Guidelines for authors – Open Science in Latin America and the Caribbean

Each essay submitted to Editorial Mar Caribe (EMC) must be written in Spanish, English, French or Portuguese, cover topics of importance in all areas of knowledge and must be original and unpublished. The level of study required of the candidates for publication will be the specialty of undergraduate to term, the authors must detail the corresponding author, specify the roles and functions they played in the fulfillment of the work they postulate. EMC has the following publication categories, which are reviewed by external double-blind peers:

Literature books
Sourcebooks
Art books
Promotional Books
Textbooks
Research books

The Authorship Statement The publication of the essays is delivered to the corresponding author for due completion and must be signed by all co-authors and sent together with the essay, within a period of no more than five (05) business days. With this manifesto, the author and his co-authors undertake not to submit the draft object of application to another publisher or any media outlet, until publication in the web repository.

On the first page, the following should be written:

TITLE: in the original language of the essay (Spanish), a short title of up to 18 words, normal size 16 spacing font. Translate titles into English and Portuguese in 14-size font.
IDENTIFICATION DATA (author and co-authors): full names and surnames, institutional affiliation, city, capital and country, profession and academic degree, as well as the email address of each author with their respective ORCID code must be included under the title in italics, size 11. Restriction: A maximum of seven (07) authors per review trial is accepted.
FOREWORD: short text in the original language of the essay, English, French and/or Portuguese in size 12, with the most important ideas of the research, containing a minimum of about a thousand words.
KEYWORDS (OPTIONAL):in the original language of the essay, English and Portuguese; minimum of three (03), maximum of six (06), based on the UNESCO Thesaurus.

Pay attention to the following stylistic criteria:

The text must have a minimum length of 70 pages, 1.15 spacing, Times New Roman 12 font, A4 sheet layout, margins of 2.54 cm on each side. Exceptions to this rule may be considered by the editorial board if and only if they are approved in advance and justified by the Editor-in-Chief.
In the body of the text, the subheadings of each section, with their proper numbering, must be double-spaced, in font 14.
Documents must be written in editable Word format.
Figures that can be used include editable graphs and tables.
Bibliographic references will include only those documents cited in the text and will be listed in alphabetical order, for this section a font type 11 is required, with line spacing 1.0 (single).

Quotes and references:

Essay references must be up-to-date, appropriate, provide necessary information, not omit references important to research, and strictly adhere to ethical and academic standards.
Citations and references should be prepared according to APA (American Psychological Association) style standards, in the seventh edition (7th Ed.) of the APA Style Manual.
References should be included within the text, in parentheses, with the name of the author or institution, year of publication, and relevant page(s); for example: (Lugo, 2020: pp. 89). References in parentheses in the text should refer to the bibliography at the end of the document. This list should contain complete information about each source cited in the text.
Textual quotations will be included in the text as long as they do not exceed 250 characters with space and must be in quotation marks in Spanish. If a text quote is longer than 250 characters, it should be placed in a new paragraph, without quotation marks or indentation. If there is more than one paragraph in a citation, each new paragraph, starting with the second paragraph, should begin with an additional indent on the first line. Textual quotations should be at most 10% of the total written text.
In the case of non-textual quotations, these will be made just like textual quotations, indicating the pages that the author is summarizing in his own words, with the difference that quotation marks will not be used. It should be noted that paraphrases that make slight variations in relation to the cited text will not be accepted, only in order not to use quotation marks. This is considered a form of plagiarism.
In the case of non-textual quotations, they have the same format as textual quotations, revealing the pages that the author synthesizes in his own words, with the difference that quotation marks are not used. The use of paraphraser in excess or from artificial intelligence software should be avoided.
In general, the format of references and citations is governed by the APA standards in its seventh edition.

At the end of the essay, the sources cited in the text will be indicated: books, book chapters, articles, legal documents, press releases, case law or regulations (blog sources, encyclopedias or theses of any level are not accepted). The bibliography should only include the sources cited in the text.

Below, we describe the correct way to reference, depending on the type of source:

Book with publisher: Surname, N.M. (Ed.). (year). Title. Editorial.
Book, electronic version: Surname, S.T. (year). Title. http://www. libro.com
Book with DOI: Surname, O.P. (year) Title. https://doi.org/10.XXXXX/1111
Chapter of a book: Surname, Q.R. (year). Chapter title. In E.R. Surname. (Ed.), Title of the book (pp. xx-xx). Editorial.
Journal article: Surname, A.B. (year). Title of the article. Name of the journal, vol(number), pp-pp.
Digital magazine article: Last name, J.K. (year). Title of the article. Name of the journal, vol.(number), pp-pp. https://editorialmarcaribe.es
Journal article with DOI: Surname, E.R. (year). Title of the article. Journal Name, vol. (number), pp-pp. https://doi.org/10.XXXXX/YYYY

From the essay format:

In general, it is suggested to follow the IMRYD model, which corresponds to the acronyms formed by the terms: Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion (in the case of a book chapter or research book). This is the suggested structure and standard requested by Editorial Mar Caribe to accept drafts that report research results; the assay to be submitted is governed by APA standards, however; For qualitative methods and research in humanities, philosophy and social sciences it can be written according to the experience of the researcher and the approval of the editorial committee. Authors are encouraged to review books published in repositories, for more information, follow the Research Book Templateposted on the web. For the rest of the book categories, the format of presentation of the work is free. Editorial Mar Caribe asks authors to faithfully comply with editorial policies when submitting their written text. Authors must report on the grants received during the execution of the research, directly or indirectly, for this they must fill out and send, together with the essay, the Declaration of conflict of interest and the Unpublished Essay Guarantee.

From sending essays to the publisher:

Submissions must be original, i.e., the written text, data, equations, tables, and graphs presented therein; and have not been published in another means of dissemination of knowledge, physical or electronic, such that the similarity index of the essay must be less than or equal to 7% on average, not including bibliographic references. All authors are guarantors of their contribution and responsible for sending the works; The correspondent author and his co-authors must sign the Guarantee of unpublished test. The submission will not be under the consideration of another publisher at the same time. EMC accepts assay shipments through the Submission Formor the platform Open Monograph Press (OMP-PKP). Essays may not be submitted by any means other than that expressed in the guidelines for authors. 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,EndnoteandMendeley. Authors must be aware of the Proposal evaluation form, executed by the scientific committee in the preliminary round of assessment and comply with the guidelines of the Scientific assessment rubric, used by the external arbitration committee.

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.

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).

Copyright Notice

Books published in EMC repositories are subject to the following guidelines:

Authors may authorize the general public to reuse their works solely for non-profit purposes, readers may use one work to generate another work, as long as research credit is given, and they grant Editorial Mar Caribe the right to first publish their book under the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0-Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license.
Editorial Mar Caribe is subsidized by associations, foundations and non-governmental institutions, so authors are only allowed a voluntary donation to cover publication fees in the ISBN catalog and the hosting of the books in the web repositories. There is no payment of the right to publication, methodological advice or content development, that is, authors enjoy the open access publishing system.
The CC BY-NC 4.0-Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license may not grant you all the permissions you need for the use of these freedoms, as long as you follow the terms of the license, provided that: the authorship and original source of your publication (publisher, DOI, ARK and/or URL of the book) are cited; they are not used for commercial purposes and the existence and specifications of this license of use are mentioned.
The authors retain the copyright and grant the publisher the right of first publication of the authorized work.
Authors are invited to electronically disseminate the post-publication versions (version valued and accepted for publication) of the books, since it favors the dissemination of the book, increases the H Index of the authors, in synergy with the metrics of the publisher in terms of web traffic and citations.