Guidelines for authors

Authors who submit papers for possible publication in the Journal Educación Superior y Sociedad ESS (Higher Education and Society) must meet the following standards:

  1. To submit articles to our journal you need to go to http://www.iesalc.unesco.org/ess/index.php/ess3/about/submissionsy and follow the instructions for registration as author of the journal. Once registered, you can send articles online in just five steps and verify their status through our platform.
  2. The text of the articles must be anonymous. For this to be achieved, you must ensure that a version of your article, without its authors’ names or related information (institution to which they belong, bibliographic quotes of their own, etc.) is attached. In addition, all quotes, acknowledgements, references and other allusions that may direct or indirectly lead to the identification of the author will be deleted. All author-related metadata will be completed within the journal’s OJS platform in step 3 (Enter metadata) of the submission. In this step it is also mandatory to fill in the ORCID field. Authors who do not have a record in ORCID should register at https://orcid.org/register.
  3. The articles may be written in Spanish, English or Portuguese, They will have a minimum length of 3,000 words and a maximum of 8,000, including references, tables, figures and the texts referred to in paragraph 4. It is recommended to use an Arial font, size 12 and with single line spacing. There should be no free space between paragraphs.
  4. Each work must have a title (concise and informative of the content, with text format in bold at 14 points, upper/lower case), a summary (with a maximum of 200 words, specifying: purpose, theory, methodology, results and discussion). At the end, three to five keywords or descriptors (separated by semicolons) should be placed. These three sections must be in Spanish, English, French, and Portuguese.
  5. Papers should be sent in text format (rtf), OpenOffice Writer (odt) or Microsoft Word (doc or docx) via the journal’s website: http://www.iesalc.unesco.org/ess/php/ess3/about/submissions . No other means of submission are accepted, no correspondence shall be maintained on the originals, which are not forwarded through the portal or in other formats. No other means of delivery will be accepted, nor will correspondence be maintained on originals which were not sent through the portal or which are in other formats.
  6. Non-textual elements (tables, charts, maps, graphs, illustrations, diagrams, drawings, images, etc.) will appear in the place of the corresponding text. In addition, embedded graphs, tables, diagrams and tables that are not editable from the text must be submitted in files that are independent of their source program (JPG, TIF, XLS.), since in many cases they are not valid for later editing.
  7. Quotes and references. APA 7th edition will apply. Updated information on the quotation form can be found on the APA (American Psychological Association) page. Here is an excerpt for guidance:                                              
  • Quotations within the text. References to articles or books must appear in the text in parentheses, indicating the surname of the author and the year, separated by a comma (Navarro, 2018). If several books or articles are included in the same reference, they will be cited in alphabetical order and separated by a semicolon (Navarro, 2018; Ramos, 2017). The articles of the same author are divided by commas, distinguishing -if they are of the same year- by the letters (a, b, c,) (Ramos, 1990, 1995, 2000a, 2000b, 2000c, 2017). If the author’s name is part of the text, the year of publication will be included: ... in a certain way Ramos (2019) predicted that education.
  • Verbatim quotes. Quotations with a length of less than 40 words will be placed between quotation marks and, then and in brackets, the last name of the author of the text, the year and the page or pages that the text has been extracted from, will be indicated. Example: "A methodology that favors a critical attitude in students, generating them [...] to be more functional and lasting" (Navarro, 2018, p. 51). If the author's name is part of the text, it would be like this: According to Nogueira (2018, p. 12) "...". Quotations of 40 or more words will appear in a separate text block, without quotation marks and adjusted to the same height as the first line of a new paragraph. At the end, the author, year and page / s will be indicated in brackets.
  • Bibliographical references. The information should appear at the end of the text in alphabetical order in a single list; all references provided have been quoted in the text and verified. Its format should be as follows:                                                                                                                                                                               Book: Surname of the author/s, Initials. (Year). Title of the book. Place of publication: Publishing House. Example: Bauman, Z. (2017). On education in a liquid world. Conversations with Ricardo Mazzeo. Mexico: Paidós.                                                                                                                                                 