About the Journal

Focus and Scope

EDUCAR is an open-access scientific journal published by the Department of Applied Pedagogy of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain) since 1982. The Journal aims to disseminate the results of educational research to promote and share them among the scientific community, professionals and academics, as well as the public specialized in pedagogical issues.

EDUCAR publishes unpublished applied research articles (of quantitative and/or qualitative methodology) and theoretically based reviews focusing on current issues of an educational nature and from an interdisciplinary perspective in Catalan, English and Spanish. The publication is biannual (January and July) and is structured in the following sections: Monograph and Research.

The Monograph section includes specialized works on the topic chosen in each issue. People interested in proposing and coordinating a monographic issue must submit the proposal following the instructions they will find in the "Submissions" section. The proposal will be reviewed by the Editorial Committee who will decide whether to accept or not the proposal. Equally, the final decision to accept an article proposed for the monograph section rests with the editorial team of the Journal and not with the coordinators of the monograph.

The Research section collects work in the educational field of current interest, not necessarily linked to the monograph topic.

People interested in publishing in the EDUCAR Journal must also consider that

  1. Each author or co-author may only have one active submission.
  2. The same author may only publish one article per volume.
  3. We only publish two instrument validation articles per volume.
  4. We only publish two theoretically grounded review articles per volume.

Peer Review Process

The articles sent must be unpublished and cannot be submitted to the consideration of other journals.

The articles received will undergo an initial review by the editors to verify that the manuscript topic fits the focus and scope of the journal and complies with the authors' guidelines established by EDUCAR.

The reviewers are chosen from the bank of reviewers that make up the Scientific Committee of the EDUCAR Journal.

The journal's review policy is "double-blind", which means that neither the authors nor the reviewers know the identity of each other. EDUCAR guarantees anonymity throughout the reviewing process.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate free access to its contents under the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

This is an open access journal licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 Unported License.

Ethical code for UAB scientific journals

The Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona is committed to maintaining ethical standards and takes as its reference the principles published by COPE (Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors). It is essential for all parties involved in the process (editors, referees and authors) to understand and heed this code’s principles.

Directors/Editors

  • Decision to publish articles: journal editors, after consulting with the editorial board, are responsible for deciding whether or not to publish submitted articles, following receipt of the verdicts of two external referees and, should there be significant discrepancies between these, that of a third referee. They agree to observe the same criteria for acceptance or rejection of articles in accordance with the originality, relevance and clarity of the same. Editors must offer mechanisms for appeal against editorial decisions to the editorial board. Likewise, they must offer complete and up-to-date instructions regarding authors’ responsibilities and the characteristics of the articles submitted to the journal.
  • Non-discrimination: Editors shall examine submitted articles without consideration of the race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnic origin, country of origin, nationality or political orientation of the authors.
  • Confidentiality: editors and other staff associated with the journal agree not to disclose information about the articles received to persons other than the actual author or the referees. Likewise, they guarantee that the procedure shall be conducted in such a way that the anonymity of the referees and authors is guaranteed under all circumstances.
  • Conflict of interests and disclosure: editors agree not to use the results of submitted articles in their own research work unless they receive the author’s explicit consent.
  • Errata: editors shall publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies should they be necessary.
  • Quality: the opinions of the authors, referees and editorial board shall be requested in order to improve the editorial procedure.

Authors

  • Authorship of the text: a submitted article must be signed by its author and, if relevant, by any other person that has made a significant contribution to the planning, organisation, development or processing of the research on which the article is based. In cases of co-authorship, the author submitting the text must explicitly declare that the names of all of the authors appear in the article, and that they have issued their approval and consent with regard to the final version of the article that is to be published in the UAB journal.
  • Responsibility: the authors shall be held liable for the content of their manuscripts.
  • Plagiarism and originality: the authors declare that every part of the text submitted to the journal is original and that all of the sources used have been correctly cited.
  • Access to and conservation of data: authors of articles must clarify, by request of the editors, the sources or data on which their research is based; this data must be conserved for a reasonable period of time after publication and may be disclosed if necessary.
  • Multiple, repetitive or conflicting publications: the author must not publish articles that present the same research in more than one journal at the same time.
  • Conflict of interests and disclosure: the authors shall explicitly declare that there is no conflict of interests that may have conditioned the results of their research or the proposed interpretations. They shall also indicate the sources of funding for the research, if applicable, as well as the project that their article forms part of.
  • Errors in published articles: should an author notice any relevant errors or inaccuracies in a published article, these must be reported to the editors of the journal and all information required to make the necessary corrections must be provided.

Referees

  • Expert reviews: the double blind review system shall be employed, a procedure that helps the editors and the editorial board to make decisions about submitted articles while also enabling the authors to make improvements to their work.
  • Respect for deadlines: after agreeing to review an article, referees must respect the agreed time periods; if they are unable to meet a deadline they should give the editors sufficient prior warning of this.
  • Confidentiality: articles submitted for review are considered confidential documents, so the referees cannot discuss them with third parties unless they have permission to do so from the editors.
  • Objectivity: reviews must be objective; personal views about the author are not to be taken into consideration and referees’ opinions of the work must be supported by appropriate and justified arguments.
  • Bibliographical indications: the referees agree to offer precise bibliographical details on important texts on the subject matter that the author may have omitted; likewise, the referees shall report to the editors on similarities or overlaps between the text received and other works, if there are any.
  • Conflict of interests and disclosure: Any reserved information that has been obtained as a result of the review procedure shall be considered confidential and may not be used for personal purposes; if the review of an article supposes a conflict with the referee’s own interests due to collaborations or competition with the author or with the institution that he/she represents, the referee must reject the review proposal.

Publication Fees

Since the publication costs for EDUCAR are covered by the editing university internal budgets, authors do not need to pay an article-processing charge (APC) and no waivers are offered.

Journal History

EDUCAR, established in 1982 and published by the Department of Applied Pedagogy of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain), is a publication that comes out every six months. Its addresses are undergraduates, managers and everyone who is specialised or interested in educational aspects.

The journal publishes original (unpublished) researches and reflections by academic contributors.