Instructions to Authors

Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

  • The work is unpublished and will not be sent to other journals while awaiting the decision of the editors of the journal Ciencias Psicológicas.
  • The text does not exceed 6000 words for research articles, 7000 for systematic reviews and 3000 words for brief communications, excluding in all cases bibliographical references, tables and figures.
  • Written authorization from the authors or publishing rights holders is provided for tables or figures taken from other publications. In all cases, it refers to the APA regulation on the presentation of tables and figures.
  • In-text citations and the list of bibliographic references are presented according to the guidelines of the Publications Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) in its 7th edition (see synthesis in the Author Guidelines).
  • The average of the referenced bibliography does not exceed the last 5 years.
  • For studies that involve the participation of humans or animals, the endorsement of an Ethics Committee for the research protocol is presented identifying the institution and the Ethics Committee that approved that protocol.
  • For human clinical trials, a copy of the corresponding registration is required.
  • The photographs and clinical materials of patients respect the anonymity of the people involved, as well as the name of the institutions that were the object of study, and the consent to publish such materials must also be included.
  • The data of the investigation will be available to the referees, if they require it.
  • In case of original research, the article includes the section "Data availability" in which the authors report whether and where the data set used is available (see indications in the Author Guidelines).
  • If the manuscript is accepted, it will be the responsibility of the authors to provide the English version of it, a translation that must be carried out by experts.
  • The authors have read, completed and sent together with the manuscript the Declaration of Responsibility for Authorship.
  • The manuscript follows the presentation format guidelines stipulated in Author Guidelines.
  • The authors have prepared an anonymous version of the work, following the instructions in Author Guidelines.

Author Guidelines

Ciencias Psicológicas accepts submissions year-round. All submissions must be made through the online platform OJS. Since 2024, preprints are accepted.

Format of manuscripts

The text of the article must be in a digital and editable (.docx or .doc) format. It must have a single line spacing, Times New Roman font, 12-point font size, in A4 format, with Word's default margins (top 2.5 cm; bottom 2.5 cm; right 3 cm; left 3 cm).

Tables and figures are presented in original format (.xls, .doc or .docx or other general-use software), inserted in the corresponding place in the text. Those figures that can only be presented in image format must have a high resolution.

The title in Spanish, English and Portuguese will appear at the top of the first page. It must be clear and precise, and contain the research variables.

The authors and their full institutional affiliation with their respective electronic and postal addresses, and the ORCID number of each author will appear in the following paragraph.

Subsequently, the abstract will be included in the three languages ​​(Spanish, English and Portuguese). It can have a maximum of 200 words. Next, five keywords in all three languages will be included. It is recommended to consult the Thesauri.

For the manuscript follow these suggested sections: Introduction, Materials and Method, Results, Discussion, Conclusions and References.

The entire document must be written in strict APA standards (7th ed.). This includes the writing style, tables and figures, and bibliographic references (see synthesis).

In articles resulting from original research, authors should include, below the bibliographic references, a section called " Data availability" in which they report whether the dataset used in their research is available and, if so, where to access it.  In case the authors have their data on any server, they should state this within the article as follows: "The dataset supporting the results of this study are available at [name and link to repository]".  Otherwise, they should include a sentence within the article stating the following: "The dataset supporting the results of this study is not available". More information here. Some possible open data repositories are: SciELO Data, Mendeley Data, Zenodo or PyschArchives.

How to prepare the anonymous file for review

To ensure double-blind review, authors should prepare a file that does not contain any information that could reveal their identity to potential reviewers.

Authors must take into account the following aspects:

  • The document must be classified as an "anonymous version" when uploaded to the platform, and must not contain information about the authors in the file name.
  • The anonymous file will not contain the names of the authors or their institutional affiliations, or acknowledgments or financing information revealed by the institution to which they belong.
  • In those passages where institutions or specific geographic coordinates –that allow the identification of the authors– are mentioned, the text will be replaced by crosses or, if necessary for understanding, by a description of the deleted element, between brackets. Examples: "The study was conducted among XXX students"; "The study was carried out among the students of the [study center]".
  • Citations to previous works by any of the authors of the manuscript should be replaced by the word “Author”. In the list of references, entries only identified with the word "Author" and the year in parentheses will be placed at the beginning, all the other data must be deleted. Example in the text: "As already studied (Author, 2019)". Example in the reference list: Author. (2019).
  • Authors should check in the word processor that there is no metadata in the file that identifies any user by name or surname. In Word for Windows, you can check and delete this information in the menu “Information> Inspect Document”. In Word for MacOS, it can be done in "Protect document> Delete personal information when saving".

Declaration of responsibility of authorship

All authors of the article must read, complete and sign the following Declaration of Responsibility of Authorship. This must be included in the submission, together with the manuscript and the anonymous version.

Editorial process

Receipt of submitted papers will be acknowledged and acceptance, proposed modification or rejection will be notified within a period of no more than 3 months, once the editorial review phase is completed. As part of the initial process, a plagiarism check of the manuscript will be carried out using Crossref and Turnitin software.

Taking into account the specificity of the topic and the availability of expert referees, the authors will be informed about the timing of the second phase (approximately 6 months).

Each referee must complete the guidelines of the evaluation form and may make contributions, suggestions and recommendations in the manuscript, in review format.

The evaluations of the referees are considered by the Scientific Editor and sent to the authors. The results of the evaluation can be three: A) accepted without modifications, B) accepted with modifications, C) rejected. Manuscripts that need to be corrected should be sent to the Editor in-chief within the deadlines stipulated for this (generally a maximum of one month).

The 2022 journal rejection rate was 54%.

Once the manuscript was accepted for its publication, the Editorial Board reserves the right to publish the work in the number and volume they deem convenient, maintaining the system of continuous publication of contents.

Editorial management, arbitration, as well as electronic publication, will not accrue costs for the authors; they will be in charge of providing the English version of the accepted manuscript, a translation that must be done by experts.

The Letters to the Editor refer exclusively to research articles published in the journal and are framed within the formal requirements of all scientific discussion; the proposals must be justified and supported by a bibliography that supports them.

ORIGINAL ARTICLES

Original research articles and/or systematic reviews are published in this section.

COMMUNICATION

Occasionally, the journal may publish communications, systematic reviews, or conferences of interest. These are generally invitations from the Editorial Team.

Copyright Notice

The reproduction rights of the article are granted under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
(CC BY 4.0), open access system.

Privacy Statement

The names and e-mail addresses entered in this journal will be used exclusively for the purposes established therein and will not be provided to third parties or for their use for other purposes.

 

 

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