Fit-and-Well Editorial Guidelines

Online Health & Wellness Information

There is an overabundance of health & wellness information on the Internet.

Even discerning readers may find it difficult to separate reliable facts from false assumptions, advertising disguised as news and, fake information.

With this in mind, we have defined our Mission as follows:

Our Mission

Do our best efforts to provide accurate, fair, and thorough information on diverse health, fitness, and wellness related topics.

Acting with responsibility and integrity, gathering, reporting, and interpreting information with honesty, empathy, and reliability.

Our audience

Our audience includes not only the general public (non-professionals and laypersons) but also medical and health professionals, scientists, and medical students.

We understand the difficulties they face in finding reliable health information online and have written our Publishing Code of Ethics and these Publishing Guidelines to assist us in achieving our Mission.

Our Objective

Our objective is to provide trustworthy, understandable, relevant, and reliable health and wellness information. Empowering our readers and giving them the transparent facts so that they can have more elements at hand to understand issues related to health, diet, nutrition, wellness, and fitness, and to help them develop better health habits and make better decisions about their lifestyles, and of course, to discuss their health with their qualified health care providers.

Editorial Guidelines

Editorial Integrity

Our Editorial Guidelines and Principles are inspired by the International Ethical Principles for Scholarly Publication and by the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics.

We also adhere to the high standards of health care journalism laid down in the Statement of Principles of the Association of Health Care Journalists.

Publication of scientific research promotes the progress of science, and this process should be transparent, trustworthy, and followed honestly and fairly.

All of our editorial decisions are made without regard to gender, age, race, sexual orientation, religious belief, nationality, ethnic origin, citizenship, political philosophy, or institutional affiliation of the authors.

Reviews may assist the editor in making editorial decisions. The reviews should be objective, honest, and supported with rational arguments.

Acknowledgment of All Sources. Relevant sources that may go against an argument or observation put forward in an article should not be omitted, on the contrary, they should be cited to provide context and an enlightened exchange of ideas.

Our editorial policy covers the text and images, interactive tools, and all other content published on Fit-and-Well.com, a website owned and managed by Patagonia Wellness (see contact details below).

We do not collect any personal health information from any individual or provide personal health advice. That is for your personal physician.

Our Content Policies

Ethical Standards

The content on our website Fit-and-Well.com must adhere to the Publishing Code of Ethics.

This content must be consistent, authoritative, credible, and evidence-based; free from any sponsorship or advertising bias.

Our online visitors can be confident that our editorial policy and decisions are guided by our Publishing Code of Ethics and free from any external influences (such as political, commercial, private or public advertisers, sponsors or supporters).

We write our content to empower consumers to distinguish quality websites that provide transparent, reliable and, trustworthy information those that do not.

Content Development

We select topics based on their relevance to the health and wellness of the general public. The actual content decisions are taken by the editor based on:

• Importance: The interest the topic may have for the website's audience;
• Timeliness: Important news or recent health-related discoveries. Seasonal subjects.
• Scientific significance: Communication and dissemination of significant scientific findings published in peer-reviewed journals.
• The editor's judgment.

No Third-Party content

We do not publish "third-party" content, and you will not find any content labeled as such or with the words "sponsored by...", "supported by..." or, "promoted by..." followed by the name of a third-party.

This means more objective content. You will not find spammy links to third-party products or services cloaked as genuine content.

Seek Professional Medical Advice

The content and information provided on our website is for educational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

If you have any questions regarding a medical condition or health issues, always seek the advice of your physician.

Do not delay seeking professional medical advice or disregard it because of something you have read on our Fit-and-Well.com website!

Please visit our Medical Disclaimer page for full details on the scope of the information provided on our website.

Original Content Creation

We produce our own original content, and these may be posted on our website as "News" or "Featured Articles". Advocacy and commentary will be clearly labeled as such.

The sources of our information are reliable peer-reviewed journals, publications by government health agencies, research reported by educational institutions or not-for-profit organizations.

We will critically review this information during the content creation process, validate and verify the original sources and contrast it with other information on the subject.

Content will be lively, engaging, fair, balanced, objective and, add value for our readers.

Advertising

Our advertising policy is detailed in our Advertisement Policy webpage, but we summarize its main points below:

• We make a clear distinction between advertising and content, and label advertising as such. We want our readers to distinguish our editorial content and information from advertising.
• We do not use Native Advertising (ads that are made to look like part of the webpage or the editorial flow of the page, they can mislead our readers).
• We do not allow certain topics to be advertised on our website.

