Editorial Policies

Focus and Scope

{PSOCIAL} is an electronic, indexed and open access scientific journal, published semi-annually since 2014 by the Sociology department of the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires.

The purpose of the journal is to offer a space for discussion and debate for students, researchers and professionals in the field of social psychology. Its thematic scope is mainly oriented to the area of social psychology, although it is open to other related topics and approaches, mainly in relation to the intersection between philosophy, psychology and sociology.

Through a peer review process, and in accordance with international ethical guidelines, the journal publishes original articles, review articles, and theoretical or methodological contributions to the discipline, prioritizing research that has implications for the Ibero-American context.

ISSN: 2422-619X (online version)

 

Section Policies

Introduction

This section introduces the aim of each issue of the journal.

Unchecked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Unchecked Peer Reviewed

Dossier

Checked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Checked Peer Reviewed

Articles

The "articles" section includes empirical or theoretical research reports. Suggested structure: (Title between 10 and 20 words / Authors (affiliation and contact) / Summary in Spanish and English of between 100-250 words / 5 keywords in Spanish and English / Introduction with the objectives of the article / Content Methodology (can include subtitles to separate sections) / Discussion / References)

Checked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Checked Peer Reviewed

Reviews

The “reviews” section includes critical notes on books published in the last 10 years on Social Psychology. Structure: [Review title / Authors (affiliation and contact) / Bibliographic data of the reviewed book / Content (suggested: thesis of the book, opinion of the review author, contributions to the field, reviews and open questions)]

Checked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Checked Peer Reviewed
 

Peer Review Process

The original manuscripts are submitted to {PSOCIAL} only through the open-source software for the management  OJS (Open Journal System) of peer-reviewed academic journals and follow the selection process detailed below:

  1. If the manuscript does not comply with the format requirements indicated in the author guidelines, it will be returned to the authors, who may send it again within a maximum period of 15 days, once these deficiencies have been corrected.
  2. Once admitted if it meets the initial formal requirements, the work, anonymised, will be subject to a prior selection: two members of the Editorial Board will review if it is a research paper, if its topic is appropriate to the field of interest of the journal and if it reaches a minimum scientific quality. The manuscript will pass this phase if at least one of these members of the Editorial Board gives a positive evaluation. In the event that both members issue a negative evaluation, the manuscript will be rejected and the authors will be notified.
  3. Subsequently, the manuscripts will enter a double-blind peer review process: the manuscript will be sent to two referees, who will determine anonymously: a) publish without changes, b) publish when minor corrections have been made, c ) publish once a thorough review has been performed and d) reject. The reviewers are external to the publishing institution. 
    In case of discrepancy between both results, the manuscript will be sent to a third referee, whose decision will define its publication. The results of the process will be final. The manuscripts sent by academics of any institution will be submitted to the consideration of external referees.
  4. The decision adopted in the Editorial Board will be notified to the author, together with a copy of the reports of the anonymous reviewers that support this decision. In case modifications are proposed, the authors must inform the journal if they agree to review the manuscript or not. If so, the authors must send the modified version to the jorunal together with a report explaining the changes made to the original version. In case of not accepting any of the modifications, the authors must justify it in the mentioned memory.
To withdraw the manuscript from the editorial process, the corresponding author must formally inform the reason for the manuscript's withdrawal and wait for the editor's response to continue sending the proposal to another journal.
The evaluation process will take place throughout the year and the evaluation time for a manuscript takes an average of 90 days.

 

Open Access Policy

{PSOCIAL} adheres to the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), considering that both scientific publications and publicly funded research should circulate freely, free and without restrictions on the Internet. This policy proposes to break the economic barriers that generate inequalities both in access to information and in the publication of research results.

The authors accept that the articles published by this journal are available under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0): interested parties can share (copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform and create from the material another work), provided that: a) the authorship and original source of the publication (magazine, editorial and URL of the work) are cited ); b) are not used for commercial purposes; c) the same terms of the license are maintained. These types of licenses are based on the principle of creative freedom for academic, scientific and cultural purposes.

To increase the visibility and impact of articles, they are sent to databases and indexing and summary systems (SIR) and, likewise, can be consulted and downloaded on the journal's website.

 

Archiving

{PSOCIAL} uses the Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe (LOCKSS) system to create a distributed filing system among partner libraries, allowing them to create permanent journal files for preservation and restoration purposes.

 

Periodicity

{PSOCIAL} is published every six months with two issues per year. The first number, published on January 1st, covers the semester from January to June, and the second, published on July 1st, corresponds to the semester from July to December.

