary permissions or whose data were illegally collected. The opinions expressed in the articles are the exclusive responsibility of the authors and do not commit the opinion or scientific policy of the journal.

Authors must mention all organizations that funded their research in the funding section of the manuscript, including grant numbers where necessary. In addition, they must describe any financial, institutional, or personal relationship that could give rise to a conflict of interest.

Only those persons who have contributed intellectually to the development of the work should appear in the list of authors. To be listed as an author, the following requirements must be met:

1. To have participated in the conception and design, in the acquisition of data, or in the analysis and interpretation of the information that results in the article.
2. To have collaborated in drafting the text or in its critical review with substantive intellectual contributions.
3. To have approved the version submitted to the journal.
4. To assume public responsibility for the content of the manuscript and respond to subsequent editorial clarifications when necessary.

Suma de Negocios safeguards intellectual property rights and good scientific and editorial practices. The manuscript must not have been previously published, either partially or in full. The reuse of one’s own materials must be made transparent in order to avoid text recycling or self-plagiarism. The data used to prepare the manuscript must be real and must not be fabricated or manipulated to support its conclusions. No data, text, or theory developed by other authors may be presented as one’s own; citations must strictly follow APA style.

Plagiarism Detection Policy

The SUMNEG editorial team uses Turnitin to detect similarities with other sources. The report must not exceed 8% similarity, excluding citations and references. If the percentage is higher, the article will be rejected in the first phase or returned to the authors for adjustment, depending on the nature of the similarities. The evaluation is based not only on the overall percentage but also on the quality and context of the similarities detected.

Researchers are invited to follow the recommendations established in the Global Code of Conduct for Research in Resource-Poor Settings. https://www.globalcodeofconduct.org/

Copyright, Intellectual Property, and Privacy

Articles published in Suma de Negocios will be subject to a Creative Commons license (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International). This license allows the free dissemination of the work, without modifications to the final version, by giving the corresponding credit to the original authors through the relevant citations and without commercial purposes.

Personal information provided to Revista Suma de Negocios will be used exclusively for the purposes declared by the journal and will not be available for any other purpose or person. The journal will endeavor to request only data strictly necessary for editorial management. Articles published in the journal represent the opinion of their respective authors and do not constitute the official position of Fundación Universitaria Konrad Lorenz.

Complaints and Appeals Policy

Suma de Negocios will assist with and resolve arguments or appeals related to non-compliance with any of the practices described in the editorial process involving authors, reviewers, and the editorial team.

When appeals refer to the non-publication of a document, high similarity with other sources, peer-review results, or the conduct of members of the editorial team, the Editor or the Editorial Committee will evaluate the arguments and, if necessary, request an additional opinion from an external reviewer. Appeals must be duly reasoned and supported by verifiable academic or ethical arguments.

For any of the cases described, or even if complaints are made by readers, the interested party must send a letter to the journal editor at the institutional email address, describing the matter and its justification. Once the communication has been reviewed, the Editor will respond and provide a solution. No request for inclusion or removal of authors will be considered after manuscript acceptance, unless there is an exceptional, documented justification endorsed by all authors involved.

Ethical Oversight, Corrections, and Post-Publication

Ethical Oversight

During the editorial process, the journal verifies compliance with the ethical principles of publication. If, during the originality check or at any stage, possible legal or ethical breaches related to copyright, plagiarism, or manuscript integrity are detected, the editorial team will inform the authors and may contact their institutions. If conflicts of interest are identified, even after publication, the journal will request clarifications from the authors and incorporate the corresponding notes to ensure transparency.

Post-Publication Policy

Suma de Negocios does not accept substantial modifications to articles once they have been published. However, when errors, omissions, or possible ethical breaches are identified, the journal may implement editorial mechanisms to safeguard the integrity of the scientific record, following the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The evaluation of these cases may be initiated at the request of authors, readers, reviewers, institutions, or indexing bodies, or on the initiative of the editorial team.

Post-Publication Correction Mechanisms

The journal may publish a correction when errors or omissions are identified in a published article that do not invalidate its main results, interpretations, or conclusions. Corrections may relate to errors in data, tables, figures, affiliations, author names, acknowledgements, funding sources, references, or supplementary information. Every correction will be evaluated by the editorial team and, when necessary, by the authors or external experts. If appropriate, the journal will publish a correction notice linked to the original article, clearly indicating the nature of the error and the modification made.

The journal may publish an expression of concern when there are reasonable doubts about the integrity, validity, originality, authorship, conflicts of interest, data, methodology, or ethical compliance of a published article and the editorial investigation has not yet concluded. This notice informs readers that the article is under editorial review and remains available until the journal adopts a final decision: keeping the article unchanged, publishing a correction, or proceeding with a retraction.

The journal may retract an article when it is proven that its results, data, interpretations, or conclusions are unreliable, or when serious breaches of publication ethics are identified. Grounds for retraction include fabrication or falsification of data, plagiarism, redundant or duplicate publication, manipulation of the editorial or peer-review process, improper authorship, serious omission of conflicts of interest, unauthorized use of protected material, failure to comply with ethical standards in research, or substantial errors that invalidate the scientific content of the article.

When retraction is appropriate, Suma de Negocios will publish a clearly identifiable retraction notice linked to the original article, indicating the reason for the retraction and who requests or determines it. The retracted article will not be removed from the journal’s website unless legal, ethical, or rights-protection reasons justify it; instead, it will remain available with a visible mark indicating its retracted status, in order to preserve transparency, traceability, and the integrity of the scholarly record.

Requests or alerts related to possible corrections, expressions of concern, or retractions must be sent to the journal’s editorial team, accompanied by the available information and evidence. In all cases, the journal will seek to act with impartiality, confidentiality, diligence, and adherence to international good editorial practices.