The Advertiser is responsible for the accuracy of their advertising. We do not review the advertising before it is published, and it is not subject to this Editorial and Publishing guidelines.

Conflict of Interest

These guidelines should ensure objective reporting and content.

If you believe a piece of content, author or reviewer has been influenced by a conflict of interest, please get in touch with us (info@fit-and-well.com ).

Reader Feedback

We welcome and value our readers' feedback, comments, suggestions, corrections, and criticism. All feedback is read and acted upon but we may not respond to each communication received.

Corrections Policy

We aim at being accurate, accountable, and transparent. We acknowledge mistakes and correct them promptly and prominently. We explain corrections and clarifications carefully and clearly.

If you find an inaccuracy or inconsistency please let us know. We will investigate any claim of inaccuracy, and correct a factual error as soon as we become aware of it and can verify it.

No AI written content

Added 29.Dec.2024

We adhere to the recommendations on the responsible use of generative artificial intelligence tools by authors, reviewers, and editors which are summarized below:

• Generative AI tools should not be listed as authors on papers. Only persons can be morally responsible and accountable.
• Authors should be transparent about their use of generative AI, and editors should have access to tools and strategies for ensuring authors' transparency.
• Editors and reviewers should not rely solely on generative AI to review submitted papers.
• Editors retain final responsibility in selecting reviewers and should exercise active oversight of that task.
Final responsibility for the editing of a paper lies with human authors and editors.

All of our written content is created and written by human beings and not by AI tools.

How we ensure the quality of our content

Each article is reasearched in depth. This is a lenghty process. Writing is based on facts and accurate information which are interpreted in a rigorously.

An article may demand no less than 24 hours of editorial and review processing.

We follow these steps in our editorial quality process:

1. Research. The topic of the content is researched. Relevant peer-reviewed studies are used as sources. These may be renown journals (Nature, Science) or those published by medical associations (JAMA, BMJ), medical scholarly journals (The Lancet, Medscape), academic and educational institutions (Harvard Medicine magazine), government institutions or international organizations (WHO, NIH), just to mention a few.
   Interviews may also complement this research.
2. References, Sources, Attribution & Citations. The studies used in researching the topic are mentioned in each article, with a link to the original source in the article's text -in the form of a link and a numeral reference like this one: (3)
   The full citation is listed in the footnotes titled "References and Further Reading" at the bottom of the article.
   Self citation is allowed in agreement with the Legitimate Reasons for Self-Citation laid down by Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
3. Authors. The writer selected for the piece is an expert in in-depth research, interpretation of the information, and capable of creating content that is clear, accurate, and comprehensible for our readers. If the author is not a health professional, this fact will be clearly stated.
4. Editing. The first screening uses available software to detect plagiarized content and grammatical errors. A second screening checks the content to ensure concise language and clarity to make sure that medical terms and scientific concepts are explained in simple and readable language.
   The content is also carefully checked to validate the sources and citations.
   A cross-checking is then performed regarding quality: the article should meet our language, grammar, spelling, readability, code of ethics, plagiarism, and content guidelines.
5. Medical Review and Fact Check. The content is meticulously fact-checked for scientific and statistical accuracy by the research and editorial engineer.
   The content is reviewed by medical professionals to warrant factual accuracy.
6. Publishing and Authorship. Content is published once all the previous steps have been satisfied. Content hypertext and semantic layout are validated upon publication.
   The date of publication, author, and source are published with the article.
   This provides our readers with clear information on who created the content and when it was created.

Updates and Revisions

The content on Fit-and-Well.com is reviewed to include relevant new research and findings. The date of the last update is posted next to the article's headline.

Updates can result from new findings, guidelines, reader feedback, comments, and corrections.

Contact us

If you have any questions or comments, please get in touch with us at Patagonia Wellness, through our e-mail address: info@fit-and-well.com.

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Postal Address:

Patagonia Wellness
Liniers 440
Florida, B1602 Provincia de Buenos Aires
Argentina

Complementary Information

Please read all of our policies:

• Terms & Conditions
• Privacy Policy
• Affiliate Disclosure
• Advertisement Policy
• Don't Sell my Personal Information
• Cookie Policy
• Publishing Ethics
• Editorial Guidelines
• Medical Disclaimer

Issued on August 30, 2020. Revision 00.
Revised on Dec. 29, 2024 (AI use guidelines added).