 

Data Availability Policy

{PSOCIAL} promotes transparency and reproducibility of published research so that other researchers can replicate the studies described in their articles, either to corroborate or to refute the results obtained, in accordance with the provisions of the National Law 26,899 on open access institutional digital repositories. All the information and research data sent to this publication will be uploaded and made available in RDIUBA, the repository of the University of Buenos Aires, in order to increase compliance with the FAIR principles: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (the data must be able to be found, accessed, must be in systems capable of interoperation and must be able to be reused in other investigations). The following guidelines are also suggested:

  • To favor the reproducibility of the results, authors may share without restrictions the data sets with which they have carried out their research. If there are limitations derived from ethical or legal causes, the authors must indicate how other researchers should access their data.
  • Authors are encouraged to deposit data in RDIUBA, or in any other research data repository (such as  FigShare, Mendeley Data o Zenodo), prior to sending the contribution to the journal . Thus, when submitting the manuscript, only the URL where the research data is located should be indicated.

 

Payments

{PSOCIAL} adheres to the open access policy, so that all manuscripts are published free of charge and are accessible to readers. In this way, the contents of the scientific publications are available in full text free and free on the Internet, without temporary embargoes, and whose editorial production costs are not transferred to the readers or the authors.

 

Self-archiving Policy

Self-archiving of the version published by {PSOCIAL} is allowed. Authors can disclose their research published by the media and share academic social networks such as Researchgate, Mendeley or Academia.edu, in the repositories of the institutions to which they belong and on portals, among other sites. During the editorial review process, the Journal will deliver the authors the post-print version which should NOT be disclosed by any means of dissemination since they are only for personal use and for final approval purposes. The journal will send the authors the published version in PDF and HTML to be shared, disseminated and disseminated by the media available on the web once the editorial process is complete. After the publication of the articles, the authors can make other types of independent or additional agreements for the non-exclusive dissemination of the version of the article published in this journal, provided that it is indicated that the work has been published by first time in this journal.

 

Ethical Principles

{PSOCIAL} adheres to both national and international codes of ethics, to the ethical principles of the Declaration of Helsinki, to the Guidelines for Ethical Behavior in Social Sciences and Humanities established by National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) (Res. No. 2857), to the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct of the American Psychological Association (APA), to the Guidelines on Good Publication Practice of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and to the Publishing Ethics Resource Kit (PERK), developed by the Elsevier Publishing Group.

Emphasis is placed on the following criteria:

  • Ethics Committee: if applicable, according to the type of study and the regulatory provisions of the research funding institutions, authors must explicitly state in the manuscript that the study has been approved by an ethics committee.
  • Informed Consent: the authors must indicate in the method section that all the procedures in obtaining data carried out with the participants (tests, interviews, recordings, videos) have been carried out after obtaining informed consent. In the event that the participants are children or adolescents, the informed consent of the parents and / or guardians must be obtained. The journal will not publish manuscripts that have been carried out without the necessary permits or that have been illegally collected.
  • Legislation in force: the authors must comply with the national and international laws that take place according to the type of research, being the authors' duty to specify such compliance in the manuscript.

Ethical responsibilities in the editorial process:

  • Editors: editors must (1) supervise the publication processes following international ethical standards, (2) ensure that manuscripts are reviewed according to publication standards, (3) commit to provide clear information on the entire editorial process, the results of the peer review and the criteria used in it, and (4) provide information about the state of the review process in all moment.
  • Authors: authors must (1) guarantee that the submission has not been previously published nor has it been sent simultaneously to another journal, (2) verify that the manuscript complies with the bibliographic and style requirements indicated in the rules for authors, (3) corroborate that the manuscript submitted complies with the established ethical standards, (5) indicate the source of funding and (5) declare conflicts of interest, if any.
  • Reviewers: the reviewers must (1) communicate about the possible plagiarism detected in the manuscripts they review, (2) maintain confidentiality about the articles reviewed, (3) provide adequate grounds in case of rejecting manuscripts, (4) excuse themselves in case of conflicts of interest, and (5) use objective and rigorous evaluation systems within the established deadlines.

 

Conflicts of Interest

The editors of {PSOCIAL} undertake to avoid the existence of any conflict of interest between the actors involved in the production. All text sent will be evaluated for its intellectual content, preventing the authors' ethnic or national belonging, their gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, or political philosophy from interfering in the process. In the same way, those external evaluations that interpose any personal position to the quality of the work will be rejected.

