Editorial policies

Editorial policies

I. Focus and scope

The Puerto Rico Journal of Education is an academic peer-reviewed journal published by the Educational Research Center at the College of Education, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus. The journal accepts unpublished original works that discuss and analyse, with academic diligence, topics of interest for the field of education. It targets professionals, researchers and students of education and related areas.

II. Publication frequency

The Puerto Rico Journal of Education publishes on a continual basis; which means, new articles come online as soon as they are edited and approved by the Editorial Board. The journal publishes a minimum of 16 research-based articles per year (usually 80% of the content), collected in one issue per semester (January to June, and July to December).

III. About the papers submitted to Puerto Rico Journal of Education

The Puerto Rico Journal of Education will consider for publication papers written in Spanish or English, in the following categories: research and evaluation; descriptive, reflexive or debate expositions; reports of projects completed or in progress; book reviews; short essays, and creative work relevant to the field of education.

  • Besides research papers, the research or evaluation category also includes: research or evaluation reports, meta-analysis, and analysis or theoretical synthesis of a set of studies.
  • The descriptive, reflexive or debate expositions include: philosophical, theoretical, methodological and historical analyses on topics related to education; analysis of education policy trends; implications of research in practice, and literature reviews, among others.
  • Reports of projects completed or in progress refers to the description of educational projects, their results or implications to transform existing educational policies or practices, or their social impact.
  • Book reviews will address the description and analysis of the contents of recent books or other publications that may have an impact on education.
  • The short essays are duly argued expositions about topics, debates or current issues related to the field of education.
  • Creative work refers to any work or project that stands out for its originality and innovative contribution to education, such as: design of educational materials, distance education platforms, didactic applications, among others.

All articles submitted for publication must follow the standards and style guidelines established by the most recent edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA style). Also, it must comply with the requirements on the use of inclusive language in terms of gender, race or any other diversity (ie nationality, ethnicity, religion, among others).

Only original works will be accepted. Papers in review by another journal or publisher, or that is expected to be published in another journal, will not be considered.

Any author interested in submitting a collaboration should send it through the journal‘s portal, at https://revistas.upr.edu/index.php/educacion. At the top that webpage, there is an option to REGISTER. You must complete the registration process. If you are a registered user already, just log in to acess your account.

After creating an account, authors will be able to upload a file in Microsoft Word format or other compatible word processor. Submissions in PDF format or any other not editable format will be rejected.

Authors should ensure that their paper maintains the following format recommendations:

  1. On the document‘s first page, indicate:
    • Title of the paper in its original language (Spanish or English).
    • Title's translation (if your paper is in Spanish, translate to English, or viceversa).
    • Abstract of no more than 150 words in Spanish and English.
    • A list of keywords (no more than five descriptors), in Spanish and English, highlighting the main topics.
    • After that, include the contents of the paper.
  2. Use Times New Roman, in 12 points.
  3. All text must be double spaced.
  4. Papers presenting research or evaluations; descriptive, reflexive or debate expositions, and progress reports must not exceed a maximum of 20 pages, including references (sources consulted), appendices and notes, if any. The latter should appear at the end of the paper (do not include footnotes).
  5. Book reviews should not exceed five (5) pages.
  6. Short essays should not exceed three (3) pages.
  7. Do not include any authorship information or details that could serve to identify the author(s) in this document. Only provide such information on the OJS platform, in the corresponding spaces during the submission process. 

The journal encourages authors to include graphs, tables, photographs, diagrams or drawings to complement their work. This content must also comply with APA style.

Authors will be responsible for obtaining the necessary permissions to reproduce any material protected by copyright laws and submit the corresponding evidence at the time of submission (if required). When applicable, they must comply with the ethical policies for research and protection of human beings and indicate so.

The Puerto Rico Journal of Education does not charge any pre-publication (for submitting a manuscript) or post-publication fees to authors.

