History and background

Innovar was created in 1991 as an editorial project of the School of Management and Public Accounting (smpa) at the Faculty of Economic Sciences, National University of Colombia. In its early years, Innovar was the institutional channel for disseminating the emerging academic work by smpa Professors. Initially published on an annual basis, the Journal’s first three issues included varied contributions to the field of Management. Through the work of Head Editors such as Francisco Rodríguez, Eduardo Sáenz-Rovner, Jair Duque, and Gloria Isabel Rodríguez, among others, Innovar became a benchmark for interdisciplinary academic work in Management and Accounting.

Aim and Scope

Innovar is a scholarly research journal (Beltrán, 2017; Morris et al., 2013). Its goal is to disseminate the academic production of the disciplinary fields of Management and Accounting, as well as of the Social Sciences with some relation to the study of organizations, from various epistemological and methodological perspectives. In this sense, its target audience is mainly made up of researchers, professors, students, and practitioners from various disciplines interested in contemporary advances in Management and Accounting academic literature. The Journal is published quarterly, as follows: January-March, April-June, July-September, and October-December. Recently, Innovar implemented an early publication scheme that delivers the pre-print versions of its upcoming issues, thus reducing editorial production waiting times for authors and readers.

Although Innovar is edited and financed by the Faculty of Economic Sciences at the National University of Colombia, the journal has a broad international scope. Among its readers, the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking academic community from the fields of Management and Accounting are the main audience. Innovar, along with its Editorial and Scientific Committees, expects to become an interaction and debate channel for the discussion of relevant and contemporary subjects in these disciplinary fields.

Within its editorial practice, Innovar performs a thorough review before accepting the publication of an article, verifying the originality of submissions and the fulfillment of the guidelines for authors. In addition, the Journal follows a double-blind reviewing process, in which neither authors nor reviewers get to know each other’s identity. In this way, Innovar prevents conflicts of interest between these parties. Once a manuscript has been accepted by peer reviewers, it will be included in a list of eligible articles —prepared by the Editor-in-chief— for publication in the upcoming issues. After defining the contents of the next issue of the journal, the editorial production process of the selected articles will head to a start.

As a result of editorial efforts and work, and the recognition and appraisal of readers and other field-related parties, Innovar is included in several bibliographic databases, directories, and indexes, namely:

Innovar publishes research, reflection, and review articles. Research articles present the original and unpublished results of systematic processes and research projects in a detailed and accurate way. The following structure for this type of article is suggested: introduction, literature review (theoretical framework), methodology, results, discussion, and conclusions.

Reflection articles present academic discussions based on the review of relevant literature and the development of a specific subject-problem. Analytical, interpretative, and critical perspectives on the specific subject-problem are accepted, as long as they contribute in an original, novel, and plausible way to the state of the art in a certain field or disciplinary subfield. The following structure is suggested: introduction, logical-argumentative development of the topic, original contribution by the author, implications, inferences, or conclusions.

Review articles introduce the systematization of a methodical and rigorous literature review process under its various modalities. This type of article contributes to a specific disciplinary field by providing detailed and feasible analysis of the state of the art on a given research subject-problem. An article will be considered within this typology if —and only if— it sufficiently and rigorously provides an account of the systematization of the available literature from a specific field. For this purpose, a minimum of fifty different sources should be examined and included in the review. The following structure is suggested: introduction, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusions.

Reviews are documents that describe and discuss specialized literature products, generally books. Critical reviews of works that, if possible, have not been previously reviewed in other means will be published. However, if other reviews of such a document are available, the new proposal is expected to have a novel and persuasive approach. The author should address the objective, development, contributions, and limitations of the original work. Reviews will be submitted for approval by an expert reader appointed by the Journal’s Editorial Committee. A maximum length of 2,500 words for this type of manuscript is suggested.

