Open Journal Systems | Investigación y Acción

Approach and Scope

The Investigación y Acción journal of the Universidad del Atlántico is an interdisciplinary publication, oriented towards the dissemination of products resulting from formative research processes developed by the Universidad del Atlántico and framed in specific knowledge of areas such as Architecture, Fine Arts, Sciences Basic Sciences, Education, Nutrition and Dietetics, Chemistry and Pharmacy, Economic Sciences, Human Sciences, Legal Sciences, and Engineering. Public original articles. Articles are refereed through a double-blind process. Investigation and Action publishes an average of 10 articles per year. Investigation and Action is governed by the Principles of Transparency and Good Practices in the Academic Edition of COPE. The Investigación y Acción journal is supported by the Universidad del Atlántico de Colombia.p>

Publication Frequency

The Investigación y Acción journal is published biannually, with an anticipated periodicity published in the months of January and July, by Ediciones Universidad del Atlántico. It has been circulating since 2021 in electronic format in Open Access, publishing works in Spanish and English.

Preservation

Subscription Fees

Since it is an open-access journal funded by the Universidad del Atlántico Publishing, authors do not need to pay to submit or publish their articles.

Copyright

Authors’ will retain their copyright and they will guarantee to Investigación y Acción journal the right of first publication of their work, subject to Creative Commons Attribution License simultaneously that allows to third parties to share the work whenever their ,Author and its first publication in this journal.

Authors may adopt other non-exclusive license agreements to distribute the version of the published work (eg to be deposited in an institutional telematic file or published in a monographic issue) provided the initial publication is indicated in this journal.

Creative Commons License

Investigación y Acción is subject to the Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license.

Under this license, you are free to do the following:

Share – Copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format

Adapt – Remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, including commercial purposes

License terms:

Attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.

No additional restrictions – You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.

Journal Sponsors

Investigación y Acción is sponsored in full by Universidad del Atlántico Publishing.

Open-Access Policy

Investigación y Acción provides immediate open access to its content, practicing the principle of making research available to society free of charge, thus fostering the continuous exchange of knowledge.

Investigación y Acción is subject to the Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 license, which allows articles to be downloaded and shared, provided appropriate credit is given to their respective authors. Copyrights are published in this journal. Furthermore, authors do not need to pay for peer review or publication processes.

Self-Archiving and Maintenance

This journal uses the LOCKSS system to create an archive system distributed among participating libraries, thus allowing those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for preservation and restoration purposes. Articles are archived immediately after their post-print version is published (i.e., the final draft post peer review) in the institutional repository as well as in the OJS.

Anti-Plagiarism Policy

Investigación y Acción is governed by the regulations of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), which is applied in Colombia through decision No. 351 of 1993 of the Commission of the Cartagena Agreement, Law No. 23 of 1982, and other laws posthumously approved, supporting the protection of authors’ intellectual property of the documents presented for arbitration. For this reason, articles received will be analyzed using the IThenticate software, wherein a similarity and plagiarism report will be generated. If it identifies a 20% similarity between the information provided in the article submitted and another article previously published in this or another journal, the editorial team will have to write to the authors and give them a reasonable term of 20 calendar days to answer and defend themselves in this situation and assume the corresponding legal responsibility, which would imply non-publication of the text.

Property Rights

Justice assumes that all persons that appear as authors have permitted the possible publication of their article and that their opinions or comments are their responsibility. The authors must specify that the document is unpublished, that they are the true authors, and that they respect the intellectual property rights of third parties. They must also state that the article has not been simultaneously submitted for publication in another journal and that they obtained the necessary permission to reproduce any material protected by reproduction rights. If an article is accepted for publication, printing and reproduction rights in any form or by any means belong to the authors.

The withdrawal of an article must be requested to the editor in writing, effective after the written response provided by the editor. To that effect, the authors must send the notification by mail to investigacionyaccion@mail.uniatlantico.edu.co, and they will receive a response in the same form.

