Editorial Process
From the reception of the manuscript the Revista Cuidarte implements standardized editorial processes and integral quality assurance procedures. All articles, except for the journal editorial or letters to the editor, are subjected to a prior strict review, that once completed, can lead to a peer review and editorial decision. Controls keep being applied until 15 days after the article was published. In the Revista Cuidarte the goal of peer review is to assess the quality of articles submitted for publication in a scholarly journal by experts in a specific field of research. Before an article is deemed appropriate for publication it must undergo an evaluation process. Fig. 1.
- The author of the article must submit it to the Revista Cuidarte editor who forwards the article to experts in the field, after it has been processed through the relevant journal submission system. Because the reviewers specialize in the same scholarly area as the author, they are considered the author’s peers (hence “peer-review”).
- These impartial reviewers are charged with carefully evaluating the quality of the submitted manuscript, often using their own evaluation criteria to assist the review process.
- The peer reviewers check a number of issues in the manuscript including assessing the validity of the research methodology and procedures. They would also be vigilant for any unethical practice in the research or plagiarism.
- If appropriate, they may recommend revisions and re-submission of an article. In other cases they may recommend rejection for various reasons. The editor of a journal is reliant on its reviewers to offer guidance on whether to accept or reject an article. Source
STEPS
- INITIAL REVIEW - PRE-CHECK. Responsible Person: Editor, Editorial Board, Editorial Manager. Term: 8 days. Ending with: An email from the editor to the author confirming its approval or rejection for editing. Verifications: (1) If the manuscript is within the thematic and methodological scope of the Journal. (2) If the information related to authorship and affiliation is reliable. (3) If the document meets the criteria of the Journal (guide for authors). (4) If the bibliography is of the accepted size, contemporary and documentary composition required. Check at least 10 references. (5) If the manuscript meets bioethics statements (if required). (6) If the article has not apparently been published in other Journal in Spanish, English, or Portuguese. (7) If the manuscript potentially shows an evidence of plagiarism. (8) If it is possible to deduce from its reading that it is a reasonably well-written manuscript. (9) If it does not exceed the institutional or national publication fees that the Journal imposes itself. Low-quality manuscripts or containing false information on authors, proven plagiarism or lack of any other required information must be immediately rejected. Manuscripts requiring further evaluation will be submitted to an associate editor or member of the Editorial Board, in addition to the peer review.
- EXTERNAL PEER REVIEW - PEER REVIEW. Responsible Person: Editor, Editorial Manager, Evaluators. Terms: 1 week to select evaluators, 1 week to check for availability to evaluate, 3 to 4 weeks to evaluate. Communications: Invitation to the evaluator, submission of the manuscript and evaluation guidelines, acknowledgment of evaluation receipt, description of future steps, certification of performance as evaluator. The editor decides which researcher is invited to act as a reviewer of a manuscript. Authors should not suggest any evaluators due to conflicts of interest. Revista Cuidarte has a database of evaluators who are entailed to follow response times and reflect quality in their evaluations. Reviewers are selected on the basis of research experience in the subject matter of the manuscript, proficiency in the language of the document being evaluated, their availability for evaluation and response times. In this process, reviewers and authors must not have any potential conflict of interest.
- REVIEW. Responsible Person: Author and Editor. Terms: 1 week for the author to review, 1 week for the editor to review. Communications: Observation letter to author and request to review and adjust the manuscript, if having any comments from the evaluators. If the manuscript is acceptable for its publication without including observations made by peer reviewers. Authors are requested to review the manuscript before sending it back to the Editor. In this stage, the authors must: Improve graphs and images, complete bibliography information, adjust citing to the Journal guidelines, adjust and include observations made by the editor, complete bibliography with suggestions made by evaluators or editors,this is the last instance in which it is acceptable to include a forgotten author or an omitted affiliation in the manuscript.