Magazines: Surname of the author/s, Initials. (Year). Title of the article. Journal name, number or volume (number), pages that include the article within the journal, if any. Example: Navarro, V. (2018). Interdisciplinary methodologies as a tool to motivate high-capacity students. Revista Iberoamericana de Educación, 78(1), 43-66.                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Chapter of an article in a book: Author’s Surname, Initials. (Year). Title of article or chapter. In Initials. Surname of the author/s, (Ed. o Coord., If it is the case), Title of the book. (Pages that include the article or chapter within the book). City: Publishing House. Example: Oettinger, AG (1971). Communications in the national decision-making process. In M. Greenberger (Ed.), Computers, Communication and Public Interest (73-114). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.                                                                                                                                                                          
  • References to electronic formats:                                                                                                                                                                                                    -Electronic documents: author/s (publication date). Title [media type]. Place of publication: editor. Retrieved from: specify URL. Example: Córdova, N. (2015). Why did the Huascarán Plan fail? Blog Rimactampu. Recovered from https://bit.ly/2GMBEXx.                                                                                    -Articles in electronic periodicals (electronic journals):  Surname of the author/s, Initials. (Year). Title of the article. Journal name, number or volume (number), pages comprising the article within the journal. DOI or failing that, retrieved from URL.
  1. Once a text that meets all the formal requirements is received, it will be acknowledged and the evaluation process will begin. If in the initial review the article does not meet all the requirements, the author will be asked to submit the text again with the required changes. The deadline to send the article with the requested changes will be one month. If the deadline is not met, the article will be rejected and filed. In this first phase, the General Editorial Team will carry out a global review of the quality and thematic appropriateness of the work, and may directly reject those works whose quality is clearly low or which make no contribution to the thematic areas of the journal, without passing them to external evaluation.
  2. Articles that pass this first filter will be assigned to an editor who will send it to two external evaluators, specialists in the concerned subject or research line. In the event that the evaluations differ or that for any other reason it is considered necessary, the editor may send the text to a third reviewer. See more about the scientific and academic evaluation of this magazine.
  3. Based on the evaluators' reports, the editor may make one of the following decisions, which will be communicated to the author:
  • Accept the sent work: publishable as is or with slight modifications.
  • Publishable with modifications: in this case, the publication will be conditional on the author making all the changes required by the Scientific Council. The deadline to make such changes will be one month and a brief explanatory report about the changes made and how the publisher's requirements are adjusted must be attached. In the event that this term is exceeded, the article will be filed as "not publishable".
  • To be considered: not publishable but with the possibility of rewriting and forwarding the work. In this case, the re-sending of a new version will not imply any guarantee of publication, but the evaluation process will start again from the beginning. The term to send a new version of the article will be three months and you must attach a brief explanatory report of the changes made and how the publisher's requirements are adjusted. In the event that this term is exceeded, the article will be filed as "not publishable".
  • Not publishable

Editor's recommendations for structuring the text

The purpose of the article should be specified in the introduction identifying the problem. Background in the research area or its emptiness, justifying the problem or question clearly, coherently and based on the literature, showing unequivocally its relevance. In the section corresponding to development, the theoretical and methodological basis must be distinguished; that is, how the problem has been studied, explaining it clearly and explicitly. A section dedicated to the presentation of the results allows showing the contextualization of both the expected and unexpected results, through texts, tables, graphs, illustrations. The discussion takes place in the space to expose what the results mean, through Interpretation with its strengths or weaknesses, recommendations and conclusions; and, the latter can only be derived from the arguments handled in the body of the work and the references. They must be clear and express the final balance of the research or the application of knowledge, sometimes integrated into the discussion. Finally the bibliographic references should be presented in alphabetical order, properly cited and referenced and relevant to the subject. No less than 10 references are suggested, varied (international) and current (30% of the last 4 years).