About the Journal

Focus and scope

The journal is financed through the Ediciones Universidad Santo Tomás Seal and the Publishing Seal of the Universidad Nacional Abierta y a Distancia UNAD (National Open and Distance University).

Purpose: To publish original articles resulting from research, reflection and review articles on education, pedagogy and cultural studies. Articles must be unpublished and make significant contributions to the educational community and to academic communities that focus their studies on social issues.

Target Audience: Specialists and those interested in education, pedagogy and cultural studies.

Thematic coverage: Social sciences: education, pedagogy and cultural studies.

Peer review process

The evaluation process of a manuscript consists of a pre-selection and general review by the editorial committee followed by a double-blind evaluation requested to external peers who are specialists in the field. Once the evaluation by the academic peer reviewer is completed, the authors will receive the decision of Approved, Approved with minor modifications, Approved with major modifications or Not approved. In those cases in which the manuscript is approved with modifications, the author will also receive the suggestions and comments made by the peer reviewers. Authors will have a maximum of fifteen days as of the delivery of the evaluations to make the necessary adjustments and send the corrected version of the manuscript back to the journal editor, together with a detailed explanatory letter of the incorporated adjustments. The editorial committee will verify the incorporation of the changes to the manuscript and, if it considers it pertinent, will send it again to the peer reviewer for his/her opinion. The final decision on the publication of the manuscript will be subject to the agreement of the peer reviewer and the editorial committee with respect to the inclusion of the modifications requested to the author. If the manuscript is accepted for publication, the authors must sign a declaration of originality and an authorization of the rights of publication and reproduction of the manuscript and its inclusion in databases, web pages, or electronic pages, national or international.

Evaluation times

The estimated time between the receipt of the article and the first response from the reviewers is 4 weeks. And the estimated time between the receipt of the article and its publication is 20 weeks.

Review guidelines

The review of articles should be of a scientific nature, evaluating mainly the methodology, results and discussion. The article must contain original and unpublished material.

The time for peer review is 3 weeks. Peer reviewers should send comments on the text and fill out the following evaluation form:

Evaluation form

Open access policy

This journal provides open access to its content, based on the principle that offering the public free access to research helps a greater global knowledge exchange.

Good editorial practices

The Revista Interamericana de Investigación, Educación y Pedagogía (Inter-American Research, Education and Pedagogy Journal) was born associated with the research response of the Doctoral degree program in Education of the Faculty of Education of the Universidad Abierta y a Distancia (Open and Distance University) of the Universidad Santo Tomás, where initially the research associated with the research groups of the program and the production of students as candidates and graduates were presented. The publications were enriched with authors from outside the University and the Program, giving way to a broader perspective on the axes of specific research in education and pedagogy, reflecting on practices, experiences and new readings of teaching knowledge in the country. With the union of the positions derived from the Post-doctoral in Education, Social Sciences and Interculturality, a second phase of editorial evolution began, the works of authors from the Latin American region expanded the repertoire and established a new proposal for the integration of knowledge, including the context of culture in research on education and pedagogy, thus overcoming the "endogamy" in the publication and promoting new editorial challenges such as the inclusion of some publications in Portuguese.

Subsequently, and after more than nine years of positioning, the journal evolves towards co-publishing, strengthening through a group of three journals interested in the objectives of research in education, thus the Revista de Investigación (Research Journal) of the Universidad Nacional Abierta y a Distancia, edited by the Vice Chancellor's Office for more than nine years, and the Revista Magistro (Magistro Journal) of the Master's degree program become part of the Revista Interamericana de Investigación, Educación y Pedagogía.

This union strengthens the editorial group, the editorial policies, the editorial boards and the evaluation processes of the journal, and also incorporates fresh resources that allow generating possibilities of editorial visibility according to the dynamics of social impact. The editorial management has worked under the models of practices focused on quality and social responsibility centered on environmental aspects. Recently, it reduced the print run to 300 copies per issue, enabled a web page and strengthened the OJS site as a tool for editorial management. In addition, it manages a rigorous peer review with concepts based on key criteria within the area of knowledge it handles.

The journal is in open access and generates dissemination in public libraries with the legal deposit; several evaluation criteria for indexing have been included in the editorial policies and instructions for authors, the frequency is semi-annual and the edition is careful to comply with the committed periods of generation.