Conflict of Interest Statement

Justice expects authors to make a statement about any business relationship that may be considered a conflict of interest in connection with the submitted article. Likewise, Investigación y Acción expects authors to propose their articles and guarantee that their procedures and methodologies adhere to international ethic codes of scientific research in social, human, and legal sciences and other related sciences. This guarantee shall be recorded in writing in the form of a transfer of copyright, and conflict of interest statement, which must be requested at the time the article is submitted and in the form of a transfer of copyright of the author. Investigación y Acción will reject all articles that implicitly or explicitly contain experiences, methods, procedures, or any other activity that follows practices that are unethical, discriminatory, offensive, aggressive; practices that affect the fundamental rights of third parties, among others; and articles that, if published, do not clearly express any type of conflict of interest, with the decision to publish at the discretion of the Editorial Committee.

Ethics Policy

A set of guidelines based on axiological and deontological principles that aim to enhance the ethical aspects of editorial processes and honesty of professionals dedicated to the fulfillment of that laudable work, in performing each of their roles

Code of Ethics for Authors:

Authors must declare originality, the article’s clarity, data truthfulness, as well as the validity of the study and its relevance in relation to the scope of the journal.
They must know the instructions for authors and follow them comprehensively.
Authors must declare any relevant conflict of interest for all contributors, if any.
They must tell editors if a particular individual should not review the submitted material, as long as such requests are reasonable and possible.
They must know the dates of journal publications and deadlines for delivery and acceptance of articles.
Authors can object to editorial decisions.
Proofreaders must maintain strict confidentiality in evaluating a manuscript and must not disclose its content to third parties.
The opinion of proofreaders is vital in determining the originality of the content and guaranteeing the scientific and literary quality of the manuscript.
Evaluations must include a thorough analysis of the manuscript by confirming the information provided and verifying the scientific literacy used for the document to present a quantitative and qualitative report to editors regarding the work’s suitability for publication.
Proofreaders must issue comments on ethical conflicts and possible inappropriate research behavior and publication that arise from the material received.

Code of Ethics for Editors

Editors must ensure the quality of the material that is to be published in the journal.
They must choose expert peers who have knowledge, experience, and academic careers in the subject and who do not have a conflict of interest with the task.
They must respect authors’ rights.
Editors must guarantee the confidentiality and anonymity of authors and proofreaders during the entire process as well as the matter related to consent and special requirements for research involving human beings and animals.
They must publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when necessary.
Editors must actively seek points of views from authors, readers, proofreaders, committee members, and/or editorial boards from other journals regarding possible ways of improving their publication processes.
They must comply with Investigación y Acción’s bi-annual frequency.
Editors must identify, select, and review the composition of the journal’s Editorial Committee and Scientific Committee members, in accordance with members’ experience and academic careers.
Editors must use systems implemented to detect the falsification of data, both as part of their routine and cases in which plagiarism is suspected.

The withdrawal of an article must be requested to the editor in writing, effective after the written response provided by the editor. To that effect, authors must send the notification by mail to investigacionyaccion@mail.uniatlantico.edu.co, and they will receive a response in the same form. When appropriate, an explanation about the procedures followed in the research will be included to guarantee the fulfillment of the ethical principles and regulations from the Declaration of Helsinki of 1975 and its subsequent amendments.

Code of Ethics for Arbitrators

Manuscripts are reviewed by expert peers using the double-blind process, which guarantees that the review complies with the standards of anonymity.
Proofreaders must declare if there is conflict of interest, which must arise from closeness or hostility toward authors. Furthermore, they must state if they identify the authors despite the fact that their names have been removed from the manuscript. The arbitrators shall declare any conflict of interest and reject the invitation of editors to evaluate the manuscript when, for example, they identify the authorship of the article; they are academically close to the authors; they are part of their family; they belong to the same university, department, research group, professional network, or research project; or they have any other type of connection or professional conflict/closeness. In this case, the proofreader must reject the editor’s offer to review the article.
Proofreaders must review the article in the period of time assigned by the journal, with the purpose of respecting delivery dates, which shall not be more than 60 days, out of respect for authors and their work.

