Evaluation and publication process
All works submitted to the journal are externally reviewed. Specialists in a variety of academic disciplines from Spanish and international universities review articles for the journal. In 2020, 87.58% of the journal’s referees were external and 12.42% were internal. The journal’s database of referees has been built based on the recommendations of the Advisory Committee, as well as by considering applications from author’s who offered themselves voluntarily.
The journal Educatio Siglo XXI only accepts submissions of unpublished primary studies (empirical research) and secondary studies (meta-analytical, bibliometric research and systematic reviews prepared under PRISMA criteria). Theoretical reflections are not accepted.
We provide an evaluation tool for referees to use when reviewing articles. This comprises a template listing the publication criteria required by the journal. Template for referees (Plantilla para evaluadores/as).
Since 2019, the journal has operated using the Open Journal Systems (OJS). This is an open source journal management program created by the Public Knowledge Project at the University of British Columbia and it is available at the following link https://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/.
STEP 1: SUBMISSION
All articles must be original and unpublished and may not be undergoing any other evaluation process with any other journal or publisher. Submissions for articles are accepted in Spanish and English.
To facilitate the process of submitting articles in accordance with the criteria laid down by the journal, as well as offering detailed information and examples, the following Word template is provided: Template for authors (Plantilla para autores/as). Authors are asked to be as thorough as possible when following the format of the journal. The journal uses the guidelines provided by the American Psychological Association (APA) in the latest edition of its Publication Manual for presentation of works, citations and referencing: The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.
Themed sections have their own guidelines. You can consult these at the following link: Rules for themed sections (Normas para monográficos).
Each submission must include the following elements:
1. It must be an original, unpublished article that is not undergoing any other evaluation processes, with no reference to the authorship on the front page or in the body of the text. The articles’ first page must feature the title at the head (brief and reflecting the content) in Spanish and English; the author(s) complete name(s) (without abbreviations); institution; email; abstract in IMRYD format (maximum 250 words) and keywords (maximum 8) in Spanish, French and English. Articles must be between 5000 and 7000 words long.
2. Declaration of originality and copyright declaration (Declaración de originalidad y de derechos de autor) signed by the author or authors, stating that the work is original and unpublished and has not been published in any other format and is not in the process of being published in any other journal.
The first step authors must take to submit an article is to register on the journal’s platform: https://revistas.um.es/educatio/user/register. There are two ways of doing this:
1. Create an ORCID account or connect using it if you already have one.
2. Fill in the name, affiliation, country, email, username and password fields manually (keep a note of the password and username for future access). Accept the privacy agreement, indicate whether you would like to receive notifications about new publications or announcements and whether you would like to participate as a referee for the journal.
The second step is to access the journal using your account at https://revistas.um.es/educatio/login, where you have to enter your email address and password
The third step is to enter the relevant details and upload the file following these steps:
1. Start: specify the language, the section for which it is intended (Themed section, Articles or Reviews), comments for the editor (if deemed appropriate), activating contact regarding the submission, acceptance of the copyright declaration and privacy policy.
2. Upload the file: select the type of component to upload (article text, research tool, research materials, research results, etc.).
After this, drag and release the file so that it starts to upload to the platform (it will take a few minutes). Click on “continue” when it has finished.
3. Metadata: prefix (if you do not wish to consider the article and title determiners); article title; subtitle; abstract; author(s) and co-authors (full names, without initials); type (image, text, software, interactive); additional enhancements (subjects, keywords, support agencies); references.
4. Confirmation: click on “finish submission” to finalise uploading the article.
You can follow the review process on the platform and see what stage of the process it is at: proposal, review, editing and production. In order to view this, you must access the “submissions” section.
If any problems arise during the process, please contact the journal on reedumur@um.es
The timescale for notifying authors of the outcome of the first review of their work will never exceed 3 months from the date of receipt of the submission.
STEP 2: PLAGIARISM MONITORING
All works received will be uploaded to a plagiarism detection program to create a similarity report for the content. Any works with a level of similarity of over 20% will be rejected for publication. These results will be analysed by experts to see if they are simply because of chance coincidence or because the corresponding citation is not included. Authors will receive the report and the expert’s reasoned justification so that they can state their view with regards to it so that the journal can establish whether or not it is a case of behaviour connected to plagiarism. If it is, we will reject the submission and will not review it.
The main plagiarism detection program the journal uses is Turnitin. However, when it is deemed appropriate, other complementary plagiarism programs will be used, such as DupliCheker, Plagium or Copyscape.
STEP 3: DECISION (PEER REVIEW)
Submissions received will be reviewed by at least two external experts. The referees are external and independent of the journal. They are chosen by the editorial team to decide whether submissions are suitable for publication and, where necessary, to suggest appropriate modifications.
The results of the review can be:
1. Acceptance of the article.
2. Acceptance subject to major revisions.
3. Acceptance only with the suggested changes.
4. Not suitable for publication.
The basic criteria for evaluating the articles are: intellectual, scientific and methodological rigour; degree of internal coherence; appropriateness, topicality and interest of subject matter; originality and/or novelty of content; clarity and order of exposition and literary quality.
If the referees do not agree on a verdict, we will resolve this by seeking the opinion of a third referee.
If we reject your article, we will provide reasons for this decision.
We will email these reports to the author. We will only send them by post if the authors require acceptance on paper.
We will notify the author of the outcome, whatever it is, and will provide a copy of the reasoned justification provided by each referee.
We accept 77.28% of articles submitted and reject 22.72% (these figures might vary according to the year when the submission was undertaken).
STEP 4: PUBLISHING
If we require changes, the author or authors have up to 3 months to react to the observations made. If no response is received after this period, the work will be rejected and archived. The external referees will also examine corrected versions before final approval is given.
In the themed section, the original version of submitted articles can exceptionally be published if the coordinator of the issue expressly informs the author.
Before sending articles to press, the author or authors will receive the page proofs for final correction of errors. Once published, the author can receive an offprint from the online edition of the journal in pdf format (this maintains the form and pagination of the paper publication).
The journal does levy any charge on authors for processing, submitting, editing or publishing articles so there is no economic cost for authors who pass the review process.
STEP 5: DISSEMINATION
Educatio Siglo XXI requires authors to disseminate their work on social networks intended for academic dissemination and interaction between researchers after it is published. Spaces include ORCID, ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Google Scholar, Mendeley among others. To submit the article, you must register with your preferred platform and follow the steps listed to store the file. To find more social networks for researchers, look in the “Resources for referees” page in the “Social networks for academic dissemination” section.
Similarly, the journal undertakes to disseminate individually works by authors on the social networks on which it is present. At present, we post regularly on Twitter (https://twitter.com/EducatioSXXI) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/educatiosigloxxi/).
