Editorial Policies

Editorial policies

The Publications Service, which publishes under the seal or brand Editorial Academia Abierta —hereinafter EAA-URJC—, has in its policy the evaluation, editing and publication of scientific, cultural and teaching production produced by all scientific and social communities of our society, whether from our university or external. The EAA-URJC promotes and defends clear editorial policies. The editorial team that makes it up considers that its duty, as a university and scientific publisher, is to ensure the dissemination and transfer of knowledge, guaranteeing rigor and scientific quality with a high ethical commitment.

The general rules of the EAA-URJC are developed based on the following editorial policies: Open access policy and APC publication costs. The EAA-URJC offers immediate free and open access to all its content in order to make scientific research available to the whole society, following the principles established by Plan Sand the AmeliCA open science principles. Users can also publish, read, download, copy and distribute all materials, whether monographs or journal articles, whether they are authored by them or by other national or international authors, without being charged any type of remuneration (APC - Article Processing Charge). All digital content of the EAA-URJC is published under a Licencia Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Authorship policy

Authorship is considered to be the responsible person who has taken part in the idea and concept, in the methodology and development of the research, in the results, in the conclusions and in the subsequent corrections (if any) of a book, chapter or article that is published in the EAA-URJC.

Ethical code and policy on publication and bad practices

The EAA-URJC is limited to the ethical code based on the COPE declaration of good practices developed in 2017. All parties involved in the publication agree and declare their willingness to collaborate with the ethical principles of this declaration. In turn, the academic management, the technical management, as well as the collection directors and journal editors undertake to:

  • Look after the best interests of the publisher.
  • Ensure that the material published is original and of proven quality.
  • Offer and maintain the best possible quality in collections and journals.
  • Defend the interests of open science against commercial impositions.
  • Accept the publication of as many corrections, retractions and apologies as necessary in the event of possible incidents that may arise.

Functions of the director, editor and editorial team of journals, monographs or editorial collections.

Each EAA Journal, monograph or collection of monographs must have an Editorial Committee. A working group made up of national professors and researchers who have a recognized research career, competitive research projects and publications in indexed journals in the last 5 years. Its composition will be reviewed every 4 years.

  • The director and editor of a journal have the following functions.
  • Appoint the members of the editorial committee.
  • Appoint the editorial coordinators for the monographic issues.
  • Decide the final publication of the articles, book chapters and monographs after passing the evaluation by blind peers, especially if there is any conflict
  • Decide the acceptance and publication standards for research papers.
  • Select the blind peer reviewers together with the coordinators of the monographs.

The deputy director and secretary will serve as support in all the functions carried out by the management of the journal and will also be in charge of taking minutes of each of the meetings held within the editorial team.

Decision to publish or reject a monograph or an article

The directors of collections, the editors of collections, the directors of journals and the editors of sections are the only ones responsible when deciding whether a monograph, article or report should or should not be published. This decision will be the result of studying the opinions offered by the blind evaluators, the consultation with the editorial teams of the collections and the defense of the editorial policy with the sole purpose of achieving the highest levels of scientific quality.

The management of the EAA and/or, failing that, the directors of collections and directors of journals will be the only ones responsible for dealing with possible crimes in the form of cases of abuse, plagiarism and violation of copyright.

All members of the editorial team undertake not to use, without the express authorization of the authors, the information sent to the journal for publication. If there is any complaint from any of the authors, the director and the editor will take all necessary measures to clarify what happened and to be able to offer the authors a response as clear as possible.

Confidentiality of the editorial team

For the reasons stated above, the members of the editorial team undertake to treat any submission to the EAA-URJC with the utmost confidentiality throughout the editorial process. Only the editor, the editorial coordinator, the collection director or the management of the EAA-URJC may contact the authors and issue an opinion on the submission.

Functions of the reviewers

The reviewers will be chosen by the editorial team of each monograph collection or journal and will be responsible for reviewing the manuscripts sent to the EAA on its journal and/or monograph platform and issuing a report following evaluation rubrics that both platforms must establish in their editorial standards. ç

Help with editorial decisions

Both the members of the scientific committee of each collection or journal, as well as their external reviewers, will help the management and the editor to make the best decision when publishing or rejecting an article.