Ethics policies, plagiarism detection, and malpractice statement

Statement on Ethical Principles and Best Practices in Academic Publishing

This journal adopts the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing, published in June 2015 by the Committee on Publication Ethics ((COPE), available at http://publicationethics.org/; last accessed on February 10, 2017). In terms of authorship and contributions, these principles establish that “an author must take responsibility for at least one component of the work, should be able to identify who is responsible for each other component, and should ideally be confident in their co-authors’ ability and integrity.” Hence, Investigación y Acción requires all authors to provide a description of their contributions to the article submitted for publication and follow these criteria in order to allocate authorship:

Make a substantial contribution to the conception and design of the research; to the collection of data; or to the processing, analysis, and interpretation of data
Draft the article
Approve the final article to be submitted

Authors who satisfy these criteria must submit an Assignment of Patrimonial Rights of Authors and a Conflict of Interest Statement. Additionally, the sender of any article for publication will be identified as the guarantor of the whole work and will be in charge of receiving and sending all notices related to the editing process, including the peer review process. Furthermore, the guarantor will be in charge of determining the appropriate order of authorship and identifying each author, including institutional affiliation and the name of the respective group, if appropriate.

With regard to the Acknowledgments Section, Investigación y Acción agrees to include collaborators who do not meet the authorship criteria but were somehow related to the creation and execution of the project or to the article’s drafting such as, for example, someone providing technical support, participating in drafting the article, designing the research, or collecting and analyzing data, as well as departments that have contributed to the overall project. Financial and material aid must also be included in this section, in which case the guarantor must include the name and contribution made by individuals or institutions providing aid (should it be a natural person, his/her institutional affiliation must also be included). In all cases, collaborators who are not authors must provide written authorization to be included in this section.

Additionally, according to the same principles previously mentioned, Investigación y Acción’s publishing team adheres to the following:

Accepts or rejects any article for publication based exclusively on its relevance, originality, clarity, and suitability for the journal
Gives priority to articles that question or disagree with articles previously published in this journal
Does not exclude research with negative results
Maintains strict confidentiality for all documents received
Is responsible for making any necessary corrections
Agrees to first have editors contact authors if improper conduct is suspected, before contacting the relevant institution
Agrees that other specific situations within the editorial process will also be based on these principles and recommendations
Seeks to preserve the identity of any individual whose photos or information have been included in the articles submitted for publication

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses published in this journal will be used exclusively for the purposes specified by this journal and will not be used for any other purposes or made available for any third parties.

Article Retraction

Investigación y Acción has the right to inform or alert its readers and the scientific community about any voluntary or involuntary errors appearing in its publications, as well as any evident fraud committed by authors. Retraction will take place in the following cases: modification of research results, distortion and manipulation of discussions and conclusions, full or partial plagiarism, proven fictitious authorship, unacknowledged co-authorship, duplicate publication (i.e., when the same article has already been published in other media), and other situations contrary to ethics and best practices in academic publishing. In all cases, errors will be published in subsequent editions to correct them.

Complaints

Any authors or collaborators directly or indirectly involved in the editorial process may express their disagreement as to one or more stages prior to the acceptance or rejection of any article submitted to peer review by sending a written complaint to the Editor at investigacionyaccion@mail.uniatlantico.edu.co. Once the request has been reviewed, the case will be brought before the Editorial Committee, composed of the Editor, a member of the working team, and a representative from the Publications Department of Universidad del Atlántico.

Policies by Section

Editorial: This can include opinions or scientific content. Scientific editorials imply a strict update or interesting explanation about certain scientific topics. Opinion editorials are those that gather point of view or social stances and behavior of the scientific community regarding a topic of interest in common with researchers and health professionals.

Original article: It is a document that presents in detail the original results of concluded research projects. The structure of the article must have the following sections: introduction, methodology, results, discussion, conclusions, and bibliography (only include bibliographic references cited in the text).

Review article: It is a document that is the result of concluded research where the results of published or unpublished research are analyzed, systemized, and integrated, in a field related to science or technology, with the purpose of showing advances in development and trends.

Reflection article: It is a document that presents results from concluded research from an analytical, interpretative, or critical point of view by the author about a specific topic, with reference to original sources.

Peer Evaluation Process

Article review will consist of three stages: preliminary evaluation, referral of the document to the arbitrators, and the final decision.

Preliminary evaluation: It is the first stage of the process, in which the formal aspects and implementation of current APA rules are reviewed.

