Publishing Regulations for Authors

Download a developed version of the "Investigación en la escuela" publication guidelines.

Presentation and Structure

Articles proposed for publication in “Investigación en la Escuela” must be original and never-before-published or proposed for publication with another journal. All articles must meet the journal profile and be closely related to the analysis of the teaching process, whatever the educational or training level of the teachers, and always from a perspective that is open to innovation, grounded and critical.

Manuscripts must be sent by means of the OJS platform. Authors need to register, with their credits, with the OJS platform, although only one author will be responsible for correspondence. No author may send in nor have two manuscripts being reviewed simultaneously, with a waiting period of at least four (4) consecutive issues.

Manuscripts shall be presented in font Arial 10, single space, justified and without tabs or carriage return between paragraphs. Only major blocks (author, title, abstracts, descriptions, credits and epigraphs) may use carriage return. Pages must have two (2) cm. margins. All texts shall be presented in Word or Open Office. The file must be anonymized in Properties of the file so that the authors are not identified.

Articles must include a brief and informative title, in both Spanish and English, taking up no more than two lines (maximum 80 characters including spaces). The abstract shall range between 210 and 220 words in Spanish and 200 and 215 in English (following IMRAD format), as well as six (6) key words in the aforementioned languages taken from the European Education Thesaurus. The names of the authors shall also be indicated, their place of work, contact e-mail and ORCID of each. Likewise, should the authors belong to a group or body, this may also be listed.

Citations in the text and bibliographical references shall follow the standards of the APA and its Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. Seventh Edition (2020). You must include the DOI with https://doi (without dx) in all references that have this indicator. You need not include bibliographic references that have not been mentioned in the actual text. The number of references needs to be sufficient and necessary to contextualize the work. In the case of research articles, these usually range between 30 and 45. In review articles, the range falls between 45 and 60. Self-citations must not surpass 10% of the total included.

Structure of the Manuscript

In the case of manuscripts that present research results, the text shall respect the structure presented below, with the sections Notes and Support being optional.

Works dedicated to revisions may have a more flexible structure in sections 2, 3 and 4. References must be included in all works.

Titulo (Spanish) / Title (English) Resumen (Spanish) / Abstract (English) Palabras clave (Spanish) / Keywords (English)

1. Introduction and state of the question: This section should include the rationale and purpose of the study using bibliographic citations, as well as a review of the most significant literature regarding the subject at both the national and international level.
2. Material and methods: These shall be presented with the necessary precision so that readers comprehend and confirm the advance of the research. As may be the case, the sample shall be described and the sample strategies, with reference being made about the type of statistical analysis used. In such case that an original methodology be used, the reasons leading to its use need to be presented, and describe any possible limitations.
3. Analysis and results: Authors shall seek to underscore the most important observations, to describe them but without judging them, the material and methods used, as well as the most relevant results of the research. The results shall be presented as figures and/or tables depending on journal standards (see Other Questions). All essential tables or figures shall appear within the text in a logical sequence to avoid repetition of data.
4. Discussion and conclusions: Findings shall be summarized to link the authors’ own observations with other studies of interest, while pointing out the contributions and limitations of the work, without reiterating data that has already been discussed in previous sections. Mention should be made of inferences of findings and their limitations, including the deductions for future research, as well as connecting the conclusions with the objectives of the study. Unwarranted assertions and conclusions that are fully supported by the data in the study should be avoided.
5. Notes: These are considered exceptional and shall always appear at the end of the article (located prior to the bibliography). They need to be incorporated manually, as the automatic process of Word is not recognized by layout editing systems. Numbers for notes are to be placed in both the text and note as superscript, making sure that numbers in the text appear before a period or a closing coma. Notes are not allowed when these include simple bibliographic citations (without comments), as these must appear in the reference section.
6. Support: The Council of Science Editors recommends authors to specify their financing for their research. Priority will be given to those projects with the endorsement of competitive national and international project. In any case, for the scientific assessment of a manuscript, this must be anonymized with XXXX for the initial assessment so that authors and research teams are not identified; these shall be specified in the corresponding section titled Collaborating Bodies of the OJS platform and later in the final manuscript.
7. References: All bibliographic citations must be indicated as references to the text. Bibliography that has not been mentioned in the actual text must not be included. There need to be a sufficient and necessary number of references to contextualize the theory, methodology used and the research results in an international research context. References shall be presented in alphabetical order using the last name of the author (only use a second last name when the first last name is exceptionally common and join them with a hyphen). Citations shall be drawn from original documents—preferably from journals and to a lesser extent books—always indicating the initial and final pages of the work from which it has been taken. The only exception is the case of complete works. Whenever possible, hyperlinks to primary sources will be included: CrossRef, Scholar, ...

