About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Caldasia is an journal enterly electronic, and from 2022, publish three issues at year. I an open acces publication of the Instituto de Ciencias Naturales of the Facultad de Ciencias of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. The journal publishes high impact contributions on the documentation, understanding, or conservation of biological diversity written in Spanish or English. The journal includes papers on botany, zoology, ecology, biodiversity, biogeography, taxonomy, systematics, conservation, anthropology and related disciplines. The journal publishes full papers, reviews or short communications preferably. Caldasia do not have page charges but if the paper includes color images, collaboration from the authors is requested to cover these costs.

Caldasia is classified by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development system (OECD) in the following categories: Large area: 1 natural sciences, Area: 1E Earth and environmental sciences, and 1F Biological sciences; Disciplines: 1E03 Paleontology, 1F10 Botany and plant Sciences, 1F11 Zoology, Ornithology, Entomology, Behavioral sciences, 1F12 Marine and freshwater biology, 1F13 Ecology, 1F14 biodiversity conservation, and 1F16 other biology fields. Caldasia charges no publication fees to authors. During 2020 Caldasia had more than 240,000 downloads. In 2020 its impact factor was 0.562 according to Journal Citation Reports. In Publindex 2020 it was in category B.

Peer Review Process

Caldasia promotes excellence, transparency and objectivity criteria for paper evaluation. Submitted papers are first checked by the editorial board for compliance with the journal scope and instructions to author guidelines. All submitted papers are checked through the Turnitin writing system (turnitin.org). The scientific merit of the contributions, and hence the possibility to publication in the journal, depends on the concept of the referees. Papers that do not fit in the journal´s scope or that do not follow instructions to author guidelines are returned to authors without evaluation. Papers that comply with the requirements described above are formally accepted for evaluation and receive a reference code indicated in the acknowledgement upon receipt letter. A copy of this letter is send through e-mail to all the authors; however, following mail contact will be with the corresponding author exclusively. This stage of paper evaluation takes up to seven (7) days.

 

Papers accepted for evaluation are sent to at least two referees for peer-review. Authors may suggest in their presentation letter three referees giving their full names, e-mail address and web page if available. The editorial board selects referees from any academic institution worldwide if they comply with two criteria: 1. Number of publications related with the study that have appeared recently in high impact journals, and 2. Independence of these referees from the paper´s authors, author´s trajectory, or author´s institutional affiliation. Referees will have 20 days to send their evaluation concept to the editorial board.

 

The editorial board will take decision about the submitted paper for publication in Caldasia based on the synthesis of the concepts provided by the referees. Papers submitted to the journal may receive any of these concepts: 1. Acceptable as submitted, 2. Publishable with changes, 3. Require a second round of review, and 4. Not publishable.

 

If changes are requested, authors can take up to 15 days to submit a corrected version to our platform system. A letter with a detailed explanation of the changes to the document should be included.

 

Caldasia uses the Open Journal Systems (pkp.sfu.ca/ojs/) platform for the review process. To submit your paper, please create an author profile at revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/cal/index. To do so choose the option “Mi perfil” that is located at the top left part of the page. Once the profile has been created, you can follow the instructions to upload your paper. The journal will not accept papers for evaluation sent directly to the contact address or any other mean.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides free and immediate access to all its content under the principle that in this way supports a greater exchange of global knowledge.

Originality, authorship and conflict of interest

Authors must agree with the originality, authorship and conflict of interest policies of Caldasia described below. Consequently, the respective format must be signed and submitted with the original version of the paper. The format can be downloaded from the format for authors section at the left side of the journal´s page (http://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/cal).

 

Originality. Papers submitted to Caldasia must be original and should not be under evaluation in another journal or publication of any type.

 

Authorship. In agreement with guidelines of organizations such as the Publication Ethics Committee (COPE (publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (www.icmje.org), Caldasia considers that listing an author in a paper is due to his/her significant contribution to the scientific content of the work. As a consequence, to be an author, he/she must have been participated significantly on the conception, design, data collecting, analyses or paper writing, agrees with the content of the submitted document and is responsible for the ideas present there. However, for efficiency, Caldasia will keep contact with the corresponding author only. Corresponding author must be indicated in the presentation letter.

 

Caldasia accepts that the order of authorship in a paper is the result of a mutual agreement, consequently, for multi-authored papers a final section of Author´s contribution as described below. Additionally, Caldasia assumes that no one that contributed significantly to the study have been left out of the authors list.

 

Competing interest. Caldasia assumes that the interpretation of the data and the objectivity of the analyses of the paper are impartial and follow the standards of the area. Thus, these must not be biased because economic or personal interests. The journal requests that the authors sign the declaration of originality, responsibility for authorship and conflict of interest (http://revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/cal.)

Ethics Policy

If required, authors must indicate in the Material and Methods section their agreement with regulatory laws regarding experiment ethics and collecting permits.

If voucher specimens are generated, collection repository must be indicated. DNA sequence access numbers and repository databases must be indicated.

Sources of Support

Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Sede Bogotá). Facultad de Ciencias.

  • Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Sede Bogotá). Facultad de Ciencias

Journal History

After 40 years as a bianual journal, beginning in 2022 Caldasia will publish three issues per year, and will continue to be an open access journal of the Instituto de Ciencias Naturales de la Facultad de Ciencias de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia. The journal´s name honors Francisco José de Caldas, first colombian naturalist who died the 29th of October of 1816 for the political independence of Colombia.

Caldasia is classified by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development system (OECD) in the following categories: Large area: 1 natural sciences, Area: 1E Earth and environmental sciences, and 1F Biological sciences; Disciplines: 1E03 Paleontology, 1F10 Botany and plant Sciences, 1F11 Zoology, Ornithology, Entomology, Behavioral sciences, 1F12 Marine and freshwater biology, 1F13 Ecology, 1F14 biodiversity conservation, and 1F16 other biology fields.

The open access through the internet policy of Caldasia allows a high visibility of its publications. During 2020 Caldasia had more than 245,000 downloads. In 2020 its impact factor was 0.562 according to Journal Citation Reports. In Publindex 2020 it was in category B.

Reviewer Guidelines

Papers accepted for evaluation are sent to at least two referees for peer-review. These referees can be selected from any academic institution worldwide if they comply with two criteria: 1. Number of publications related with the study that have appeared recently in high impact journals, and 2. Independence of these referees from the paper´s authors, author´s trajectory, or author´s institutional affiliation. Referees will have 20 days to send their evaluation concept to the editorial board.

The editorial board will take decision about the submitted paper for publication in Caldasia based on the synthesis of the concepts provided by the referees. Papers submitted to the journal may receive any of these concepts: 1. Acceptable as submitted, 2. Publishable with changes, 3. Require a second round of review, and 4. Not publishable.

The editorial staff will take care of all issues related to instructions to authors such that referees can focus on the scientific content of the paper. Caldasia thanks that referees have in mind the following topics while reviewing the document: 1. Originality of the text and of the work in general, 2. National and international significance of the work, 3. Rigor of the paper, 4. Coherence between all the sections of the document. We thank that referees point at the main difficulties of the work and to the potential ways to solve them. Referees will have access to an evaluation format where they can write their comments. Two sections will be available in the format, one for editor-referee communication and another for referee-author feedback.