- EDITOR’S DECISION. Responsible Person: Editor, Editorial Board, Guest Editor Terms: 1 week for the editor to review. Communications: Acceptance letter to the author. The decision of acceptance is only made by the Editor-in-Chief, who delegates this decision to associated editors or guest editors in certain cases (if in the event of.) If one of the editors has a conflict of interest, he or she is excluded from the decision. Criteria to be considered in the decision: if reviewers are qualified and suitable to review the manuscript, if comments were carefully and adequately provided, If authors have appropriately responded to comments, If the manuscript meets the standards for its publication in the Journal at that time, If a new manuscript evaluation is carried out at this stage in search of plagiarism. The Editor may accept, reject or request additional reviews from authors. The Editor might make a decision that conflicts with that of the reviewers. if so, the editor must justify his or her decision.
- PRODUCTION, CORRECTION AND PUBLICATION. Responsible Person: Editor, Layout person. Terms: 1 week to layout and control, 1 week for the author to check.Communications: Galley proof sent to the author, galley proof sent by the author. Production process includes editing design, review of editing language and conversion to other formats for indexing and purposes. This process is carried out internally. Aspects to be designed: Initial page, DOI assignment, article body, tables and graphs, headers and footers, notes: funding, co-author liability, references. Before publishing, the authors will have one last chance to check the final version and make only minor corrections.
- CORRECTION AND RETRACTION. Responsible Person: Editor, authors, readers. Terms: In case of complaints, 1 week to apply the protocol. Communications: Meetings minutes, COPE protocols, Editor’s opinion, derived actions based on the COPE recommendations. Corrections for important errors after their publication will be separately published as a correction at the end of each issue of the Journal. Minor errors that do not interfere with the understanding of the study will be corrected on the online versions within the first 15 days after its publication. Retractions are published when authors, readers or editors find out any honest errors or scientific misconduct in the article after its publication. The editor will examine such document on a case-by-case basis and will contact authors and external reviewers before making a final decision. Protocols defined by COPE will be used to determine conduct. Once misconduct has been classified, actions to be taken will be in accordance with COPE procedures.
CONTROLES DE QUALIDADE
- Editor Quality. The editor, editorial board and guest editors are guarantors of the quality of the result and editing process. Their conduct must strictly follow the editorial ethics, comply with the editorial process and the standardized evaluation. The Journal publishes the names of the editors and members of the editorial board with their contact information, position in the Journal and work affiliation
- Reviewer Quality. Selection of appropriate reviewers: must be productive in the field, must be active in the field, must have previously evaluated well and on time, must not have any conflict of interest, must have not been the coauthor of the evaluated author.
- Quality of the Review made by External Pairs. To review a manuscript, external reviewers must follow an online evaluation report system which covers the key points that reviewers must evaluate and comment, using a format destined for that.
- Quality of the Editor’s decision. Validation of the work and its importance for the scientific community must always prevail in this type of decisions. The editor may be guided by the politics of the Journal’s editorial board and limited by the legal requirements regarding defamation, copyright infringement and plagiarism. Editor’s decisions are based on the evaluation reports of the manuscripts made by reviewers or members of the editorial board. Manuscripts are reviewed based on their scientific content without distinction of race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, ethnic origin, nationality or politic view of the authors. A double-blind evaluation system will be used to avoid any bias in the process of manuscript evaluation. In this type of review, reviewers do not know the personal and professional identity of authors in the same way that authors do not know the identity of reviewers. External or guest editors are volunteers with honorary positions. They are obliged to avoid any conflict of interest with authors.
- Quality after publication. Our Journal publishes in an open access model, which means that once a document is published online, it is open to the public. Anyone can have access to the complete text without any restriction. Therefore, documents can be checked easily and freely as many times as required. If you have any question about an article, we welcome your comments and suggestions or send us a letter to the Editor. If there are scientific errors or occasional ethical problems, please contact us to initiate an investigation and take immediate action. If problems are proven, we will start the corresponding correction or retraction procedure
