About the Journal

The journal uses a double-blind external peer review system to guarantee the quality of research articles, research reports, monographs, dossiers, narrated reports of pedagogical experiences and transfer-to-the-community projects, interviews and graduation dissertations. The review process can last between 2 and 4 months. Editorials, reviews and translations are evaluated by the Editor-in-Chief with the possible help of an ad-hoc reviewer.

When a peer-reviewable manuscript is received, it is firstly checked by the editorial committee, which verifies its relevance and its compliance with formal aspects. The committee can directly reject manuscripts without consulting external reviewers if they are inappropriate for the journal due to their quality, incongruity with the journal's aims and scope, indifference to authors' guidelines, or if they present evidence of being fraudulent.  If the manuscript is positively evaluated, the Editor sends it to at least two members of the permanent scientific committee and/or external specialists (peers). Reviewers evaluate the quality of manuscripts taking into account conceptual clarity, academic relevance, originality, and use of language. The evaluation is carried out by means of a strict double-blind system. This means that reviewers will not know the authors' identity, and vice-versa. Reviewers will not belong to the same institution as the authors. Also, a minimum of 66% of the reviewers will be unrelated to the journal's publishing entity. Authors receive comments by reviewers through an e-mail in which the decision regarding their manuscript is informed.

After the review process, the Editor-in-Chief generates a single decision regarding the manuscript: 

• Accepted: with no objections. The manuscript is sent for style correction in order to be published in the journal;
• Accepted, subject to changes. In this case, authors will be given a time limit to make corrections (1 month for minor corrections; 2 months for major corrections). Should the authors submit a new version of the manuscript, the editor evaluates the changes made and, if necessary, sends the manuscript for a second round of review. If the final version is approved, the manuscript is sent for copyediting and publication. If, on the other hand, the changes are not satisfactory, the manuscript is not published. This decision is unappealable.
• Rejected: when the manuscript does not meet the minimum quality standards regarding conceptual clarity of academic writing. In this case, the manuscript will not be published, and cannot be submitted again to the journal in its current form. This decision is unappealable.

Plagiarism detection

The Journal of Psychology analyzes each manuscript with the aim of avoiding plagiarism, as established by national and international editorial regulations. For the detection of plagiarism, the Editorial Board uses the computer tools provided by Google. In case of detection of plagiarism, the Journal of Psychology follows the guidelines provided by COPE. Full plagiarism policies can be found here. 

The Journal of Psychology is committed to Open Science and is part of the Diamond Open Access model because it considers that it promotes a greater global exchange of knowledge. This means: (i) that submitted manuscripts go through a peer-review process; (ii) that the journal provides free and immediate free access to published manuscripts (without embargo period); and (iii) that neither the authors nor their institutions must pay any fees for the manuscripts to be published in the Journal. This type of policy is in accordance with the principles of the BOAI definition of Open Access and corresponds to the blue cataloguing (Blue) proposed by SHERPA/RoMEO.

The journal also complies with the Fair Open Access Principles defined by FOAA (Fair Open Access Alliance): 

1. The journal has a transparent ownership structure and is controlled by and responsive to the scholarly community (Faculty of Psychology, UNLP)
2. Authors of articles in the journal retain copyright.
3. All articles are published open access and an explicit open access licence is used (CC-BY)
4. Submission and publication is not conditional in any way on the payment of a fee from the author or their employing institution, or on membership of an institution or society.
5. Any fees paid on behalf of the journal to publishers are low, transparent, and in proportion to the work carried out (the Faculty of Psychology takes care of the publication process, without intermediaries).

Copyright & licencing policies

The material published in the journal is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (CC-BY 4.0). This license allows others to distribute, mix, adjust and build from their work, even for commercial purposes, provided that the authorship of the original creation is recognized. The authors of the works published in the Journal of Psychology retain the copyright without restrictions. Authors also retain publishing rights without restrictions.

Adoption of codes of ethics

This journal adheres to the Code of Conduct and Best Practices Guidelines for Journals Editors, COPE. Also, this journal adheres to the San Francisco Declaration (DORA) to guarantee good practices related to the evaluation of academic outputs. Detailed information on ethics and how we handle plagiarism can be found here. 

Gender perspective

The Editorial Committee works together with the Mental Health and Human Rights Secretariat, Faculty of Psychology, Universidad Nacional de La Plata to promote the dissemination of academic production with a gender perspective. This initiative is part of the Participatory Plan for the Promotion and Strengthening of the Gender Perspective (2018-2021) by the mentioned Secretariat. This endeavour involves, at least, the following actions: (a) to balance the number of published manuscripts considering the authors' gender, (b) to balance the structure of the Academic Committee considering the gender of the specialists, (c) to encourage the publication of studies that have been carried out considering the gender perspective, both at a theoretical and methodological level.

Archive and self-archive policies

The journal uses the LOCKSS system via PKP PN to create an archive distributed among the participating libraries, allowing these libraries to create permanent journal archives for preservation and restoration purposes. The journal allows self-archiving of contributions in its final version (post-print), immediately after its publication online, both on personal webs of authors (such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, ActaAcademica, etc. .) as in institutional and telematic repositories. The Journal of Psychology does not allow self-archiving of pre-print versions.

Preservation policy

The materials published in this journal are deposited in SEDICI, the repository of the UNLP. Automatic backups and remote copies, format adjustments, integrity checks and other activities required to ensure digital preservation are made through the repository. The preservation policies of SEDICI can be consulted at the following link: http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/pages/politicas#preservacion.