About the Journal

Focus and scope  

The U-Mores Journal is a refereed publication of the Israel Technological University with a strong humanistic vision and a rigorous base on empirical evidence that integrates the field of Applied Neuroscience to the areas of education, health, social groups, institutions, and others.

Its name -from the Latin "mores"-, refers to the need for permanent revision of praxis and norms in the university environment, but also, morar is "chosen voice", mainly used in literature, and refers to the necessary voice that researchers must make heard in their role as founders of scientific knowledge. To dwell is also to inhabit... and this journal is an invitation to inhabit science, method and evidence from the daily university practice, in the search for excellence. That is why it is open access and free of charge, with no submission or article processing charges (Article Processing Charge - APC), neither for authors nor for readers. All expenses, inputs and financing of the U-Mores Journal come from the contributions made by our publisher: Universidad Tecnológica Israel.

The journal is published every four months (January, May and September) and promotes the dissemination of innovative articles, essays, reviews and research advances. These are submitted to the consideration of qualified referees, expressing directly the opinions of their authors and not, necessarily, those of the Editorial Committee, in absolute respect for the plurality of voices.

U-Mores is aimed at researchers, teachers, students and the academic audience in its multiplicity of levels, as well as the scientific community in general and other people involved in the fields of health, education and the generation of public policies.

Mission

U-Mores has as its primary mission to publish the results of research conducted in Higher Education Institutions (HEI) nationally and internationally, in order to contribute to the most outstanding scientific advances. Part of its vision is to become a national and international reference in the generation of scientific publications in the fields of health and education, with special emphasis on the intertwining that arises from them, prevailing the development of high standards of quality and methodological rigor.

Target

The objective of the U-Mores Journal is to disseminate scientific and technological knowledge in its areas of immersion, through original results, product of scientific research that represent a contribution to the development of science, technology and the generation of new pedagogical resources. It includes scientific research products, reviews, case studies and theoretical reflections that, due to their relevance, deserve to be published and thus contribute to the visibility of intellectual production in a transdisciplinary framework.

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 U-Mores Journal is an Open Access journal that offers its entire production 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 submission or Article Processing Charge (APC) is charged, neither for authors nor for readers.

All expenses, supplies and financing of the U-Mores Magazine come from the contributions made by our publishing entity: Universidad Tecnológica Israel.

Code of Ethics

U-Mores Magazine, as a publication that strives for excellence, adheres to the standards of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) code of conduct:

Responsibility of the authors:

  • Originality of submissions: documents submitted to U-Mores Magazine 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 study, as well as in the interpretation of the results and in the writing of the study. 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 U-Mores Magazine and provide the necessary information for corrections.
  • Responsibility: the authors are exclusively responsible for the content of the articles published in the U-Mores Journal, therefore, they undertake to review the most current and relevant scientific literature on the subject analyzed, taking into account the different currents of knowledge in a pluralistic manner.

Responsibility of 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. Peer reviewers are committed to provide a critical, honest, constructive and unbiased review of both the scientific and literary quality of the writing in the field of their knowledge and skills.
  • Conflict of interest and disclosure: when an evaluator or reviewer has a 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 agreed deadlines: reviewers who do not feel competent in the subject matter to be reviewed or who are unable to complete the evaluation within 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.
  • Confidentiality: Each assigned manuscript should 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 key 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: the editors evaluate the articles submitted for publication based on the scientific merit of the contents. They must guarantee transparency in the evaluation, editing and publication processes of each issue.
  • Confidentiality: editors and members of the working group agree not to disclose information regarding articles submitted for publication to anyone 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 deadlines: 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 U-Mores 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 formats.
  • Periodic file integrity checks to prevent file corruption.
  • Monitoring of the technological environment to foresee possible migrations of obsolete formats or software.
  • Digital preservation metadata.

For digital preservation purposes, U-Mores Magazine recommends the deposit of 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 editions of the U-Mores Magazine are preserved in the digital repositories of 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 U-Mores 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 journal's own scientific production.