Regarding the presentation of the printed edition, a book format style has been chosen with Corbel and Caviar Dreams typography, which facilitates reading and gives identity to the issues produced. Additionally, the academic committee of the journal strengthens the visibility processes with actions within the Colombian territory. These actions favor the usability of the article, the knowledge of the author and knowledge transfer in the context of learning cities promoted by entities such as UNESCO.

Editorial practices and policies

The journal has an editorial governance structure represented by an editorial committee with 5 members representing 4 countries with the participation of important academics in the area of knowledge, and an editorial team with two editors representing each of the publishing institutions, a general editorial coordinator, a support professional, and an editorial board represented by the directors of the universities participating in the co-publication, whose functions are focused on facilitating the means of production and dissemination of the journal.

The peer reviewers make a double blind evaluation of each of the articles received and the author is informed of the result of said evaluation within a period not exceeding two calendar months. In the event that differences are observed in the opinions of the academic peers, a third peer reviewer is consulted and the results are presented to the Editorial Committee of the Journal who will make the decision about the publication of the article and the authors will be informed.

Likewise, those responsible in the editorial team in the production process are responsible for reviewing the relevance of the group of reviewers under the established criteria. The supervision of reviewers is guided by the principles of transparency and good practices of the COPE. In addition to the principles of evaluation of this guideline, other ethical criteria are applied such as control in the declaration of conflict of interest and anti-plagiarism policy, as well as the declaration of originality and the assignment of the content to be published, especially this aspect associated with the open access policy through the web.

In terms of evaluation, the double-blind criteria and editorial feedback and decision making for publication are complied with, the peers are filtered according to the H₅ index guaranteeing that the experts of the region participate in the process; however, it has been relevant to establish punctuality in the remission of the two-way evaluation from peers to editors and from authors to editors, for this purpose, alarms have been created on the schedule so that both parties respond in the estimated time to offer the acceptance or not of the article.

It is a requirement for authors to register as a researcher in the ORCID registry and the creation of Google Scholar. These two platforms facilitate the current dynamics where the author ceases to be a passive individual in the socialization of research and begins to be part of the value chain for the visibility of the journal's production.

The number of articles per volume maintains a pattern in the journal and communications with authors are done through the author editors via e-mail and the journal manager; all editorial policy criteria and recommendations for authors are visible on the link http://revistas.usta.edu.co/index.php/riiep/article/view/1373 and on the website http://revistariiep.com/ 

The presentation of each issue of the journal is made under the figure of editorial presentation in its own scenarios and then through strategies linked to social impact such as Google Scholar, LinkedIn, SlideShare and other academic social networks, expanding the editorial concept of distribution.

Value Model

The value model of the journal is focused on seeking quality and social impact, the two are united in a process of visibility. The value process begins with the identification of publication needs, the main authors of the journal present their articles under the forms accepted and defined in the editorial policy and scope. These articles are presented to the academic committees where the first moment of value is generated since articles are classified and monographic or heterogeneous editions are considered, but focused on the needs of knowledge in the fields of pedagogy and education, prioritizing reflection and teaching experience. At this point, the process generates a new value proposition: the articles are evaluated by expert peers from the region who also deal with the original language of the file. The model is not as sophisticated as in a world journal manager, but it upholds the advantage of establishing critical points of control over the process.

In a third phase, once the articles of each issue have been identified, the quality of the editing process continues with proofreading and layout. The value acquired is to ensure publications with proper syntax and spelling and a clean layout with style and identity for the journal.

In terms of distribution, open access has generated the possibility of such a social impact that the model of economic retribution per printed issue lacks value in view of the possibility of reaching scientific literacy, creation, socialization and interaction with expert and non-expert knowledge communities in the field of knowledge.

The mixed model of the journal favors the scope previously presented and the production under co-publishing with an advisory editorial government and that supports the distribution processes make the journal viable over time.

Digital Creation and Management

The issues of the journal are in open access in the link http://revistas.usta.edu.co/index.php/riiep. Additionally since 2017 they are entered into the open repository called CRAI-USTA http://crai-bidigital.usta.edu.co/. Visits through the digital link favor the increase of queries and access of users in the region.

Impact strategies

The impact is focused on two strategies, scientific dissemination for specialized audiences and a possibility of strengthening in the region and Spanish-speaking readers and a second one, aimed at dissemination that builds knowledge in non-specialized audiences at the level of the nature and scope of the journal even more when it expands its content to cultural studies. Although it does not yet develop works by invitation, the journal has managed to gather experiences and research results from different regions of Colombia and Latin America, facilitating traceability, transversality and identity in the interpretation of the questions that researchers in the region seek to resolve.