Confidentiality of reviewers

Any monograph or article sent to the different collections of the EAA or to any of its journals must be treated with the utmost confidentiality, with the reviewers and section editors being the only ones responsible for issuing an opinion on the submission. The EAA-URJC is working to ensure that an open access evaluation process can be used in the future.

Duties of authors

The works sent to the EAA-URJC must comply with the editorial standards published on the journal portal and on the URJC monograph portal. The data provided must offer the greatest rigor so that others can be allowed to properly cite the work without fear of making mistakes. It is unethical and highly reprehensible to try to publish deliberately inaccurate data.

Original and plagiarism

Authors must meet the following requirements:

  • The article or monograph submitted to the EAA-URJC must be original.
  • The article or monograph has not been published by any other publisher.
  • Data taken from other authors included in the article must be cited and referenced according to the rules specified in "rules for authors".

The EAA-URJC, as well as its collection directorates and journal editors, undertake to use anti-plagiarism tools to ensure that the works received are original and have not been copied from other sources. They also undertake to use tools that help detect works carried out using Artificial Intelligence, although as of the date on which these regulations are drawn up, there are no tools available that guarantee a secure review.

Conflict of interest

Any member of the EAA-URJC editorial team, collection editorial directors, section editors, editorial board, members of the scientific committees of the collections and journals, reviewers undertake to withdraw in the event of a conflict of interest with the content to be published. This incompatibility may occur for the following reasons:

  • An editor or reviewer is part of the work that is being evaluated
  • An editor or reviewer has financial interests in the work that is being evaluated
  • An editor or reviewer is a family member or has a personal relationship with the person who is sending a work for evaluation. A
  • n editor or reviewer is a family member or has a professional relationship with the person who is sending a work for evaluation.

The EAA-URJC publishing house has an ethics committee in case its intervention is necessary, made up of at least 4 people from the Editorial Board Although the publishing house does not believe in or defend hierarchies in research, since it understands that all people play an important role in achieving research goals, it is advisable to review the guidelines established by the CrediT Taxonomy . These guidelines will help organize participation, avoiding ghost authorship.

The opinions expressed in the articles and monographs are exclusively those of the authors, and none of the editorial team is responsible. The authors declare that the manuscripts sent to the EAA-URJC publishing house are unpublished and have not been published in any other electronic or paper media and must have all the necessary permissions for the use of images and graphics before being published by the EAA-URJC.

To avoid confusion in the attribution of authorship due to coincidences in names, the EAA requests an ORCID number. If you do not have one, we recommend that you register on the platform.

Anti-plagiarism policy

The EAA-URJC defends an anti-plagiarism policy that guarantees the originality of all its published content. To make this possible, journal and monograph portals use specialized tracking tools to detect fraudulent copying such as Unicheck and Turnitin,  In addition, the rules for submitting monographs and journals request a declaration of whether AI has been used to prepare the content to be published and to what extent it affects the results presented. If you want more information, visit our section: policy on publication, ethical code and bad practices

Archive policy

EAA-URJC guarantees permanent access to published material —in the form of digital objects— through its servers and offers the following solutions:

Local backup copies of the OJS and OMP web hosting of the journals in the university's IT facilities Metadata storage for long-term conservation in external repositories and services: Hosting of complete articles in Dialnet, Sherpa Romeo, Dulcinea, Zenodo, OpenAir and REDIB (Ibero-American Network for Innovation and Scientific Knowledge).

  • Use of an OJS (Open Journal Systems) y OMP (Open Monograph Press)
  • editorial manager in its latest versions, open source software compatible with the OAI-PHM (Open Archive Initiative-Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) interoperability protocol, which allows interoperability between different platforms and repositories through the exchange of metadata.
  • Digital preservation services: BURJ is used as an institutional repository where all the content published by the EAA-URJC is hosted.
  • The technical advice of a publishing services company ensures the correct functioning of the OJS and OMP systems through the journal and monograph portals respectively, as well as the installation and maintenance of the new software versions.