Arbitration: It is the second stage of the process, in which arbitrators verify if the article complies with the required structure of scientific quality to continue forward until publication. It will also be referred to two peers to be assessed using the double-blind process. In their assessment and implementation of objective criteria, they must determine if the article fits the substance and format expectation for publication. Corrections, if made, must be done in the shortest period of time possible, so that the document can be included in the journal’s upcoming volume.

The peer evaluation process was developed in accordance with the following aspects:

Article review is based on the qualification of each of the described items in the journal’s scope and objective; if one of them is not fulfilled, the document is returned to its author to be properly amended.
After the general filter, the article is referred to its arbitrators so that they can decide on its scientific quality, as well as its fulfillment of the specific parameters indicated by the journal to move forward with its publication.
The timeline to review the article and determine its admission and delivery to the arbitration process will be 15 calendar days.
The timeline for article arbitration will be one calendar month. After that date, the author will be informed if his or her article will be published or rejected. If the reasons for rejection can be remediated, the author will have 15 days to amend the document and send it again, but if the document fails to comply with the minimum criteria required by the journal, it will be returned with the corresponding admission rejection evaluation referred by the appointed arbitrators.

Final decision: It is the third and last stage of article evaluation. The Editorial Committee decides whether or not the article will be published after reading the analysis from the arbitrators and verifying the implementation of recommendations made to the article’s author.

The article’s publication is subject to all of the items previously described, in the three aspects to be evaluated; the willingness of authors to include suggestions in the document should be stated within a period of 60 days of them being sent via email. If these suggestions are satisfactorily implemented, Investigación y Acción’s Editorial Team will conclude this stage and make final edits to achieve the best version of the article without eliminating or replacing information that affects its integrity.

For more information, check the journal’s Editorial Policy, in the About Us and Policy sections. Click the document

Ethics note: In accordance with Investigación y Acción’s policies for article publication, it will be considered unethical on the part of authors to submit for evaluation articles that have previously been published, which do not comply with the appropriate citation and reference criteria, or which have been submitted for evaluation simultaneously in different publications. Moreover, taking into account the double-blind evaluation process, any attempt to contact the evaluators with the intention of attempting to influence the evaluation result will be deemed unethical.

Reviewer Guidelines

Article Review Instructions

The articles sent to Investigación y Acción must strictly comply with all the instructions to submit manuscripts found in the “Author Guidelines” section.

The article evaluation form may be downloaded from the following link: Arbitration Form.

Bibliographical references must be adjusted to APA style, 6th edition, 2018 update. In addition to the formal aspects, peer evaluators, within their expertise, must assess the importance of the article’s content and its relevance to the scientific community, and if the work will be published. Evaluators must answer each of the items on the evaluation form (if the type of article is applicable), provide their comments regarding it, and issue their decision, which consists of three [sic] options: accept without modifications, accept with modifications, and reject the submission.

Accept the submission without modifications: (Accept Submission). Choose this option if you recommend that the submission be accepted as is.

Accept the submission with modifications. (Revisions Required). You believe the article needs light editing.

Reject the submission. (Decline Submission). You recommend that the submission not be accepted.

Finally, evaluators will be able to provide their comments to the authors to improve the article, both in the article during the blind process and on the evaluation form.

The purposes of Investigación y Acción’s peer review process are as follows:

To verify the quality of the research before publication
To identify errors missed by authors
To provide feedback to authors in order to improve their research processes

One of the fundamental requirements of peer review is confidentiality, and therefore, we request that the articles evaluated not be shared with third parties.

Evaluation Criteria

Investigación y Acción requests its evaluators review the following criteria:

1	Article’s relation (relevance) to the journal	It presents an appropriate sequence and coherence in the topic’s development, the treatment of the topic is based on current and reliable sources, the methodology is suitable, and the results are analyzed and discussed based on scientific literature.
2	Article’s formal aspects	Clear and explicit identification of the title, including all article components (abstract, introduction, conclusions, keywords, materials and methods, results, bibliography)
3	Article’s content or substantial aspect	The research problem is clearly defined and relevant for legal, social, and human sciences. There is sufficient discussion of the literature or bibliographical references to establish the state of the issue dealt with in the article.
4	General assessment	Classification corresponding to the evaluated article

Editorial Pick

Indexed in