Strategies are facilitated through platforms such as Google Scholar, Research Gate, Mendeley, Linkedin, YouTube channels, among others.

Databases

Currently, the journal seeks to enter databases and therefore works actively to improve the quality criteria and incorporate those that are established as high evaluation criteria, as well as the promotion of citation and co-citation of the journal’s issues.

Language

Revista Interamericana de Investigación, Educación y Pedagogía is published in Spanish; however, since 2016 in some issues it includes articles in Portuguese as a policy of inclusion of Brazil as a producer of knowledge in the region and attending to the intercultural dialogue that professes the scope of the journal. All articles have an abstract in English and keywords regulated by international thesauri, the abstracts are structured and editorial practices are followed, such as the length of the titles, the good use of the language and in the cases of languages other than Spanish, an edition is made with editors who are experts in the language and certified to evaluate the aspects of both substance and form of the articles.

National overview

The journal stands out within the country for recognizing the importance of the regions and the need for communication of knowledge and teaching experiences in them, as well as a new commitment to publish content with international scope guidelines. It currently designs collaborative publishing strategies under the figure of co-publishing, strengthening its field, the possibilities of visibility and impact as well as the entry and maintenance in the indexing blocks. Presently, the country has Publindex as a national indexing system under a renewed measurement model that allowed placing 244 journals in four quartiles according to various quality criteria called categories A1, A2, B and C, being A1 the quartile where the maximum quality criteria are met. The education journals produced in the country were mostly located in quartiles 3 and 4, i.e. category B and C respectively.

Although the indexing view is relevant, it is also important to note that the Revista Interamericana de Investigación, Educación y Pedagogía also focuses on the social impact of education and pedagogy as a learning element that cuts across all disciplines.

Relationship with the publishing institution

The journal is co-published by the Universidad Santo Tomás from the Vice-Chancellor’s Office of the Universidad Abierta y a Distancia and the Academic and Research Vice-Chancellor’s Office of the Universidad Nacional Abierta y a Distancia UNAD. Its planning and support in human, technical and scientific resources is supported by the decisions of the editorial board of both institutions. The functions of receiving the volumes and sending them to the authors are operated by the Publishing Seals of both institutions, which are in charge of delivering the physical copies to the authors. Additionally, the editorial coordinators are responsible for informing the authors about the availability in electronic format of the issues produced every six months.

The dynamics subsequent to the co-publication has strengthened the distribution channels and streamlines communication between authors and editors; furthermore, there are operational conditions for the management of knowledge networks through the creation of itinerant scientific communication networks in order to establish users and followers of the journal.

Open access

The journal opts for open access under Creative Commons –Attribution-Share Alike International 4.0 license using On-line communication, this is a strategy that expects to increase the number of citations knowing that in the free database “Colombia is a leading country in publications above Brazil, France or Spain” (Mesa, 2016). This has also posed a new challenge focused on the marking of metadata and the use of XML type languages that broaden the horizon of visibility. Currently, the access to the On line publication allows downloads of the PDF of each issue, one by one. In addition to the last two issues of the journal, the abstracts are in Slideshare in public access and with link to the journal's website. On the other hand, the green route of open access is covered from the institutional repository of the co-publishing universities, also favoring the assignment of DOI number to the articles facilitating their traceability and location.

Bibliography:

Committee on Publications Ethics, COPE (2015) Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing. Available at https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines.

Colciencias, Índice Bibliográfico Nacional Publindex, Indexación, Available at http://scienti.colciencias.gov.co:8084/publindex/EnIbnPublindex/buscador.do.

Mesa, J. (2016) En Colombia publican artículos científicos que pocos citan. Diario el Espectador, Bogotá, Available at Disponible.https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/ciencia/colombia-publican-articulos-cientificos-pocos-citan-articulo-639115.

Rejection rate

Journal History

The Journal of Inter-American Research, Education and Pedagogy (Revista Interamericana de Investigación, Educación y Pedagogía – RIIEP in Spanish) is a publication of the Doctorate in Education, appointed to the Faculty of Education of the Vice-Chancellor of the Open and Distance University, Santo Tomás University, which publishes works in educational and pedagogical research ongoing or that are already completed. The journal, founded in 2002, publishes two issues per year with research works that have made significant contributions to the problems in education and society in general. It is indexed in Publindex (B), has an Editorial Committee and a Scientific Committee, which are in charge of ensuring the adequate level for a scientific publication in education.