Revista Colombiana de Psicología

Author Guidelines

The Revista Colombiana de Psicología accepts reports of empirical research, theoretical contributions in the form of essays, meta-analysis, critical reviews of literature, and in general, those works that follow any of the varieties of a scientific methodology in psychology.

Only submission including a version of the article in English will be considered for publication. The submission of a version in English does not guarantee, however the acceptance of the article. The article still has to go through peer review. Additionally, prior to that, the editorial team will conduct an assessment of the quality of the English version of the draft. Remember that literal translations from Spanish or other languages do not produce good quality texts in English. For example, “la investigación previa” is translated as “Prior research shows”, and not as “Prior investigation displays”. Also technical and academic terms need to be carefully checked. For instance, “huellas mnémicas” is translated as “memory traces”, not as “mnemic prints”. All these elements need to be checked using GoogleScholar, Grammarly and linguee. Additionally, in English long sentences are considered grammatical errors, so the structure of the text needs to be reviewed to make it consistent with the grammatical rules and structural practices of English academic writing. Exceptions to this rule are articles presented by or coauthored with professors of the Psychology Department at Universidad Nacional de Colombia and authors applying to any of the monographic sections described in the announcements' section.

Collaborative Peer-Review

The Colombian Journal of Psychology requires that the authors of submitted articles collaborate reviewing another submission. This policy was implemented to push researchers to cooperate in the process of peer-review.
The incentive system in the academy produces a paradoxical situation: everybody wants to publish, but nobody wants to review. To correct this problem, we require authors that have been approved after peer-review, to conduct a review of an article in our queue.
Reviewing a queued article is required for that your article continues to publication phase. This process will also help also to increase the communication among researchers in a similar field, increasing the public conversation about psychology.

Submission Process, Arbitration and Acceptance of the Article

Articles submitted for publication should be addressed and sent to the Revista Colombiana de Psicología, as MS Word file texts, through the Open Journal System. To send the article go to page www.revistas.unal. edu.co/index.php/psychology/user/register, where you can register as author and follow the instructions for sending articles. This allows you to monitor the process of your article. Sending articles to the Revista Colombiana de Psicología does not generate any submission or processing charges to the authors.

Articles submitted must be unpublished and may not be assessed simultaneously by other journals, which is why it is essential that authors sign a letter provided by the journal certifying the originality of this text.

To ensure no conflict of interest in the arbitration process, the author will send, along with the article, the names of two academic peers he/she considers qualified to evaluate his/her work, with the rationale for the suggestion. The editor reserves the right to accept the suggestion or choose two different referees. The authors will not know the identity of the reviewers.

After reviewing the minimum standards of presentation according to APA standards, and other formal requirements, the manuscript is evaluated by at least two academic peers, to whom the name of the author will not be revealed. Within a period of six to twelve months for evaluation, reviewers will produce an academic concept drawn from their knowledge and experience in the theme area of the article.

Finally, based on the concepts of the referee, the editor of the journal will issue a decision in which he formally communicates to the author the possibility of publishing the article. That is, accepted, rejected, or accepted once the changes requested by the reviewers are made. In either case, authors will receive a general concept that integrates the evaluations of each of the referees, detailing the strengths of the article and the issues that must be modified. In many cases they will also receive the manuscript with the comments that different evaluators made to the text.

Whenever an article is accepted, the rights to publish and reproduce it either in print or online belong to the Revista Colombiana de Psicología, under Creative Commons license. However, any request from the author for reproduction permission will be assessed.

Once posted, the article will be sent to the authors in .pdf format. To remove an article before its publication, the author must send a written request to the editor, which will be effective only with the editor's response.

Formal Characteristics and Presentation of Articles

Articles should not exceed 25 pages (without abstract and references) and must meet the standards of international style of presentation of scientific literature in psychology, recommended by the APA, 6th edition (2010). Tables and figures should be included in the Word document and, in addition, enclose the original file (eg., .xls, .jpg, .tiff).

We recommend using a standard language for scientific publications and avoid using idioms characteristic of a particular geographic region. Any article that is the report of empirical research (which has data collection) should be properly divided into the sections recommended by the apa and contain the following information:

Title: Corresponding with the information and purpose of the manuscript.

Abstract: A brief text (160 words maximum) to condense the most relevant aspects concerning the methodology, results and conclusions. It should include 5 keywords on the content and the area of psychology that matches the work, and also a Spanish version of the abstract and keywords.

Introduction: A text setting out both the background in the research area and the description of the research problem or question; the justification must be clear, coherent and based on the reviewed literature.

Subjects or Participants: The article should explain the main characteristics of the participants and the selection and assignment to groups when appropriate. The APA recommends the use of the term participants when it comes to research with humans, and subjects, when animals.

Instruments: It is essential to clearly identify and describe the instruments used to collect information; when it comes to psychological tests, the psychometric properties should be mentioned.

Procedure: You must describe the relevant actions that were undertaken to collect information and analyze data.