The files published on the EAA website are available in formats that can be easily reproduced on both mobile devices and desktop computers and tablets, since PDF, EPUB, HTML and XML files are offered.

Rey Juan Carlos University (URJC) maintains a digital preservation and updating policy that is continually reviewed both in its publication service and in the Free Knowledge Office.

Digital preservation policy

The EAA-URJC guarantees open access since it has an archiving system that guarantees the digital preservation of all its publications.

The EAA-URJC deposits its metadata in different international repositories to ensure long-term digital preservation, such as Dialnet, DOAJ, Dulcinea or Sherpa/Romeo

The articles published on this website are available in widely known and easy-to-use formats, such as PDF and EPUB. The digital preservation policy is constantly reviewed to offer legible and long-lasting formats.

Policy on good editorial practices, equality, sexual, ethnic and cultural diversity

The EAA-URJC defends the United Nations principles on equal opportunities and respect between men and women, publishing scientific works without making gender distinctions in any of its publications, whether journals or monographs. It also recommends the use of inclusive language in the submitted works. It also recognizes sexual diversity and different races and cultures. To carry out these equality policies, we carry out these specific actions:

  • To make a publication that is more equal between men and women based on the principles set out by the URJC equality unit created in 2010 to comply with Organic Law 3/2007, of March 22. On June 7, 2019, the Unit was established as a university service as regulated in article 188 of the URJC Statutes. https://www.urjc2030.es/ui/
  • Trying to maintain a participation percentage of 40 percent of women in all management bodies, Guest Editors, Editorial Boards and Advisory Boards of collections, Editorial Committees, Journal Editors, whenever possible.
  • To make publications more diverse and inclusive and that is why the URJC belongs to the Network of Universities for Diversity and has created a sexual and ethnic-cultural diversity unit.
  • It is our intention to maintain, as far as possible, a percentage of at least 40 percent of women as reviewers of the works submitted to the EAA.
  • Use inclusive language in communications with the authors of scientific, teaching or any other type of works accepted by the EAA and request that they also comply with it.

Blind reviewer policy

Refereeing system All research and teaching works received by the EAA will be evaluated to see if they comply with the standards of each collection or journal. The editorial boards of the journals and monograph collections will be responsible for reviewing the subject matter and the minimum formal requirements of each collection or journal and accepting or rejecting them depending on each case. They must also inform the authors of the result of this first evaluation. Texts approved in the first instance and provided they are research manuscripts will be sent without stating the name and affiliation of the author to two external evaluators who will assess the quality of the subject matter and its contents for possible publication.

Obligations and ethical commitment of the reviewers

The external evaluators must follow the evaluation guidelines set out in a form as an evaluation rubric in which they will define the relevance, clarity and originality of the work, accepting the article with or without minor modifications. In the event that they accept it with major modifications, a third evaluation will be required. The reviewers undertake to communicate the acceptance or rejection of the research work, accompanying their decision with a brief report within a maximum period of one month for articles and 3 months for monographs.

If one of the evaluators' reports is negative, a third report will be requested. In the event that the positive report also shows doubts about the publication of the article or monograph, the editorial board of the collection or journal may make the decision not to publish said work without resorting to a third evaluator and will communicate this to its author.

The reviewers undertake to follow minimum ethical and professional guidelines by accepting manuscripts whose content is appropriate to the knowledge of the person who performs the evaluation. Evaluations will be carried out that provide substantial improvements to the manuscript, avoiding personal comments that disrespect the person being evaluated.

They will not contact the person being evaluated, maintaining anonymity at all times. They must inform the management of the monograph collection of any possible conflict of interest when receiving a manuscript to be evaluated. This will also be done in the case of journals.