The Puerto Rico Journal of Education reserves the right to publish any paper in accordance with the requirements stipulated in these editorial policies. The Educational Research Center, the College of Education or the University of Puerto Rico are not responsible for the contents, expressions and opinions issued by the authors in the papers published in this journal.

IV. Preliminary review

When the journal receives a submission, it will be subject to a preliminary review, according to the following procedure:

  • The editor receives a paper and verifies if it complies with the requirements established in Section III of these editorial policies.
  • If the paper meets the requirements, the editor will send an acknowledgment of receipt, to notify the author that the paper has been referred to the Editorial Board to begin the peer review process.
  • When the paper does not comply with the recommendations, the editor will notify the author the reasons for the return. At this stage, the author may make the relevant changes and resubmit the paper at any time.

V. Peer review process

All papers in conformity with the editorial policies will be subject to a peer review process, under the double blind modality, by at least two experts in the subject outside the editorial team and the publishing entity. If the reviewers disagree with their assessment, the Editorial Board will submit the paper to a third reviewer. Based on their opinions, the Editorial Board will make a decision, which may be one of the following:

  • The paper is accepted as submitted by the author.
  • The paper is accepted with minor corrections, which the author must address within a 15 day period. Minor corrections refers to those of a grammatical, orthographic or syntactic nature, and do not imply changes to the contents or structure of the paper.
  • The paper is accepted conditionally; nevertheless, the author must address major corrections recommended by the Editorial Board within a 60 day period. Once the revised version is received, the Editorial Board will confirm that the paper has duly addressed the recommendations; the paper will not be subject to peer review again. Major corrections are changes --including, for example, style or format, coherence or clarity of the exposition, organization of the discussion, extension or reduction of the arguments-- that significantly alter the contents or structure of the original writing.
  • Revise and resubmit. In this case, the author will be able to thoroughly revise the paper taking into account the Editing Board‘s recommendations, and resubmit it for reconsideration. When the revised version is received, it will undergo a new peer review process (the reviewers may not necessarily be the same ones).
  • The paper is rejected definitively, and the author will not be able to submit it again to the journal.

If, during the review process, the Editorial Board or the peer reviewers determine that the topic dealt with in a paper is not consistent with the focus and scope of this journal, the work will be rejected.

The peer review process may extend for 45 days. After receiving and considering the recommendations of the peer reviewers, the Editorial Board will communicate the author the results of the evaluation and, when applicable, the alloted time to complete the revision.

VI. Publishing integrity policy

The Puerto Rico Journal of Education is committed to promoting research and publishing integrity. To preserve this policy, the journal will use plagiarism detection programs or any other tools to guarantee the originality of the works received. The journal will reject definitively any paper that presents irrefutable evidence of plagiarism, at any time during the editorial management process. The journal will follow the guidelines suggested by the Committee on Ethics in Publication (COPE) to address these allegations.

VII. Open access policy

The contents published in the Puerto Rico Journal of Education is freely distributed under open access practices, in accordance with the Creative Commons license, Attribution-NonComercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). Through these principles, the journal and its authors allow readers to access, reproduce and share articles in full text. Users should give credit to authors in a reasonable way without suggesting they have their support. Under no circumstances, readers may make use of the contents for commercial purposes. The authors retain copyright on their works.

VIII. Archiving policy

The Puerto Rico Journal of Education preserves its archives through various electronic means, including: the Portal of Academic Journals of the University of Puerto Rico (its main distribution platform), a parallel copy maintained on the Portal of the Educational Research Center, and Google Drive, part of the G Suite platform, a Google service to which the UPR subscribes. The journal is responsible for making the published content recoverable and accessible in the indexing services. At present, the journal is indexed by Conuco, PubMed, and 1Finder (a 1Science service); it is indexed and evaluated by LatIndex and ERIH-PLUS, and its bibliographic information is registered in Ulrischweb and WorldCat.

These Editorial Policies were approved by the Editorial Board on November 29, 2018, and amended on October 22, 2019. Information regarding the electronic document's format was updated on November 1, 2022.