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EDUCAR publishes unpublished applied research articles (of quantitative and/or qualitative methodology) and theoretically based reviews focusing on current issues of an educational nature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.

Finally, the EDUCAR Journal maintains a policy of support and exchange with other scientific journals in the field of Educational Sciences and collaborates on the Aula Magna 2.0 blog, a meeting and collaboration space for editors and editorial teams of scientific educational journals linked to universities, institutions, or associations, primarily in Spain.

Communication with the authors

Communication with the author(s) (proof of receipt, notification of rejection and/or acceptance, questions, etc.) will be conducted through the Journal's OJS system. Only in exceptional circumstances will be contact the corresponding author via the email address provided and always via the EDUCAR Journal email address: educar@uab.cat

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.

Editorial practices on gender equality

EDUCAR Journal is committed to gender equality and therefore implements editorial practices aimed at alleviating the invisibility that women have traditionally experienced both in society in general and in academia in particular. Specifically, these practices are reflected in four lines of work within the editorial policy.

Inclusive and Non-Sexist Language

In all articles, as well as in the monograph proposals submitted, it is essential to use inclusive and non-sexist language. In this regard, it is advisable to replace the use of the generic masculine when referring to men and women with terms of generic meaning or explanatory phrases. Authors may follow the recommendations of the Guía para un uso no sexista de la lengua (Guide for a Non-Sexist Use of Language) (UAM, 2019), adopted by the CSIC, or similar.

Gender Perspective in Research Papers

It is recommended to incorporate a gender perspective in research papers. On the one hand, gender stereotypes and biases that adopt the masculine as a universal reference or naturalize socially constructed differences must be avoided. On the other hand, the variable sex must be considered in any type of research, that is: a) reflect and make informed decisions about the gender composition of the samples and report the sex of the subjects studied; b) analyze the differences within each sex and present the results disaggregated by sex. In this regard, we recommend consulting the document Recomendaciones para la inclusión del género en los contenidos de investigación (Recommendations for the Inclusion of Gender in Research Content) (2023).

Visibility of Women

In order to contribute to making the scientific production and contributions of women visible, the journal includes the full names of the authors of the works it publishes.

Gender Parity

EDUCAR Journal is committed to effective equality between men and women and therefore seeks to maintain gender parity in the composition of the Editorial Committee, the Editorial Board, and the Scientific Committee (reviewers).

Plagiarism, fraud, and retraction

Authors must ensure that the data and results presented in the work are original and have not been copied, manipulated, fabricated, or distorted.

Plagiarism in all its forms, self-plagiarism, multiple or redundant publication, as well as the fabrication or manipulation of data, constitute serious ethical violations and are considered scientific fraud.

When an author discovers a serious error in their work, they must notify the Journal's Editor and Secretariat as soon as possible so that they can modify their work, withdraw it, retract it, or publish a correction or errata. Likewise, if the error is detected by the Journal's Editorial Team and/or readers, the authors have the obligation to demonstrate that their work is correct.

Use of artificial intelligence

Any use of artificial intelligence (AI) must be explicitly disclosed in the article, indicating the tool used, its purpose, and the prompts used (or the actions taken to reproduce the result) in an AI use statement published at the end of the article. You can find more information about the AI ​​use policy for articles published in UAB scientific journals at this link. 

Governance

The editorial team of the EDUCAR Journal is composed of five governing bodies: two individual ones (Director and Secretary) and three collegiate ones (Editorial Committee, Editorial Board, and Scientific Committee).

According to the Regulations of the UAB Department of Applied Pedagogy, the management of the EDUCAR Journal falls to the director of the Department, who, in turn, appoints the journal's secretary. The Editorial Committee is made up of the journal's director and secretary and one member from each subfield of knowledge that makes up the Department. In turn, the Editorial Board, proposed by the Editorial Committee, is composed of national and international experts in the journal's thematic areas. Finally, the Scientific Committee is composed of all those accepted to serve as article reviewers.

More information about the process that regulates the structuring of the individual and collegiate management bodies of the EDUCAR Journal can be found at the following link.

Property registration

The EDUCAR Journal is the exclusive property of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), pursuant to Spanish intellectual and industrial property law. Any use of the masthead (name, graphic design, logo, and associated identifying elements) is prohibited without the express authorization of the UAB.

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.

Authors retain copyright.

Deposit

Authors are permitted to deposit the published version of the article in open access institutional or thematic repositories under the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.

Publication frequency

EDUCAR publishes two issues a year, in January and July.

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.

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.