Submissions

AUTHOR GUIDE

Before you start

We recommend that you review the sections that correspond to Journal Policies, so that you can consult the journal's topics and scope, as well as its sections and how we review articles for publication.

Authors must register with the journal to be able to submit contents. If you are already registered, you may simply identify yourself  and begin the five-step process.

Journal profile

REurEDC only publishes articles in Spanish, focusing on topics revolving around the teaching and popularization of experimental sciences. The content must be original, unpublished, and not under consideration for publication by any other publishing house.

Only manuscripts written in Spanish are accepted, although the editorial team may decide to invite collaborators to submit works in English. These manuscripts will also undergo a peer review process in these cases.

Guidelines

The manuscripts must include an abstract and a list of keywords in both Spanish and English, as well as a title, which must also appear in both languages.

The manuscripts must combine their informational capacity, and spirit, with the necessary rigour that must always characterize a scientific journal, a journal that in our case focuses on educational issues and contexts. Therefore, it is necessary that the authors include the corresponding references in their proposals, thus expounding the foundations of the points of view expressed in the manuscript.

Since the edition and layout processes are carried out using free software, manuscripts must be prepared in OpenOffice format, presented according to the guidelines, and ready to be published (if they are accepted). Hence, the authors should use the template designed for this purpose in OpenOffice format (download template) (please verify layout guidelines). If any additional materials are provided, these materials must also be correctly included using the same template, but in a separate file.

In order to supplement the information provided in the main body of the text, the manuscripts may incorporate charts, which must be numbered in their corresponding location, where they appear, within the body of the text.

Likewise, if deemed necessary, other figures may be included (graphs, diagrams, concept maps, drawings, photographs, etc.); these figures are essential if pictures are included. Authors will make sure of the quality of the figures included (jpg or png format), minimum 300-ppp resolution, and these will be zipped so that their incorporation does not result in the submission of a file exceeding 5 Mb.

Barring exceptions, manuscripts being submitted will not exceed 45,000 characters (without spaces) for the following sections: “Foundations and lines of work”, “Science: past and present”, “Science Education today”, “Science education and sustainability”, “Science teacher training”, and “Experiences, resources and other works", and 25,000 characters for the “Fun science” section. Nevertheless, longer articles may be accepted as long as this is justified on the grounds of a better contextualization of the educational framework in which the study is performed: teaching-learning sequences, teaching units, rubrics and research tools, etc. However, the most recommended option for including such information is for authors to include such complementary materials in the form of files deposited in public repositories through unique and persistent identifiers (doi or handle), explicitly linking them in the text of the article through the corresponding link.

In the same way, authors are recommended to deposit the research data underlying the publications, in open access institutional or thematic repositories federated in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).

For citations and the list of references, APA 7^th Edition will be applied.

Manuscript submission

Authors must sign in to the journal in order to submit a manuscript or, if previously registered, they can simply log in and start the five-step process. Please include all the requested data, clearly specifying your ORCID.

Once logged in with their passwords, authors will find in their submission box an option for a “New submission”. Please carefully follow the instructions and incorporate all the information requested in the metadata (title, abstract, keywords, references, etc.), specifying names and surnames and all the information requested (affiliation, ORCID, etc.) for all participating authors.

Review process

Every article will undergo a two-stage review. In the first stage, the members of the Editorial Board of the journal will select those works in line with the profile of the journal that meet the required criteria and minimum quality standards. The criteria that must be met which will be assessed in this first review will be the following:

1.- The submitted manuscript ties in with the thematic line of the journal.

2.- The manuscript contains new elements with regards to previously published works, meets minimum quality standards, and does not exceed the maximum number of characters specified for the section to which it is directed.

3.- Authors have included, at least, the following metadata: name, surname, affiliation, e-mail address and ORCID code of all authors, and the abstract of the article.

4.- The manuscript has been prepared using the template and follows the required layout guidelines.

5.- The manuscript passes the plagiarism and anti-plagiarism test that will be performed with a tool especially designed for this purpose. Those works with texts with a high level of correspondence with articles already on the Internet will be rejected straightaway.

Only those submissions succeeding in this preliminary review will proceed to the second stage, the peer review process.

In this second stage, the works will undergo a peer review process, performed by two anonymous reviewers (double-blind), who may or may not belong to the advisory board of the journal. Both reviewers will each issue a report stating the advisability of publishing or not publishing the manuscript, explaining the motives for this decision. In the event of disagreement, a third party will be convened. Finally, the editor will draw up a report summarizing the views of the reviewers and concluding with one of the following decisions:

a)       “Accept submission”, meaning the manuscript would be included in the edition line, therefore being published as submitted.

b) “Revisions required”, meaning the article would be publishable with minor changes, to which the authors must respond within two months.

c) “Resubmit for review”, meaning the authors must introduce substantial changes to the manuscript so that it can be reassessed, by the same reviewers in the first stage. In this event, the authors must submit the new version within three months.

d) “Decline submission”.

Within approximately three months, the authors will be informed of the results of the review process and of the decision of acceptance or rejection of the manuscript and, where applicable, the corresponding proposal of changes. However, it is important to bear in mind that the process may take longer when more than two reviewers are needed or when the assessment requires more than just one review process. Nevertheless, the journal will always try to minimise delays.

Authors must submit the revised version within three months. Failing this, the manuscript will be labelled as declined, and so any version submitted afterwards will necessarily start again at the initial stage of the review process.

The new version must be submitted with a written document wherein the authors expound the changes introduced to the new version, compared to the previous one, responding to the remarks and suggestions of the reviewers. If any of the recommendations were not accepted, these decisions must be suitably justified.

Pre-print and revisions

Once the article has been accepted, authors will receive the pre-print version in PDF format well in advance, and will have a week to suggest changes or amendments to the submitted text. These changes must be limited to minor errors, slight style changes, and improvement of the quality of charts and figures.

Once corrections have been completed, the articles will be published as preprints, which is why we consider the publication frequency of this journal as similar to that of continuous publishing journals. The average time for the article assessment process, from submission to publication, is estimated to be between four and six months.