Authors and evaluators are requested to state in advance the relevant conflicts of interest that they may have, so they can be taken into account when assigning evaluations. If any conflict arises after the publication of the contribution, if necessary, a retraction or the manifestation of the fact will be made.

“Conflict of interest” is understood as the situation in which there is a divergence between the personal interests of an individual and their responsibilities regarding the scientific activities that they carry out, whether as authors, reviewers, and members of the editorial committee, which may influence your critical judgment and the integrity of your actions. Conflicts of interest can be:

  1. Economic: when the participant (author / reviewer / editor) has received or expects to receive money for the activities related to the research and its dissemination
  2. Academic: when reviewers or editors adhere to a certain methodological or ideological trend in such a way that they may be biased to evaluate the work of others. For this reason, they are requested to manifest beforehand.
  3. Personal or work relationships: when the participants (authors / reviewers / editors) have some kind of friendship, enmity or work relationship. To avoid this, editors should take into account the sources of funding and the affiliation of the authors, to choose evaluators who do not belong to those specific circles.

 

Plagiarism Policy

The policy of {PSOCIAL} is to publish original works, written by those who declare their authorship. They may not have been previously published in any printed or electronic medium, or be simultaneously evaluated in another journal. In order to respond to plagiarism practices -among them translations, fragmentation of results or "salami slicing", duplication, among others- the journal implements the following procedure based on the information provided by the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct of the American Psychological Association (APA), to the Guidelines on Good Publication Practice of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the Code of Ethics of the British Psychology Society:

  1. At the time of submitting an article, the authors are asked to declare that the article has not been previously published or sent to other journals for evaluation. Furthermore, they are asked to declare that they are following the author guidelines, which establish that the articles to be submitted must be original.
  2. All articles sent to the journal are reviewed using Plagius detection software,
  3. When sending the manuscript to the peer reviewers, they are asked to pay attention to possible indicators of plagiarism, since they know the literature on the subject.

The journal considers the practices listed and explained below as plagiarism:

  • Direct plagiarism. This type is incurred when: 
  1. There is omission of authorship and what is taken from another text is not indicated with quotation marks.
  2. Minimal changes are made to the text of another (sentence structure is modified, lower case is replaced by upper case or vice versa, synonyms are used, etc.) and it is presented as original.
  • Plagiarism for the improper use of paraphrase, is done when:
  1. Although authorship is noted, the original text is reproduced with a few changes that do not constitute paraphrases.
  • Complex plagiarism using a reference, is committed when:
  1. The original authorship reference exists, but the source pages are inaccurately noted.
  2. I paraphrase that long texts are summarized, but with little or no indication that they correspond to paraphrases.
  3. Absence of quotation marks in words and phrases of the original text that are reproduced verbatim.
  • Plagiarism with single quotes, is performed when:
  1. A textual quote continues to play after quotation marks have been closed or the previous phrases are omitted from the same quote.
  • Paraphrasing as plagiarism occurs when:
  1. There is paraphrasing and the original source reference is not noted.
  2. The paraphrasing is continuous and extensive, no material is added to allow interaction or enrich the information, despite the source being mentioned.
  3. Academic works - which require original thoughts and critical reflections on other people's points of view - become texts that do not exceed the repetition of other academic texts.
  4. Paraphrased passages are not clearly identified as such.
  • Paraphrasing as plagiarism is not considered plagiarism when:
  1. It does not dominate over the work of the writer.
  2. It is used to allow the author to interact critically with another person's points of view.
  3. The argument of the original text is rewritten in different words.
  • Self-plagiarism or recycling fraud is committed when:
  1. The appearance of a job is changed and it is presented as if it were a different one.
  2. The indication that the job is being recycled is ignored, that is, it is a previously published manuscript but with corrections or new additions.
  • Self-plagiarism is not considered when:
  1. The previous work is the basis for a new contribution, and key parts must be repeated to explain and defend the new arguments.
  2. The author considers that what he has already said cannot be said in a better way for the new publication.
  3. The repetition does not exceed 30% of the original work.

 

Authorship Contribution

Authors should indicate their substantial participation in the manuscript (e.g., manuscript design, data collection, statistical analysis, final manuscript revision, etc.). To determine and identify consistency in authorship and avoid mistakes such as unwarranted authorship. CRediT – Contributor Roles Taxonomy - is strongly encouraged.