Publication Calendar, Preservation, and Open Access

The journal maintains a continuous publication frequency in digital format, with semiannual numbering. Articles are published as they are accepted.

Digital Preservation Policy

Suma de Negocios has a digital preservation policy aimed at ensuring the stability, integrity, permanence, availability, and continuous access to the scientific and academic content published by the journal. The journal adopts technological and editorial guidelines to preserve its digital files, metadata, and full content, ensuring that published articles remain available to readers, authors, institutions, indexers, repositories, and other users of scholarly communication.

Digital preservation is carried out through storage and backup of information in institutional media, computer equipment, and external backup drives. The journal also strengthens the permanence and visibility of its content through academic platforms, indexing systems, databases, repositories, and scientific dissemination services. Contents are preserved in open or widely accepted digital formats such as PDF and XML, in order to facilitate consultation, migration, interoperability, and long-term preservation.

As part of its digital preservation actions, the journal seeks to:

1. Maintain backup copies of published content and its metadata.
2. Guarantee the permanent availability of articles on the journal platform.
3. Preserve digital files in stable and reusable formats.
4. Facilitate interoperability with repositories, indexes, and academic information systems.
5. Maintain persistent identifiers, such as DOI, to ensure permanent location and citation of articles.
6. Conduct periodic reviews of digital files to verify their availability, integrity, and accessibility.
7. Implement, when necessary, technological migration processes that prevent the obsolescence of formats or platforms.

The journal guarantees that, even in the event of technological changes, platform updates, or modifications to its website, the published scientific content will continue to be available through backup copies, persistent identifiers, indexing systems, repositories, and associated academic platforms. This policy applies to all articles, files, metadata, and scientific content published by Suma de Negocios.

Diamond Open Access and No APC Policy

Suma de Negocios is a diamond open-access scientific journal. All content published by the journal is freely, immediately, and gratuitously available to readers, authors, and institutions, without embargo periods and without requiring subscription.

The journal does not charge article processing charges – APC – or any other fee for submission, review, editorial evaluation, processing, editing, or publication of manuscripts. Consequently, publication in Suma de Negocios does not involve monetary costs for authors or their institutions. The journal’s open access is possible thanks to the institutional support of Fundación Universitaria Konrad Lorenz and its editorial structure.

Article-Level Metadata Policy

Suma de Negocios has an article-level metadata management policy aimed at guaranteeing the identification, retrieval, interoperability, preservation, and circulation of the scientific and academic content published by the journal.

For each published article, the journal records, preserves, and disseminates complete bibliographic metadata in standard, interoperable, and non-proprietary formats. These metadata include, at a minimum: title in the original language of the manuscript, authors’ names, institutional affiliation, abstract, and keywords in the original language, English title, English abstract, English keywords, document type, relevant editorial dates, volume, issue, pagination or publication identifier, license of use, bibliographic references, and persistent identifier.

Articles with scientific or academic content published by Suma de Negocios have a persistent digital object identifier, preferably DOI, to ensure location, citation, traceability, and permanent access. The journal’s metadata are made available in open and reusable formats, such as XML or other standards compatible with indexing systems, aggregators, repositories, academic databases, and information harvesting services. Bibliographic metadata are considered public domain and may be harvested, reused, distributed, and integrated into academic information systems, provided that the integrity of the bibliographic information and proper identification of the source are respected.

Direct Marketing, Communication, and Advertising

The use of the ScholarOne Manuscripts platform during the article submission process allows Suma de Negocios to maintain effective communication with authors and send relevant information. The journal does not commercialize personal data or offer editorial advantages in exchange for advertising, sponsorship, or citation.

Suma de Negocios preserves in its ScholarOne Manuscripts editorial platform the traceability of the manuscript evaluation process, including submitted versions, editorial communications, evaluation reports, editorial decisions, requests for adjustment, author responses, and reasons for acceptance, revision, or rejection. This information forms part of the journal’s internal editorial management repository and may be consulted for follow-up, auditing, institutional verification, or indexing processes, while respecting confidentiality.

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Research and Scientific Publication

Revista Suma de Negocios includes the following recommendations on the use of AI tools:

1. Transparency. Authors must explicitly report whether they used AI tools in the research, writing, translation, style editing, analysis, programming, or image generation.
2. Reliability. Authors must ensure that the AI used is reliable, relevant, and reproducible to the extent possible, and must humanly verify all results produced.
3. Equity. Authors must avoid discriminatory uses of AI and recognize potential biases in data, models, and outputs.
4. Responsibility. Authors are fully responsible for the accuracy, integrity, originality, and traceability of all manuscript content, even when they have used AI as support.

Authorship

Large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, do not meet the authorship attribution criteria of Revista Suma de Negocios. Authorship attribution entails responsibility for the work that cannot be effectively applied to LLMs. Therefore, no AI tool may be listed as an author or co-author of the manuscript. Substantive use of an LLM must be documented in the Methods section, in a methodological note, or in the acknowledgements section, as applicable.

Use of Generative AI Images

Generative AI images may be used exceptionally to support academic communication, provided that they do not compromise the veracity of scientific content. Authors must be transparent about their use and indicate the respective credits. AI-generated images will not be accepted when they may mislead, simulate non-existent empirical evidence, or replace observational results without express notice.

In particular, authors must include in the manuscript, where applicable:

1. The type of AI used, including model name, provider, and version.
2. The specific purpose of its use within the research or manuscript preparation process.
3. The source of the data or inputs used, where relevant, and any potential bias identified.
4. The express statement that the authors verified the generated content and assumed responsibility for its accuracy.

Credit statement example: Figure 1. Image generated with AI support using OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 model, reviewed, validated, and approved by the authors for exclusively illustrative purposes.