Guide for reviewers
The Revista de Trabajo Social values the work carried out by expert reviewers in the scientific community, who provide an essential service to the publication's process of excellence, promoting research within their fields of specialization. The peer review process is an essential step for the development of research in all subject areas.
Authors and researchers benefit by improving their work and developing their knowledge. Reviewers also benefit from being able to read cutting-edge research before publication and before anyone else in the field. They also have the satisfaction of knowing what they are contributing directly to the development of their scientific field.
In the following text provides information and resources to support the work of a reviewer for the Revista de Trabajo Social.
Ethics and responsibility
The Revista de Trabajo Social is committed to maintaining the integrity of the work it publishes. Also, pay particular attention to issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism, or other violations of publishing best practices. The objective of the journal in this regard is to protect the rights of the authors, a task that is supported, as the first step in the editorial process of the articles, with the use of the similarity analysis software, "Similarity Check", to all articles presented. In this way, the Editorial Team intends to protect the journal's reputation against bad publishing practices.
All received manuscripts are evaluated anonymously by experts (double-blind system). If a reviewer discovers the author's identity through any means (such as identifying previous work or reading a paper presented at a conference), he or she should contact the journal's Editor immediately.
The journal recommends that if reviewers suspect any of the following problems in any article they are reviewing, they contact the Editor of the journal to discuss the situation without delay. Reviewers are reminded to maintain the confidentiality of all information on these matters and not discuss them with colleagues other than the journal's Editor. Aspects such as:
- If they suspect that the document is duplicating the work of authors.
- If they suspect that there may be problems with the ethics of the research carried out.
- If they suspect there may be an undeclared conflict of interest in the manuscript (editors may have more information about this than you do, so it's best to check).
Conflict of interests
The journal recommends that reviewers carefully analyze their possible conflicts of interest related to the evaluation of the manuscript before performing the review. Sometimes the reviewer may have a potential conflict of interest in reviewing a particular manuscript. For example:
- May be a close colleague of the authors.
- It may be a competitor of the author or authors of the manuscript in the same area of research.
- You may participate in a project that would benefit from the authors' work if the journal accepts publication of the article.
- May have assisted the authors in carrying out their work.
If one or several of the above situations occur, or if a reviewer, for any other reason, feels uncomfortable reviewing an anonymous manuscript, they must inform the Editor of the journal or revistatrabajosocial@uc.cl, so that this decide if you need to find a different evaluator. It is recommended that the reviewer decline to review a document if they have a potential conflict of interest, and it is important that they declare such a conflict at this early stage, to avoid later charges that compromise the objectivity of their report.
Time limit to send the report
Once the commitment to evaluate a manuscript has been accepted and notified of their access account, the evaluator must send the report available on the platform (and eventually also the article file with comments and/or "change control") through the editorial platform (with your access account informed at the time of inviting you to enter the platform) within a maximum period of four weeks. If for any reason the evaluator needs additional time to finish the report, he must notify revistatrabajosocial@uc.cl.
How to write the report
Reviewers should base their assessment on the quality of the manuscript in terms of its relevance, novelty, clarity of writing, and presentation of information. All these characteristics are contained in the peer review form (file available next to the article), which also addresses observations on the solvency, methodology, structure, and formal aspects of the submitted manuscript.