Given the importance of the citation indexes and the calculation of impact factors, correct citations are considered an asset and be expressed in keeping with APA 7.0 standards (http://bit.ly/2JkuWs8). Equally important is the use of national and prestigious international journals as references.  

Other Questions

The headings in the body of the article shall be enumerated using Arabic numerals. In English, the first letter of each main word is to be capitalized but without underlining or bold print. Numbering shall have a maximum of three levels: 1. /1.1. /1.1.1. At the end of each numbered heading, there should be a carriage return.

No text shall be underlined. Fully capitalized words are not acceptable, except in the case of acronyms. Words in another language other than Spanish and the titles of books and articles will use quotation marks (In the case of Spanish use « », while in English standard quotation marks (“”) are to be used. To facilitate this operation, the editor recommends that you use the find and replace option on your word processor. Throughout the text, avoid using italic print for terms; only use quotation marks.

Bibliographic references shall be used correctly; those that fail to meet the needs of the text are unacceptable. In general, and according to APA standards, when the author is mentioned in the actual text, indicate year and page number in parenthesis. If the author is not mentioned in the discourse, then it should appear within parenthesis, followed by the year, a coma and a space. (For example: Lopez, 2020, p. 24) The editor recommends that author check examples in already published articles. You are advised to use a reference manager such as RefWorks, Mendeley or EndNote, and always verifying your results.

In the case of bibliographic citations, whether in the discourse of the article or as references, it is essential that you follow uniform and constant criteria. This aspect is essential in scientific journals. Incoherencies and alterations with the established norms are unacceptable. Please respect the punctuation system: comas, periods, colons and semi-colons.

Verify your text using the word processor dictionary; even when this fails to identify all mistaken terms, it solves many problems automatically. There is a general tendency to place two spaces after a period. Once you finish your text, use the find/replace option in Word to find all double space and replace them with a single space.

Tables need to be presented in the actual Word text, as they appear in the order of the text. Use Arabic numbering and sub-titles with a description of the content. These are used to clarify important points. The use of 3D design is recommended for all tables and graphs.

Figures such as photographs or images must be relevant for the text; no more than six images, graphs and table shall appear in the text. These are to be presented within the actual text, in order, and numbered using Arabic numerals with an abbreviated description of the content. They must be of print quality, presented as .JPG or .PNG with 300ppi and in a separate, editable file.

Abbreviations must be universally accepted (consult Units Symbols and Abbreviations). When striving to shorten a frequently used term in the text, the corresponding abbreviation shall appear in parenthesis the first time it appears in the text after the phrase. Roman numerals shall not be used in the text; when using decimals, use a period rather than a coma (as is commonly used in Spanish). For example: 123.45.

Complementary Material: When a manuscript requires complementary documents and visual materials, audiovisuals, statistics, extensive tables, complex, color graphics, among others, these, due to format and space may not be inserted in the article. Such documents shall appear as an extraordinary file and once accepted, will be published online by the author, using the Figshare platform (http://figshare.com). Citation of this hosting will appear in the manuscript. This platform also offers a complementary DOI free of charge.