 

Intellectual Property

The intellectual property of the articles is exclusive to the authors. In the event that the manuscript is approved for its next publication, the authors retain the copyright and will assign to the {PSOCIAL} the rights to publication, edition, reproduction, distribution, exhibition and communication at the national level. and international in the different databases, repositories and portals that it integrates.

 

Disclaimer

{PSOCIAL} does not sympathize with the opinions expressed by the authors. The opinions expressed in the articles are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the journal's Editorial Board.

 

Policies for Sanctioning Inappropriate Behavior

The set of inappropriate behaviors include the falsification of data, the manipulation of data in favor of results, the indiscriminate use of self-citations and unjustified authorship. If any of these malpractices are found in any manuscript, the editorial committee will evaluate the case and subject it to sanction according to the type of fault.

  1. Minor Misdemeanors: minor misdemeanors correspond to inappropriate conduct that does not warrant a thorough investigation, where all parties involved have the right to reply, for example, the unjustified inclusion of authors, abuse of self-citations, among others that the Editorial Board considers.
  2. Serious Offenses: these types of offenses require a thorough investigation involving superiors and employers of the objectively accused person for notification. In case of wrongful evidence, the journal may involve external experts (limited number of people to the consideration of the Editorial Board) for the final opinion and sanction (alteration of results, plagiarism, self-plagiarism, double submission of papers, among others that consider the committee). The author has the right to appeal this opinion.
In order to treat cases in which plagiarism is incurred, the journal will follow the following procedures:
  1. In the case of minor offenses, the journal will send a notification to those involved about the misconduct, requesting an explanation about it so that this type of behavior is avoided in the future.
  2. In the case of serious offenses, the journal can send a formal letter to the employing entity, financing entity or to the superior of those involved, referring to the case in question. According to the severity of this lack, the journal may publish an editorial on unethical conduct or remove the publications of the involved indefinitely.

 

Indizaciones

{PSOCIAL} is indexed and listed in:

 

A. DIRECTORIES


  • BINPAR. The National Bibliography of Registered Periodicals (BINPAR) is a service of the Argentine National Center of the ISSN developed by CAICYT-CONICET. In this space it is possible to locate the continuous Argentine resources that have ISSN registration through their title and the addition of multidisciplinary thematic coverage.

           

  • DOAJ. The Directory Open Access Journals (DOAJ) increases the visibility and usability of open access scientific and academic journals, aims to be global, and to encompass all journals that use a quality assurance system to ensure content.
           
  • ERIH PLUS. The European Reference Index for the Humanities and the Social Sciences (ERIH PLUS) was created and developed by European researchers under the coordination of the Standing Committee for the Humanities (SCH) of the European Science Foundation (ESF). The ERIH lists, which initially covered only humanities disciplines, were first published by ESF in 2008, while revised lists were made available in 2011-2012. In 2014, responsibility for the maintenance and operation of ERIH was transferred to the NSD - Norwegian Centre for Research Data. The reference index at NSD is called ERIH PLUS in order to indicate that it has been extended to include the social sciences.  
         
  • Latindex. The Regional Cooperative Online Information System for Scholarly Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal (Latindex) is a bibliographical information system available for free consultation. Established as a network in 1997, the project is based on the cooperation of 17 national resource centers that operate in a coordinated scheme for the gathering and dissemination of relevant information and data on the Iberoamerican journals.
          
  • LatinRev Network. LatinREV is the cooperative network of journals and academic journal associations in the field of social sciences and humanities in Latin America sponsored by FLACSO Argentina. Its purpose is to provide advice, training and updates on issues related to the sustainability of publications.

       

  • Latin American. The Association of Academic Journals of Humanities and Social Sciences is an initiative of the journal Cuadernos de Literatura of the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. The network intends to act as a place of opinion and articulation of criteria on the various topics involved in academic publication, especially in the current development landscape of electronic media, serve as a channel for exchanges of experiences and training in academic and scientific edition, generating agreements and collaborations with organizations related to these objectives and supporting and becoming part of any proposal or need for constant openness and open access to content and data derived from academic work and research, especially If they are supported with public resources, serve as a space for the dissemination of news and news of the affiliated publications, as well as events and initiatives deemed to be of general interest in the academic community.