Editorial process and workflow

Editorial process

Submissions

Before submitting a proposal, authors, in accordance with the permanent call for papers or the call for special issues, must review and adopt the guidelines for authors available on the Open Journal System (ojs) website. Submissions will only be accepted through the ojs platform and must comply with all the items included in the submission preparation checklist. The submit document must conform to the template for articles or reviews provided by Innovar for authors. The corresponding author´´'s form of each participating author must be attached. Submissions that do not include these forms will not be considered.

Submission confirmation

The Journal’s editorial team will inform the authors upon the reception of their submission. If authors do not receive such confirmation within seven business days, they should contact the editorial team. If a submission includes all the required files outlined in the guidelines for authors, they will be notified that their submission will move forward to the initial assessment stage. If a submission does not include all the required files, authors will be asked to submit the necessary documents before confirming the reception of their submission.

Initial assessment – Editorial team

Innovar editorial team will make a preliminary check of all submissions to verify compliance with the guidelines for authors, namely: inclusion of jel codes, authors’ forms, and tables and figures in an editable format. In addition, the editorial team will evaluate the following aspects: coherence of the proposal with the Journal’s aim and scope, clarity in writing, adequate use of references, clarity in the presentation of the methodology, and originality of the proposal. Authors can check the initial assessment form here.

The editorial team will provide authors with some recommendations for improving their proposal. The editorial decision in this regard could be one of the following:

1. The submission does not meet the quality standards of the Journal and therefore is rejected.
2. The submission must address the changes explained in the comments section to be formally accepted.
3. The submission meets all the requirements and therefore is accepted.

The editorial team will inform authors about the editorial decision. If a submission is rejected in this stage, Innovar expects that authors receive the comments made as an opportunity to improve the quality of their work, to later submit it to another journal. If an article is required to incorporate changes, authors will have one month to prepare the adjusted version. If an article is accepted without any modifications, the evaluation process will begin.

Modifications by the authors

It is the duty of authors to review the comments made during the initial assessment and add the changes they deem necessary. If authors decide not to consider a comment that does not affect the minimum editorial quality criteria, they must explain the reasons for their decision. The editorial team will identify and review the changes made.

Peer-reviewing process

Authors will be notified once their article is formally incorporated into the process. The average time for the evaluation process is six to twelve months. This timeframe may be shortened or extended, depending on the availability of reviewers and other factors that could delay or accelerate the process. Innovar does not charge authors for their submission, hence the Journal does not pay reviewers either.

Reviewers will evaluate aspects related to the quality of proposals, for example, interest and topicality of the research topic, contribution to its field of knowledge, conceptual soundness, relevance and mastery of the referred sources, methodological robustness, relevance of the discussion of results, and the presentation of conclusions, among others. Authors can check the evaluation form here.

The Editor-in-chief will consider the evaluation concepts issued by reviewers, based on their quality, for making an editorial decision. Extremely concise concepts —argumentatively weak in approving or rejecting a proposal— are not quite useful, since they could generate justified replies from authors, which unnecessarily extends the evaluation processes.

Editorial decision

The Editor-in-chief will consider the suggestions made by reviewers for reaching an editorial decision, which could be one of the following:

1. Accepted without changes: the reviewer finds the article meets all the required quality criteria.
2. Accepted with minor changes: the reviewer finds the article could be published, although authors need to make improvements mainly associated with how ideas are presented.
3. Accepted with major changes: the reviewer considers that the article is interesting and relevant, although authors must incorporate significant, structural, or argumentative modifications that require more time and work than Innovar could expect.
4. Rejected: the reviewer considers the document lacks the minimum quality criteria required to be published in a scholarly journal.

The editorial team will inform authors about the final editorial decision. If an article is accepted with any type of changes, authors will have three to five weeks to incorporate changes. Once authors submit the new version of their article, the editorial team will send this version to the reviewers. In case reviewers suggest further changes, a new revision round will be carried out. If reviewers accept an article for publication, the document will enter the list of eligible articles to be published in the upcoming issues of the Journal prepared by the Editor-in-chief. The average waiting time for an article to be selected for publication is six months.