Results: The results (shown as data) relevant to the objectives of the study should be explicit and clear. Whenever you require additional elements such as tables or figures, the data must be sorted properly as indicated by the APA. Avoid repeating the same data in the body of the text and in the tables.

Discussion and Conclusions: Any discussion about the results should be made in light of the relevant literature and answer the research questions. Likewise, the conclusions of the study must be presented.

Citations and References: Any article should contain only the list of references cited in the article (maximum 60 references.) This list must be submitted strictly as indicated by the APA.

Appendices: The text may include appendices (attached pages) provided they are considered important and strictly necessary to clarify the understanding of the text. Otherwise, it is not recommended to include them.

Articles that are not a research report as such and do not contain the above information can be submitted as itemized revisions of a thematic, as review of a theory or empirical research, or as development of a theoretical proposition. These articles should be presented taking into account those general criteria of the APA regarding titles and subtitles, abstracts, writing style and citation of references. Additionally, these texts should have the following characteristics:

1. Problem clearly stated and developed throughout the text.

2. Importance of the issue or analyzed problematic clearly presented.

3. Arguments and conclusions clear and consistent with the development of the subject.

4. References for the topic being studied and the type of study (for a review article at least 50 references are expected.)

Ethics and Publication Malpractice

The Revista Colombiana de Psicología (RCP) accepts the Deodontological and Bioethical Code of the Colombian Psychological Association (http://www.tribunales.colpsic.org.co) and the APA ethics code as ethical standards (http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/) for research and publication. As a policy of RCP, accepted authors must warrant compliance with the principles mentioned in the document "Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement" available at this webpage.

Additionally, accepted authors must read and sign a document certifying that they not have a conflict of interests in relation with the research being published.This document is available in the webpage of the journal. In this document, accepted authors must declare any potential conflict of interest, as well as the institutions of affiliation and the financial sources related to the research that is being published in the journal.

¿How to cite the Colombian Journal of Psychology (Revista Colombiana de Psicología-RCP)?

When citing a journal, most citation formats require using the complete journal title (e.g., APA Format). However, some journals use citation formats that include the abbreviated citation form (e.g., Journal of Science Education and Technology). RCP asks authors referring to Revista Colombiana de Psicología as Rev. Col. Psic, when the abbreviated form is required by other publications.

Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

The Revista Colombiana de Psicología (RCP) accepts the Deodontological and Bioethical Code of the Colombian Psychological Association (http://www.tribunales.colpsic.org.co) and the APA ethics code as ethical standards (http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/) for research and publication.

According to APA policy, practices that violate the following principles are considered ethic violations and cases of publication malpractice: (a) Providing imprecise or false information in order to obtain institutional approval for research; (b) Obtaining primary data for research and publication without informed consent (see 3.10, 8.02, 8.03, 8.05 of the APA´s ethic code for details); make clear to subjects and take steps to protect them from negative consequences of declining or withdrawing from research. (d) Participation must be voluntary and in academic settings alternative options for extracredit must be offered; (e) Participants must be informed of research goals, and deception techniques only should be used when justified by the significance of the research, and when there are not alternative options to reach the same goals. Deception cannot be used anytime when participation in the research study can cause harm to participants. Participants must be informed of the right to withdraw before the end of the study. (f) Researcher must provide opportunities for participants to know the results and conclusions of the studies they were part of, except cases in which that information can harm them (g) animal research must comply with legal and ethical standards; this research must be conducted by properly trained staff and must avoid to cause unnecessary harm, discomfort or pain to the animals. (h) Fabricating data is an ethical violation. (i) Plagiarism is a publication malpractice and contradicts research ethics: psychologists do not presents other people´s work as their own (even when cited occasionally), nor do they use other people´s data without permission. (k) Psychologist only get credit, including authorship, for works they have conducted and to which they have contributed substantially. Credit is granted in direct relationship with the authors contribution, and is independent of institutional status.  For this reason, a student must be listed as the first author of a work with multiple authors, that is the product of its doctoral dissertation. For lower academic degrees, APA does not points out specifics, but it indicates that the authorship order must be discussed with students as early as possible (see 8.12). (l) Previously published data must be presented as so, and properly cited. "Psychologist does not publish as original data, data that has been previously published". When the same data is published more than once, this fact needs to be acknowledged properly. (m) Data must be available for results to be verified (see 8.14). (n) Reviewers of material submitted for publication or other academic(al) or funding purposes must respect confidentiality, intellectual and property rights, and authorship related to that information (see 8.15). As a policy of RCP, accepted authors must sign a document warranting the compliance with this principles, prior to the publication of any article.

I, ____________________________________, certify that the elaboration of this article, titled _____________________________, was conducted according to the ethic principles established by the APA (http://www.apa.org/ethics/code/) and by the Deodontological and Bioethical Code of the Colombian Psychological Association (http://www.tribunales.colpsic.org.co).

_______________________________

Sign and Date