           

 

B. ANALYTICAL INDEX


  • CIRC. The Integrated Classification of Scientific Journals (CIRC) aims to build a classification of scientific journals of Social and Human Sciences based on their quality, integrating existing evaluation products considered positively by different national evaluation agencies such as CNEAI, ANECA . It is also intended that the model be operational and the resulting classification can be integrated into scientific information systems to facilitate the construction of bibliometric indicators for the evaluation and description of the research results of various scientific agents such as universities, departments or researchers. Therefore, Integrated Classification of Scientific Journals - CIRC, was born in order to generate a common measurement instrument that is used by evaluators, researchers and research groups on bibliometrics, facilitating comparisons and sharing information. {PSOCIAL} currently complies with CRITERION D2 (Magazines included in the Latindex catalog), which places it in GROUP D.
          
  • MIAR. The Information Matrix for the Analysis of Journals is a database that collects data for the identification and the analysis of scientific journals. If you enter an ISSN in the search box, the system will check in which databases, those referred to in the matrix, the journal is indexed. That is regardless of whether the journal is included with a full description in MIAR or not. The system will also calculates an index called the ICDS. If the journal is not included in MIAR, the value of the Survival Index will not be given. MIAR is a COLLABORATIVE tool. Publishers, authors and readers can suggest new journals, report errors, supply news, or share data on social networks. Publishers can also include value-added information about their journals provided that it can be validated against a public source in the Internet. MIAR has an INTEGRATED approach. Apart from showing the visibility of journals in abstracting and indexing databases, MIAR also provides information about journals from other evaluation tools, such as the Sello de Calidad FECYT, Scimago Journal Rank, or CARHUS+, as well as their open access policies as represented by the ROMEO colour. MIAR is a TRANSPARENT and UP-TO-DATE resource. Information is always processed using data available from public sources. It can be also directly compared with the original source material. Our software agents check the sources every 15 days in order to keep MIAR updated with the latest changes or additions. The algorithm for ICDS is public and is displayed in each record for each journal.
       
  • PSICODOC. PSICODOC is an online bibliographic database, with links to full texts, specialising in Psychology and related disciplines (Education, Healthcare, Sports, Social Work, etc.). It includes works published in journals, proceedings and books, published in Spain, Portugal and Latin America, from 1975 to date.
            
  • REDIB. The Iberoamerican Network for Innovation and Scientific Knowledge (REDIB) is an aggregation platform for scientific and academic content in electronic format produced in the Ibero-American sphere.

          

  • Basic Nucleus of Argentine Scientific Journals: The Basic Nucleus of Argentine Scientific Journals determines a set of Argentine scientific and technological publications of excellence in different fields of knowledge. These scientific publications are subjected to an exhaustive evaluation with unique defined criteria of quality and transcendence, according to international criteria, established by Resolution 1640/05 of CONICET.
        
  • Cabells' Journalytics: Since its founding over 40 years ago, Cabells' services have grown and evolved to include the Journalytics, a curated list of over 11,000 academic journals spanning 18 disciplines guides researchers and institutions in getting the most impact out of their research. Each journal selected for inclusion is evaluated and reviewed by trained specialists. {PSOCIAL} appear in their psychology directory.
           
 
 
 

C. REPOSITORIES

 

  • Carus Plus+. Carhus Plus + is a system of classification of scientific journals in the fields of Social Sciences and Humanities that are published locally, nationally and internationally. This project, developed by AGAUR at the proposal of the General Directorate for Research, is presented in order to contribute to the evaluation of the research carried out in the Catalan scientific and university system with the highest objectivity. In 2020, Psocial has successfully undergone the Carhus Plus + evaluation process, which is why it will be included in the 2022 edition.

          

  • Mir@bel. Created in France in 2009 by documentation and library professionals, Mir@bel aims to promote the content of scientific journals accessible online. A living and evolving project, combining shared document monitoring and automatic retrieval at the source, Mir@bel enables professionals to control the quality of data provided in journals

            

  • RDIUBA. The Institutional Digital Repository of the University of Buenos Aires (RDIUBA) includes the intellectual and academic production of the university in all its disciplines. The repository allows to gather, register, disseminate, preserve and give access to the knowledge generated in the university, compatible with national standards and international, to guarantee its integration with those similar portals. The objective is to provide a specialized search service for scientific and academic information available on any subject, facilitating the work of teaching, research and study. {PSOCIAL} ICDS = 3.8.

         

  • SIBSI. The Library and Information System (SIBSI) of the Science and Technology Department of the University of Buenos Aires (SIBSI) was created by Resolution (R) No. 1913 of December 23, 1985, replacing the Library Institute of the University of Buenos Aires created in 1942. It aims to coordinate, promote and lead cooperation between the Information Units of the University Library System to provide excellent services and products to different users, and promote continuous training for all its staff.