The director of the collection, journal or section editor may contact the main author through the contact provided in the submission, informing him/her of the acceptance or rejection of his/her work. In the case of monographs, it will be the director of the collection or, failing that, the editor of the collection who will contact the authors. In the event that the article, book or book chapter has been accepted with modifications, the evaluators will provide an information sheet with which the authors must incorporate the suggested changes to improve the publication. These changes will be communicated to the journal's management in the body of the article or in an attached document.

The committee of the journal, monograph or editorial collection may reject an article if the changes marked in its evaluation are not incorporated before publication. In all cases of acceptance or rejection, electronic communication will be maintained with the authors.

External blind peer reviewers

As explained in the General Regulations of the EAA-URJC approved by agreement of the Governing Council on October 3, 2024, original research works are accepted that will be subject to the supervision of the editorial board of each journal or editorial collection of monographs and to external review by two blind peers (peer review), considered experts in the topics proposed in the research. In the case of teaching materials, dissemination and other materials that are not strictly research results, the evaluation will be internal, although it will always be maintained by peers.

The EAA-URJC arbitration system uses evaluators external to the Rey Juan Carlos University to review research papers using the blind peer review procedure prior to their acceptance. Only 10 percent of evaluators from the Rey Juan Carlos University will be used, with the remaining 90 percent external to said institution. The EEAA-URJC allows the authors of the submissions to suggest names of external evaluators for their monograph or article.

Internal blind peer reviewers

In the case of papers that are not strictly research results, they may have one or two evaluations by members of the Editorial Board of each monograph collection. Both the journals and the editorial collections of monographs of the EAA-URJC will have a bank of reviewers who will publish on their own pages where their name and institutional affiliation will appear.

Peer review guarantee

The EAA-URJC publishing house has sumission guidelines for monographs and specific submission guidelines on the journal portal that indicate the details of how the submission should be made. Submissions must be made without including personal data to ensure anonymity in the evaluation. The data of university affiliation, postal address, email and brief curriculum CVA will be incorporated into the journal and/or monograph platforms in an attached file.

Privacy Statement

“In accordance with or established in the General Data Protection Regulation EU679/2016 and current legislation, we inform you that the data provided in this document will be processed, as Data Controller, by UNIVERSIDAD REY JUAN CARLOS.

The purpose of processing the data, names and email addresses entered in this editorial platform is the registration of authors and readers of, as well as the sending of information to the Academia Abierta editorial platform. They will be used exclusively for the purposes established therein and will not be provided to third parties or for use for other purposes.

The authors give their consent, as a legal basis for the processing of their data and will not be transferred or communicated to third parties, except in the cases necessary to meet the purposes of the journal, as well as in the cases provided for by law.

The authors may exercise the rights of access, rectification, deletion, limitation, portability of data and opposition before the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. Rector's Building. Calle Tulipán, s/n. Móstoles. Madrid.

How long do we keep your data?

The personal data collected by Academia Abierta publishing house and provided by the authors themselves will be kept in the publishing house's database, for no other use than contact when necessary. When the relationship ends, it is carried out in accordance with the provisions of EU Regulation 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of April 27, 2016, (Art 17, 1a), in Law 16/1985, of June 25, on the Spanish Historical Heritage and in Law 4/1993, of April 21, on Archives and Documentary Heritage of the Community of Madrid.

However, the editorial process requires keeping the data of authors, reviewers and guest editors and Article 85 of the General data Protection Regulation (GDPR) allows us to do so “for archiving for purposes of public interest, scientific or historical research or for statistical purposes whose maintenance is in the public interest."

Data Protection

The Editorial Academia Abierta uses security protocols such as (https) to prevent attacks and theft of information in all its communications. The Rey Juan Carlos University maintains a two-factor system as an extra security method.

All data provided by authors, reviewers and editors are kept securely on desktop computers and in internet backups at the Rey Juan Carlos University, taking into account the rules dictated by the EU General Data Protection Regulation .Regulation (UE) 2016/679) (GDPR).

For more information, visit our privacy políticy.

This project has been developed thanks to the funding received from the María de Guzmán grants, managed by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT).