Focus and Scope

región y sociedad is a journal of scientific dissemination aimed at the scholars of social sciences and humanities. Its goal is to publish original and relevant research articles with a regional approach, emphasizing the analysis on Mexico and Latin America in topics such as development, environment, politics, gender and health from disciplinary or multidisciplinary approaches akin to social sciences and applying quantitative and qualitative methodologies.

As of 2018, región y sociedad becomes electronic and open access, published by El Colegio de Sonora, with double-blind peer review, in Spanish language. It adheres to the Best Practice Guidelines by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Peer Review Process

Original research articles

By agreement of the Editorial Board, as of May 26^th 2017, región y sociedad only receives and publishes original research articles.

Submissions received for possible publication shall be original results of high-level academic work, related to the journal’s thematic areas, on condition of presenting explicitly and thoroughly the resorted theoretical-methodological strategies and emphasizing the findings of the research. The extension will be between 8 thousand and 10 thousand words (letter size with 2.54-cm margins, Times New Roman, 12 points, double spacing, no space between paragraphs), including bibliography as well as graphs, figures, images and all additional material. For further details, see: guidelines for authors.

Editorial review

The authors who postulate an article for possible publication in región y sociedad shall submit the documents —complete and in its final version— indicated in requirements for manuscript submission. Once the editorial team verifies the submission meets all the postulation requirements, the text will be sent to editorial review, which comprises the following stages:

1. Successfully pass a review with the tool approved by the Editorial Committee to detect plagiarism, only after this will it be possible to go on to the following stages of the editorial review process.
2. It will be ensured that the submitted text concurs with the focus and scope of the journal and the requirements of originality and relevance. Works which do not explicitly regard the regional dimension as a relevant component will not be considered.
3. The text will be revised so that it complies with each and every indication as stated in requirements for submission and manuscript submission and also in guidelines for authors. 
4. The reported bibliography will be examined for pertinence and up-to-dateness, and that it is duly standardized following APA style (requested as of October 2017 and due to be reflected in the issues published as of 2019 onward).
5. According to the editorial policy guidelines approved by the Editorial Committee, priority will be given to the texts whose bibliography contains active DOI hyperlinks, in any applicable case.

Once the submitted article accredits the editorial review, the corresponding author will be formally notified about the registration and beginning of the academic review process. In case of failing to accredit editorial review the author(s) will be notified about missing elements and the possibility of addressing the observations.

Academic review

The articles must favorably accredit the academic review process, which will operate under the modality of triple-blind peer review, in which both the identity of the author(s) and reviewers will remain anonymous:

1. The articles that accredit editorial review will be sent to expert academicians in the same disciplinary and thematic area as the submitted article. The reviewers will be chosen from the referee panel —which comprises specialists from national and international institutions— and will comment on the pertinence and academic quality of the submitted article and rule on the feasibility of publishing the article in question.
2. The reviewers will be responsible for revising and analyzing the academic, theoretical and methodological relevance of each and every article assigned to them. They will be in charge of verifying the explicit presence of a theoretical-methodological section, as well as its congruence regarding the field of studies, coherence between academic contribution and the relevance of the findings, as well as the up-to-dateness and suitability of the presented bibliography.
3. All the texts will be sent to three experts —ascribed to institutions other than the authors’— who will express their opinions. Finally, on the basis of the reviewers’ recommendations, the decision of the editorial direction of región y sociedad will be:

a)         Recommend publication with no modifications.

b)        Recommend publication with minor changes, without undergoing a second review.

c)         Condition the publication on making major changes, which obliges the reviewers to perform a new revision. This process can be repeated up to two rounds, and in the case it is not accepted, the author(s) will be invited to start the submission afresh.

d)        Not recommend its publication.

1. For a text to be approved for publication it is indispensable that, at least, two of the three reviewers agree on recommending publication. 
2. The editorial direction will ensure that, in all cases, the rulings delivered to the authors contain solid argumentations that support the editorial decision.
3. In all cases the results of the academic review process are unappealable.
4. In case of receiving observations, the author(s) will have twenty natural days to send the editor the new version of the work. Failing to comply with this deadline will cause the rejection of the work.
5. The time needed to send the document to review will be in function of the number of articles in waiting list. The referees, upon receiving the article, will have three weeks to review the text and deliver their ruling.
6. The accepted documents will begin the edition process (proofreading, marking up metadata, composition and layout), to later be included in the corresponding fascicule, according to the editorial decision.
7. Once the editorial process concludes (proofreading, marking up metadata, composition and layout), the preliminary version will be sent to the author(s) for their final revision and approval.  The author(s) will have three days to express their approval, if there are no comments within this time, the editorial coordination will assume that the authors have tacitly approved it.

Open Access Policy

The authors who publish in región y sociedad accept the following conditions:

In accordance with the copyright laws, región y sociedad recognizes and respects the authors’ moral rights, as well as the ownership of property rights, which will be transferred to the journal to disseminate the articles in open access. región y sociedad does not charge the authors for submitting and processing articles for publication.

All the texts published by región y sociedad —with no exception— are distributed under a Creative Commons license 4.0 Attribution – Noncommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0 International), which allows third parties to use the publication as long as they mention the works’ authorship and the first publication in this journal.

