Open Science in Latin America and the Caribbean

Editorial policies

Focus and Transcendence

Editorial Mar Caribe (EMC), a private entity sponsored by non-governmental institutions, was launched in November 2021 with the sole purpose of uniting and creating connections between all researchers in Latin America and the Caribbean, regardless of their function, specialty, limits, hierarchy or educational level. EMC has been publishing continuously since 2022, with a scientific and interdisciplinary nature, and provides new sources of information, access to research and the ability to share experiences and knowledge quickly and up-to-date in all areas of knowledge. The publisher has taken care of all the details in its publication, making it a reliable and open database for its readers. The digital documents in our repository are a resource that provides countless advantages and benefits, if we use it properly, among the infinity of rigorous, reliable, updated and authentic books.

The content is presented to us in full-text, open-access format. The editorial committee admits for review; essays, documents and studies related to Latin American thought, corresponding to research in the thematic axes of philosophy, social sciences, pedagogy, basic and exact sciences, history, among others, giving them an interdisciplinary character. Editorial Mar Caribe disseminates knowledge through:

  • Literature books
  • Sourcebooks
  • Art books
  • Promotional libros
  • Textbooks
  • Research books

Authors’ proposals must meet the following criteria:

i) Be unpublished: they may not be simultaneously in the process of revision and/or arbitration in another publisher;

ii) The thematic content must be related to the professional areas of the authors;

iii) Present original, methodological and bibliographic results or support derived from research with validation of research instances of public or private universities, completed or in a significant state of progress;

iv) Contain a clear methodological development, consistent analysis of the data and/or academic foundation;

v) Include a conceptual discussion and a relevant and updated bibliography on the subject.

The books are backed up in open, immediate and permanent access repositories, for the use of these digital resources by readers and the general public; available in Spanish, English or Portuguese, with an emphasis on reducing the digital divide in higher education. Editorial Mar Caribe adheres to open persistent ARK identifiers of direct link to open research, represented by the unique identifier for ISBN books, preceded by the protocol: ark:/10951/isbn.xxx-xxxx-xxxx-x-x; and runs an open infrastructure to link research books, creating a durable and reusable academic record through Crossref, registers a DOI for each new item of content as it is published,  with the https://doi.org/10.70288/emc.xxx-xxxx-xxxx-x-x structure

Peer review process

During the evaluation of the tests received by Editorial Mar Caribe (EMC), the scientific assessment is carried out in (03) three stages: (1. Preliminary round by the scientific committee of the publishing house, 2. Double-blind external peer review by public universities, 3. Final opinion by the publisher’s ethics committee). The participation of the ethics committee is crucial in case of discrepancies between experts on the assessment of the research content, maintaining complete anonymity during the process of exploring these, making the final decision based on linguistic quality, updated references, ease of following the logic of the written text and compliance with publication ethics. External peer reviewers are requested by the editorial committee of Editorial Mar Caribe, to the academic and research vice-rectorates and/or editorial funds of public universities in Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela; based on inter-institutional cooperation agreements.

Step No. 1: The deadline for reading and notifying the author and his co-authors, the acceptance or rejection of the trial in the preliminary round by the scientific committee, is ten (10) business days from the date of receipt. In case of rejection, it is returned to the authors for adaptation in accordance with the recommendations for improvement; and the proposal is invited to be resubmitted for reevaluation by the publisher. If the written text is accepted, it goes to the second stage (external arbitration committee). Authors must be aware of the Proposal Evaluation Form, executed by the scientific committee during the process.

Stage No. 2: The editorial committee will assign the essay to (02) two public universities (external arbitration committee), in charge of Academic Vice-Rectorates, Research Deans and Graduate Studies, so that they can review it and make suggestions for improvement, and decide whether to accept or reject the essay. A positive review by both parties will be required for acceptance, the deadline for issuing a final decision on the revised text is thirty (30) calendar days. If the decision is not unanimous, a third review is carried out. The final result will be the acceptance of the manuscript or its rejection. Authors are recommended to review the Scientific Assessment Rubric used at this stage.

Step No. 3: The publisher’s ethics committee ensures compliance with ethical standards to ensure high-quality scientific publications, trust in scientific findings, and that people receive credit for their ideas. The ethics committee demands good quality scientific papers that are of interest to the scientific community of Latin America and the Caribbean. Your book proposal is likely to be accepted if:

  • The content of the proposal is within the scope of the publisher;
  • The research topic is novel and describes a research that advances the scientific field;
  • It proposes a contribution to an active field of research;
  • The authors use clear and concise language when expressing research results; and
  • The authors are not involved in acts of administrative penalty for unethical conduct in research.

The term of the ethics committee to issue a final decision on the revised text is one (10) calendar day; If the proposal is accepted, the authors are informed as well as if it is rejected. However, at this stage, a reassessment of the content of the book is not accepted, the rejection that is communicated is definitive.

Assessment and quality control criteria.

i. During the evaluation process, Editorial Mar Caribe trusts in the professional capacity and potential of the reviewers, guaranteeing rigor, confidentiality, equity and honesty in the process of developing this management activity. EMC includes tools to detect plagiarism in text and various documents, using detection software: SmallSEOTools and DupliChecker.

ii. Regardless of the grades that the essay receives from the reviewers, they must be fully supported. The information provided by the reviewers will help the editorial board make the final decision on whether or not to publish the book. However, a manuscript still has the status “accepted” if it has passed peer review and the author has made all suggested edits and changes. The accepted work is then sent for layout and spelling. A version of the machote will be sent to the author for review and return with a letter of acceptance and permission to publish. A work is considered “in progress” if the editor-in-chief has the minimum necessary requirements to publish the book.

iii. All trials, research products published by Editorial Mar Caribe, will be subject to rigorous peer review and a double-blind system based on the initial selection by the scientific committee in the preliminary round, the anonymity of the peer reviewers, and the subsequent review by the authors of the trials,  when applicable.

All peer reviewers must adhere to the following ethical principles:

  • They will only accept to review trials in which they have sufficient experience, committing to execute the process in the instituted periods.
  • Reviews should be objective and constructive, with no defamatory or demeaning comments.
  • They will have to declare their potential conflicts of interest.
  • Evaluate each essay based on the rigor, focus, significance, bibliographic support, discursive topic, and coherence in the written text.
  • Maintain the confidentiality of the peer review process.
  • Provide valuation reports that are constructive, complete, substantiated, and with substantial content.
  • Inform Editorial Mar Caribe of any significant similarities between the manuscript under consideration and any published essays of which you are aware.

Of general interest:

i. Editorial Mar Caribe reserves the right to accept or reject the proposals that are received and to request from the authors the modifications it deems necessary to comply with the requirements for publication of the written text and to standardize the machote of the book according to the style of the publisher.

ii. The review process will be blind, so the referees will not know who the authors of the trial are and the authors will also not know which assigned expert evaluated their trial.

iii. The evaluation is confidential and the identity of peer reviewers should not be disclosed. However, if the governing bodies of the science and technology system in the country of origin of the research request detailed information from those in charge of the peer review, the publisher will be responsible for providing the information on the peers who collaborated during the process.

iv. Editorial Mar Caribe assures that the selection of the reviewers who participate in the stages of scientific evaluation of the proposals will be defined according to the specialty or degree of the peer reviewer and THEMA classifiers  of the written text.

v. The peer review process for proposals received by the publisher is carried out in an average period of between 45 and 60 calendar days, the time necessary to guarantee the quality of the written text before publication.

Flowchart of the peer review process:

The (Step 3) of the process occurs “Yes and only if” the proposal of the authors is approved in the preliminary round. Authors must attach supporting documents when submitting the essay to Editorial Mar Caribe (Step 1):

Conflict of Interest Statement

Guarantee of unpublished test 

Research Book Template

Posting Frequency

Editorial Mar Caribe’s digital content will be announced collectively as part of the editorial collection, visible in the ISBN catalogs of Uruguay, Argentina and Peru; disseminated in open access through its own or institutional repositories, based on cooperation agreements with the publishing funds of public universities. The publication will be continuous, indexed and catalogued in international databases, in electronic and/or physical book format, with its respective legal deposit and ISBN.

Open Access Policy

Editorial Mar Caribe provides open access to read and download digital content under the premise of making the information available, without Book Processing Charges (BPCs) or Chapter Processing Charges (CPCs), which fuels an ethical global sharing of knowledge. Open access to the publisher’s publications is governed by the CC BY-NC 4.0-Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license. Books hosted in the publisher’s own repository are distributed in scientific databases through ONIX 3.0 metadata and multipurpose persistent identifiers recognized by The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), and are embedded in indexing systems with basic quality standards. In addition, EMC is committed to digital preservation and to depositing content in institutional repositories and disseminating it on social networks, to expand the socialization of knowledge within the Latin American scientific community. The books are published under an open access model, free of embargo or membership charges, both to readers and authors, to contribute to reducing the digital divide between Ibero-American countries, based on UNESCO standards.

Digital preservation policies

All books published by Editorial Mar Caribe (EMC) are hosted in the institutional repository of the entity, sponsored by depositaries supported by OSF PREPRINTS and Knowledge Commons. The publication of texts in the open repositories segment or preprints as they are known in the field of open science, has been a reality since July 2022. Academics are invited to submit their research essays through our platform Caribe Pre-Print X, as this favours the preservation of the work before and after peer review. EMC Joins Open Appointments Initiative I4OC, collaboration between publishers, academics, researchers and universities, to promote the unrestricted availability of information. All books have a DOI Bibliographic Identifier in collaboration with Center for Open Science (COS), Humanities Commons, Crossref and ARK that do not return 404 “Page not found” errors, guaranteeing long-term access to the scientific record of the works. EMC has a separate digital preservation plan for published files, in the event that the entity stops publishing, the object link associated with persistent identifiers cannot be located, or content management systems (CMS) are not available online. To this end, readers who wish to download the published books must access the Independent digital repository.

Code of Ethics

  • The submissions must be original, that is, the text, data, equations, tables and graphs presented in it have not been published in another medium of dissemination of knowledge, physical or electronic, the similarity index of the written text must be less than or equal to 5%, on average, not including the bibliographic references. All authors are guarantors of their contribution and responsibility in the submission. The submission will not be under the consideration of another publisher at the same time. EMC accepts essay submissions or book reprints through the Submission Form or the Open Monograph Press (OMP-PKP) platform.
  • The authors are solely responsible for the bibliographic references used, as well as for the ethical aspects related to the research topic. It is recommended to make use of managers such as BibTeX, Endnote and Mendeley.
  • The works must be unpublished, the corresponding author and their co-authors must sign the Unpublished Essay Guarantee.
  • In the event that the work has been presented at research conferences or conferences, the authors must submit a participation credential stating the title of the paper and the material of the conference, dates and place of celebration, including the names of the co-authors; if it was presented as a scientific poster, oral or written communication, specify whether the abstract has been published in the proceedings of the conference, page number, publication link, etc.
  • They are not considered unpublished if the text has been published in its entirety in the official collections of the congress or research conference.
  • Editorial Mar Caribe conceives that each trial, previously submitted for publication, complies with the review guidelines of the corresponding ethics committee, guaranteeing the anonymity and confidentiality of the study participants.
  • In public health studies, clinical cases, or human studies, authors must submit a copy of the approval by the Ethics Committee of the institution in which the research was conducted. And also an endorsement of informed consent or dissent.
  • Editorial Mar Caribe complies with the standards of good editorial practices and ethical responsibility in research in accordance with the DORA protocol.
  • The publishing house, in collaboration with Mount Scopus Journal, faithfully complies with the Peruvian Technical Standard NTP 722.001:2022 on “Gender equality management systems in the workplace”, approved by the National Institute of Quality (INACAL) for the Republic of Peru and Law No. 19846: “Approval of the obligations arising from international human rights law,  in relation to equality and non-discrimination between women and men, including formal, substantive and recognition equality” in the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; to guarantee equal rights and non-discrimination based on gender between women and men, including formal, substantive and recognition equality, this in relation to the percentage of inclusion of women in the constitution of the Editorial Committee.
  • Faculties, citations and references: Authors must provide the correct indication of the primary or secondary sources, as well as the participation mentioned in the book along with their DOI, ARK or URL, if any.
  • Conflict of interest and disclosure: All authors are obliged to state that there are no conflicts of interest, which may have influenced the results obtained from the research. Note: It must be indicated at the end of the text sent to the publisher, after the bibliography.
  • Authors must declare any source of funding that has favoured or provided support to the project that generated the trial and research. Note: It must be indicated at the end of the text sent to the publisher, after the Conflict of Interest Declaration section.
  • For more information about our code of ethics, download here.

Complaints Policy

  • Editorial Mar Caribe announces the channel so that each of the participants have a means by which they can make their comments known and the editorial team can give a solution and prompt response. Authors, readers and the general public can apply their complaint through the email: contacto@editorialmarcaribe.es.
  • Editorial Mar Caribe will evaluate the comments carefully and a response to the request will be issued as soon as possible (10 business days).
  • Authors, readers, and the general public can rest assured that all requests will be treated confidentially. Correspondence, statements, and other documents related to claims policies will be kept confidential in accordance with the Privacy Statement section. According to the data protection principles established by the publisher, the details of the requests will be kept for as long as reasonably necessary.

Advertising Policy

Editorial Mar Caribe is supported by funds from non-governmental institutions, for research and development purposes. It does not receive funding from private entities that profit from publishing, and it does not advertise of any kind. Therefore, it does not have commercial advertising on its website or in the published books. The notices and calls for papers will be for academic and scientific purposes.

Editorial Mar Caribe Training School

  • The Moodle virtual classroom  of Editorial Mar Caribe is a tool for the dissemination of scientific knowledge, to strengthen reading and writing skills, aimed at authors, readers and the general public. EMC provides training through linguistics and literacy workshops, led by specialists in the area of language and literature, on a bimonthly basis. In the Notices section, the planning of these workshops and the registration form are published at the end of each month. Authors and readers are invited to participate in these open access events, and the virtual classroom is available through this link.

© Editorial Mar Caribe, 2025