About the Journal

Focus and scope  

The UISRAEL Scientific Journal is an academic publication of the Israel University of Technology, that since its first publication in 2014, has addressed a wide variety of topics ranging from the field of tourism, administrative and economic sciences, engineering to the arts and humanities. However, it is currently focused on the social sciences and their interdisciplinary lines (communication, education, sociology, anthropology, contemporary visual arts, psychology, ICT, law, etc.). Published every four months (January, May and September), the journal accepts papers in both Spanish and English in order to facilitate its international projection.

It is open access and free of charge, so no submission or Article Processing Charge (APC) is charged, neither for authors nor for readers. All expenses, inputs and financing of the UISRAEL Scientific Journal come from the contributions made by our publisher: Israel University of Technology.

The UISRAEL Scientific Journal is a peer-reviewed scientific journal that follows the publication standards of the American Psychological Association (APA), and uses the external peer-review system following the double-blind review methodology. Compliance with this system guarantees authors an objective, impartial and transparent review process, which facilitates the publication's inclusion in international reference databases, repositories and indexes.

Mission

The mission of the UISRAEL Scientific Journal is to publish original articles to contribute to the dissemination of knowledge, from the academy, to the entire scientific community and society in general, from the field of social sciences, such as communication, education, sociology, anthropology, visual and contemporary arts, psychology, methodology, ICT, among others, in order to facilitate its international projection, that is the reason why works are accepted both in Spanish and English.

Peer review process

All manuscripts must be submitted through the Open Journal System (OJS), which guarantees the electronic and auditable registration of the interactions between the publication and the authors. Once the relevance and scientific solvency of the manuscript has been determined by the Editor, the document is sent to a minimum of two internationally recognized experts in the field, using the internationally standardized system of double-blind peer review, which guarantees the anonymity of the manuscripts and their reviewers. In the case of discrepant results, they will be referred to a third opinion, which will be final.

The entire review process, from the moment the manuscripts are submitted through OJS to the completion of the reviews, takes an average of 8-10 weeks, barring any incidents. Reviewers, in turn, must also comply with reviewer regulations and the reviewers' code of ethics.

Open Access Policy

The UISRAEL Scientific Journal is an Open Access journal that offers all its production in full online with open access to the entire scientific community.

No economic fee is established during the entire editorial process for the publication of articles under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY) license, including the scientific review, layout and translation of the articles, so no fee is charged for submission or article processing charge (Article Processing Charge - APC), neither for authors nor for readers.

All expenses, inputs and financing of the UISRAEL Scientific Journal come from the contributions made by our publisher: Israel Technological University.

Code of Ethics

The UISRAEL Scientific Journal, as a publication that seeks the highest excellence, adheres to the standards of the code of conduct of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE):

Responsibility of authors:  

  • Originality of submissions: papers submitted to the UISRAEL Scientific Journal must be original and unpublished.
  • Multiple and/or repetitive publications: the author should refrain from multiple/repetitive submission of articles to different publications or publishers. This is a reprehensible conduct in the dissemination of academic research.
  • Attributions, citations and references: the author must always provide the correct indication of the sources and contributions mentioned in the article.
  • Authorship: the authors guarantee the inclusion of those persons who have made a significant scientific and intellectual contribution in the conceptualization and planning of the work as well as in the interpretation of the results and in the writing of the article. At the same time, the order of appearance of the authors has been hierarchized according to their level of responsibility and involvement.
  • Conflict of interest and disclosure: all authors are required to declare explicitly that there are no conflicts of interest that may have influenced the results obtained or the interpretations proposed. Authors must also indicate any agency and/or project funding from which the research article arises.
  • Errors in published articles: when the author identifies an error or inaccuracy in his/her work, he/she should inform the editorial team of the UISRAEL scientific journal and provide the necessary information for corrections.
  • Responsibility: the responsibility for the content of the articles published in the UISRAEL Scientific Journal is the exclusive responsibility of the authors, therefore, they undertake to carry out a review of the most current and relevant scientific literature on the subject analyzed, taking into account in a pluralistic manner the different currents of knowledge.

Responsibility of the reviewers:

  • Contribution to the editorial decision: peer review is a procedure that helps editors to make decisions on proposed articles and also allows the author to improve the quality of articles submitted for publication. The reviewers assume the commitment to perform a critical, honest, constructive and unbiased review of both the scientific quality and the literary quality of the writing in the field of their knowledge and skills.
  • Conflict of interest and disclosure: when an evaluator or reviewer has any personal or financial opinion or interest that could affect his or her objectivity in the evaluation, he or she must abstain from participating in the editorial process.
  • Respect for the agreed time: the reviewer who does not feel competent in the subject matter to be reviewed or who cannot finish the evaluation in the scheduled time, should immediately notify the editors. The reviewers undertake to evaluate the papers in the shortest possible time in order to meet the deadlines.
  • Anonymity: to ensure that the review process is as objective, impartial and transparent as possible, reviewers will never know the authors (only through the OJS code) and will never know the identity of the other blind peer reviewer.
  • Confidentiality: each assigned manuscript must be considered confidential. Therefore, these texts should not be discussed with others without the express consent of the editors.
  • Text Display:  Reviewers undertake to accurately indicate bibliographic references to fundamental works possibly overlooked by the author. The reviewer should also inform the editors of any similarities or overlaps of the manuscript with other published works.

Responsibility of the editors:

  • Honesty: editors evaluate articles submitted for publication on the basis of the scientific merit of the contents. They must guarantee transparency in the evaluation, editing and publication processes of each issue.
  • Confidentiality: the editors and members of the working group undertake not to disclose information related to the articles submitted for publication to persons other than authors, reviewers and editors. The editorial team will maintain anonymity between reviewers and authors throughout the process.
  • Publication process: the editors will guarantee the selection of the most qualified and scientifically specialized reviewers to issue a critical and expert appraisal of the work, with the least possible biases.
  • Conflict of interest and disclosure: the editors undertake not to use in their research the contents of the articles submitted for publication without the written consent of the author.
  • Respect for time limits: the editors are fully responsible for compliance with the time limits for reviews and publication of accepted papers, to ensure rapid dissemination of their results.

Digital Preservation Policies

The UISRAEL Scientific Journal is working on the long-term digital preservation of all the documents it houses. To this end, it is developing an action plan that includes basic measures to ensure the digital durability of the scientific material present:

  • Periodic backups through the use of repositories.
  • Conversion of formats to other more secure ones.
  • Periodic checks of the integrity of the files to avoid their corruption.
  • Monitoring of the technological environment to foresee possible migrations of obsolete formats or software.
  • Digital preservation metadata.

For digital preservation purposes, the UISRAEL Scientific Journal recommends depositing documents in easily readable formats (PDF). In general, open formats such as RTF, TIFF and JPG are preferred over proprietary formats (Word, GIF, etc).

The content of all issues of the UISRAEL Scientific Journal is preserved in the digital repositories of the Israel University, as well as in Cloud Computing repositories such as Dropbox and Google Drive.

LOCKSS is used to create a distributed archiving system among collaborating libraries, allowing them to create permanent archives of the journal for preservation and restoration purposes.

Anti-plagiarism Policy

The act of copying the works of others without giving the corresponding credits is unacceptable behavior and cause for rejection of any type of manuscript submitted for publication. All originals submitted for review in the UISRAEL Scientific Journal are inspected by a disciplined anti-plagiarism policy that ensures the originality of the articles. The Turnitin system is used, which analyzes the texts in search of similarities, which guarantees that the works are unpublished and ensures compliance with the editorial quality standards that guarantee the scientific production.