The authors can enter into independent and additional contractual agreements for the nonexclusive distribution of the version of the article published in región y sociedad (for instance include it into an institutional repository or publish it in a book) as long as they clearly indicate that the work was published for the first time in región y sociedad.

For all the above, the author(s) must send the Letter of transfer of property rights of the first publication duly filled in and signed by the author(s). This letter can be sent by e-mail as a PDF to: region@colson.edu.mx

Guidelines and best editorial practice

These guidelines are based on the Editorial Regulation of El Colegio de Sonora and refer to the policies of best editorial practice by COPE, available at: http://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines.

On the ethics of editorial processes

Article 8 of the Editorial Regulation of El Colegio de Sonora points that “the authors of academic editorial proposals sent to the Editorial Committee agree to observe ethical criteria in their submissions. This implies maintaining at all times a principle of honesty regarding the originality of the submitted materials and their authorship, to be unpublished and have not been sent to other publishing houses; likewise, commitment to academic quality, attest the veracity and specify the information sources; respect for the informants’ confidentiality and the authorship of collaborators. Ethical aspects, in like manner, concern the anonymity of authors, members of the Editorial Committee and reviewers over the review process. The Editorial Committee might ban editorial proposals when it is demonstrated that the authors have not adhered to these criteria”  (http://www.colson.edu.mx/Transparencia/Documentos/MarcoNormativo/ReglamEditorial-(AprobJC17feb2012).pdf).

Functions of the Editorial Board of región y sociedad

• Promote the submission of works for publication in the journal in the national and international academic community.
• Suggests academic guidelines for the journal’s editorial policy.
• Promote the dissemination of the journal in national and international academic media.
• Participate as reviewers of the works submitted for publication or recommend the appointment of other experts as reviewers.

Functions and responsibilities of the Editorial Committee

• Promote the submission of works for publication in the journal in the national and international academic community.
• Support in the selection of reviewers of the submitted works as well as deliberating on the best options of reviewers in the necessary cases. 
• Decide on the relevance of publishing the submitted materials, supported on the experts’ rulings.
• Approve the contents proposed for each issue of the journal.  
• Revise and asses each published issue.
• Collaborate with the appropriate agencies to maintain the periodicity established for the journal.

Functions and responsibilities of the Director of región y sociedad

• Coordinate actions toward the fulfillment of the journal’s goals.
• Ensure high academic level in the published content.
• Receive the works submitted for publication and ask for the reviews.
• Supervise the fulfillment of the reviewers’ observations.
• Inform the author(s) about the stage of the editorial process in which the submitted text is.
• Inform the Editorial Committee on the review process of all the received materials, being careful with confidentiality.
• On the basis of the texts corrected and approved at the time, propose the content of each issue to the Editorial Committee.

Functions and responsibilities of the Editor of región y sociedad

• Plan and coordinate the journal’s editorial production process.
• Supervise the technical processing of the materials approved by the Editorial Committee, once they have covered the established academic requirements.
• Supervise proofreading and the journal’s technical quality.
• Collaborate to maintain the periodicity established for the publication and that the distribution of the journal begins within the first month of the corresponding period.

Authors’ responsibilities

• Pay attention to the journal’s publication requirements regarding: originality, relevance and not having been published before.
• Present their results with honesty, without lying, falsifying or manipulating data.
• Take collective responsibility, if it is the case, for the submitted and published work.
• Funding sources and conflicts of interest shall be declared in the article.
• Quote the works of others accurately and only refer publications used in the text.
• The authors shall report the editors if their results have been previously published or if several reports or multiple analyses of one same set of data are considered for publication somewhere else. The authors shall provide copies of the publications or similar works submitted to other journals.

Reviewers’ responsibilities

• Accept the review of articles that fall in their area of specialization in order to produce an adequate assessment.
• Declare from the start of process if there is a conflict of interests.^[1] In case of suspicion of the authors’ identity, notify the journal if this datum poses any possible conflict of interest.
• Reject the review immediately if it is not possible to deliver it within the deadline.
• Express their opinion based on the originality, contribution of the article to the topic, methodology, relevance and up-to-dateness of the bibliography, style, coherence, and quality of the structure and writing of the text.
• Immediately report the journal if during the review they find or discover they do not have the necessary expertise to assess all the aspects in the text.
• Their criticisms shall be objective, specific and constructive.
• Clearly define the approval, rejection or conditioning of the text.
• Produce their assessment within the deadline.
• Respect confidentiality during and after the review process.
• Do not use the content of reviewed or in-review texts.
• Do not involve third parties in the review.
• Notify the journal if there are similarities with other text reviewed or if any sort of plagiarism is detected.
• Transferring the responsibility of a review to any party, assistant or collaborator is forbidden.

^[1] Conflicts of interest arise when the authors, reviewers or editors have nonmanifest interests, which can influence their assessment of the text. These can be personal, academic, economic, political or religious. When such interests are important, reviewers must inform the editors.

Registration in scientific-content directories and databases

Plagiarism detection

In región y sociedad software to detect plagiarism is utilized. The submitted texts will undergo this review before sending them to editorial and academic review and will be rejected if the percentage of similarity with other article published or available on the internet is over 30%.

If a possible plagiarism is detected or reported in a published text, the procedure to follow is the one COPE summarizes in the following Flowchart

Sponsors

• El Colegio de Sonora