Second originality check

            The editorial team will verify that an accepted paper had not been published in another journal during the course of the evaluation process. Compliance with the Journal’s publication ethical standards will also be evaluated. If necessary, adaptations to the content of the article will be requested to ensure compliance with such standards.

Assembly of next issues

The Editor-in-chief will select the articles to be published in the next issues from the list of eligible articles. An issue may have two or more sections, depending on the decision of the Editor. The editorial team will inform authors when their paper has been selected for a specific issue. Authors must sign a transfer of economic rights before their paper is included in the editorial production process.

Editorial production process

The editorial production process, led by the editorial team, includes the following activities:

• Proofreading: a neat writing style, appropriate to the standards of the journal, will be sought. This will ensure quality in the readability of the documents published in the Journal. The author should assess the changes suggested by proofreaders. A pre-print document is obtained from this activity.
• Translation of abstracts: the abstracts and keywords of each article are translated and revised.
• Artwork: involves the creation of an illustration that represents the content of an article. This is a differentiating characteristic of Innovar with respect to other journals.
• Design and layout: the layout version of an article is prepared using the template designed for this purpose.

Publication and dissemination

The editorial team will publish the final version of all articles and the complete current issue of the Journal on its official ojs portal and website, as well as in the databases it is currently indexed. Innovar will deploy different visibility and dissemination strategies defined in its editorial policy in order to promote the access, readability, and citation of published works.

Publication Frequency

Innovar is published quarterly, as follows: i) January-March, ii) April-June, iii) July-September, and iv) October-December. Eventually, the Journal will publish special issues, based on public calls for papers or the concurrence of works on a specific subject. Starting from the publication of issue 80, Innovar has implemented early publication of contents.

Open Access Policy

Innovar promotes and encourages open access to all of its contents. Therefore, the Journal adopts the proposal by AmeliCA organization, which is focused on a non-profit publishing model that preserves the scholarly and open nature of scientific communication. All contents published by Innovar are open access and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International copyright license (cc by-nc-nd 4.0), which entails the following:

1. Our readers are granted free and unlimited access to the full text of all contents.
2. Our readers are free to use all published materials provided they duly cite and give the corresponding credits under the terms of the license (cc by-nc-nd 4.0).
3. There is no fee for submissions nor the publication of articles or reviews.
4. The Journal does not offer any financial reward to contributing peer reviewers.

Journal Ethics 

Innovar is committed to meeting and maintaining high ethical standards at all stages of the editorial process. We closely follow renowned associations such as the Committee on Publishing Ethics (cope) and ElSevier Ethics Policies and Guides (see here), which establish standards and guidelines to meet said requirements. Below, there is a summary of the main expectations regarding ethical behaviors and good practices by the parties involved.

To ensure compliance with the expected ethical behaviors, Innovar editorial team and its Editor-in-chief work together to identify similarities that may lead to unwanted practices. For this purpose, the editorial team will use the technological resources provided by the National University of Colombia, mainly, Turnitin plagiarism detection tool.

Some statistics and metrics on visibility and impact:

1. Initial assessment rejection rate: 44,22%
2. Peer-reviewing rejection rate: 58,86%
3. Overall rejection rate: 75,47%
4. H-index: 19 (Google Scholar) H5 11 (Scimago) H5: 38 PoP
5. Redalyc statistics:
   1. Internationalization index: G1 (highest level)
   2. Editorial effort: 1,79 (published articles compared to other journals in the same disciplinary field)
   3. Download decile: first decile (journals with the highest download rates in Redalyc)
   4. More info: here.
6. Scimago statistics:
   1. H: 11 (Scopus)
   2. Higher quartile: Q3
   3. SJR (0,163)
   4. More info: here.

* All statistics were consulted at May 31, 2021. 

statistics (Google Analytics - Users) (Website visits)