Procedure for selection and approval of the articles

Double-blind external peer review

All the manuscripts will be subject to a reviewing process that consist of a double-blind external peer review, which implies all the evaluators must be external to the editorial organization and ensures the anonymity of both, authors and reviewers.

When the article is assigned for review, the process will take about five weeks.

 

Stages of the review and editorial process

Verification of the journal topic and norms: The manuscript must be related to the journal topic and scope and requirements established in the norms for authors.

Plagiarism free: The article must not contain any sort of plagiarism or self-plagiarism and any taken information must be cited according to the APA (7th version)

Acceptance of the manuscript: After overcoming the first stages of the process, the acceptance of the manuscript will be extended, and then, the double peer review process starts.

Double-blind peer review: After the acceptance, the Editor in Chief will assign the evaluators according to their expertise. For evaluation, the manuscript will be sent to two external reviewers, and they will fulfill the Evaluation Form available in the website for consults.

Reception of double-blind peer review: The peer reviewers will extend their opinion; either publish, publish with observations that must be applied either to the form or background or do not publish. If publication with observations is recommended, all the observations must be applied by the author who will be sending the new version of the manuscript in two weeks via electronic mail.

Judgment discrepancy: If one of the two peer reviewers considers the manuscript must not be published, the manuscript will be submitted to a third evaluator to settle the discrepancy. In case of a non-predicted conflict about the process, the editorial council of the Journal will make a decision.

Adjustments reception and acceptance:  When the author sends the version of the manuscript including all the comments within the assigned time-frame, adjustments will be verified and, in case of not included comments, the manuscript will be returned until all the comments are included. After this stage, the manuscript is considered an approved article.

Release and publishing: Approved by the editorial organization and surpassed the external blind-peer review and proofreading, the article will be published as post-print, which means an accepted and proofread version of the manuscript before the final process of edition and final version. This post-print will be published on the Journal website. When the final document is ready, the post-print is replaced by this version including the other formats of the final article. 

In total, the whole process can last from 3 to 4 months, approximately.