Editorial Policy

Editorial Policy

Revista M is attached to the Faculty of Architecture of the Bucaramanga, branch of the Santo Tomás University, institution that oversees the financial support of the publication. It has an annual periodicity (January – December), which receives material permanently in Spanish and/or English, although schedules of calls and publication are established to comply with the declared periodicity. The calls are disseminated through the journal's website and other institutional and allied media.

However, the journal uses the advance publication system, that is, as the articles are received, they begin the editorial process and if they are accepted by the peers, a preliminary version of them is published, after assignment of the DOI (all articles in the journal have this identification code). The aim of this is to guarantee the timely publication of the material, proceed to the dissemination and facilitate the referencing of it and its authors. Subsequently, the articles follow the regular editorial channel through style correction and layout, before the definitive version of the articles gathered in each issue is published.

On the other hand, the average time between the receipt of an article, its approval and publication, at least in advance mode, is approximately six months, although these publication times are subject to the times of authors, evaluators, and the journal's support team [proofreading; design and layout].

Finally, it is important to mention that Revista M does not charge for submitting, evaluating, correcting, or publishing articles, and there are no monetary charges for printing or distributing the journal in any of its formats. From the issue of Revista M Vol. 16 January - December (2019), labelled “Architecture, city and territory”, the publication is only made in its digital format.

 

Editorial team structure

The operation of the journal is mainly based on the work of an editorial team headed by an Editor who coordinates all the processes of management and production of the copies; Editorial Coordinators* who support these processes in the Bucaramanga section; eventually Guest Editors** may also intervene; an Editorial Committee and a Scientific Committee with extensive experience in research both in the national and international academic field; and a Support Team, made up of professionals from the Centre for Institutional Design and Image (CEDII) who are in charge of providing support in terms of style correction, design and layout, and web master. While the professionals of the Learning and Research Resource Centre (CRAI) oversee providing support in bibliometrics and technical advice related to institutional platforms such as the Open Journal System and the Institutional Repository where all issues of the Journal are hosted.

* Note: since 2020, following the guidelines of the Multicampus Institutional Policy, support from the USTA headquarters and sectionals, which also have Faculties of Architecture, begins to be gradually managed to promote progress in editorial processes such as search for publishable material, peer evaluators and dissemination of calls.

* * Note: the editorial team may invite expert editors to participate in specific thematic issues. These editors must be available throughout the process, from the establishment of the guidelines of the call to the final publication of the copy, participating in the preliminary review of the content received, as well as the supervision of the evaluation process. The last word on the acceptance and/or rejection of articles to be published, and the number of articles per issue, will be the editorial team of the journal.

 

Stages of the editorial process

The editorial process follows a phased structure within which the availability of all the actors involved in them is essential. Communication must be permanent between the editorial team, authors, and peer reviewers, through the means previously established for this purpose, especially the journal's official email (revistam@ustabuca.edu.co). The following is a general list of the phases that make up the process:

  1. Presentation of the article: the author proceeds to the presentation of his article following the Authors' Guide, which is invited to be reviewed beforehand. Likewise, you must fill out and send the forms that are required for the application and publication of the article: Article Presentation Form, Author Information Form, Assignment of Rights for Publication Form and Originality Certification Form. Finally, the author is responsible for guaranteeing the originality of the material, as well as ensuring that it is not found in parallel in other evaluation processes. In case translations of the material are required, the author is responsible for managing them.

  2.  Preliminary review of the article: this phase is carried out by the editorial team to verify the author's compliance with publication requirements [See Authors' Guide] as well as to guarantee: the relevance of the thematic content of the article; its research and bibliographic support; coherent argumentation and clear writing; reflective contribution to the academic discussions of the discipline; and generation of new knowledge.

    Subsequently, if the article passes this first filter, it undergoes a review within the Turniting software to detect the similarity indices of the document.

  3. Peer review: when phases 1 and 2 are approved, the article goes to the peer review phase [double-blind modality] who have an established deadline for the review of the article [both authors and evaluators are invited to review the format established for this purpose].  

  4. Approval and Early Publication: when the article has been approved by peer reviewers and after review by the author, it is published under the modality of early publication with the following exception:  

    ADVANCE RELEASE

    The Editorial Committee of Revista M has authorized the early publication of this article considering that: it has been approved by the respective peer reviewers and complies with the editorial rules and policies of our journal. However, readers are cautioned that this PDF version is provisional and may have some minor adjustments after the corresponding style correction and layout.

    Even so, the article already has the definitive DOI, therefore, from now on it can be consulted and cited without any inconvenience.

  5. Publication of the final version: when all the material corresponding to each copy has been gathered and organized, it is delivered to the corresponding institutional units so that the editorial process can continue as follows: Research and Innovation Unit, Publications Department, and Centre for Design and Institutional Image, the latter being in charge of the correction of style and the design and layout of each copy. In this regard, the journal reserves the right to decide in which issue to publish the article; to carry out a general style correction of the texts; adjust the abstract and keywords if necessary; and to verify the translations sent by the author [revisions may be requested – second versions].

    Subsequently, in the final phase of the layout, a version of the text is sent to the authors for review before final publication. At this point, only minor corrections or adjustments are accepted.