About the Journal

About the Journal

Scope and Purpose

Albores, Revista de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales (ISSN 2954-3878), is a biannual open-access publication that does not charge any fees for publication at any stage of the editorial process. The journal focuses on various disciplines within the social sciences. Edited by Facultad de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales of Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro (UAQ). The journal uses a double-blind peer review process, with external reviewers and software for plagiarism detection and identification of AI-generated writing. The final decision on the publication of manuscripts is made by the editorial board with the support of the scientific committee.

Albores publishes research articles, essays, book reviews, and photographic works. The first two categories undergo blind peer review, while the last two are evaluated internally by the editorial team. 

Proposals for the coordination of thematic issues or special editions are not considered.

When an author publishes in Albores, they must wait two years before publishing again, except in cases of co-authorship with someone who has not published in the journal during that period.

The objective of Albores is to disseminate social research in disciplines such as cultural studies, communication, sociology, politics, gender studies, local development, international relations, and public administration, among other social sciences. Additionally, it seeks to foster dialogue, exchange, and exposure of work at the local, national, and international levels within the Spanish-speaking academic community of social sciences.

The audience that Albores targets consists of researchers, academics, and students engaged in social research and action research, who wish to share their findings and contributions to knowledge.

The mission of Albores is to serve as a space for discussion, critique, and reflection on contemporary social issues. The journal aims to encourage researchers, academics, and students to conduct social research and action research, and to share their findings as contributions to knowledge, with an impact on solving social problems.

The vision of Albores is to establish itself as an accessible, reliable, and prestigious source for academic dissemination and scientific knowledge with social impact, based on standards, guidelines, and criteria that ensure the clarity, validity, and quality of the published material.

Rights Policy and Publication Conditions

Authors grant Albores the right of first publication of their works, which will be subject to the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This license allows third parties to share the work under the same terms, provided that proper attribution is given to the authors, indicating that the first publication occurred in this journal (including the publisher and URL), and that the work is not used for commercial purposes.

Authors retain their moral rights over the work, including ownership, recognition, and integrity. However, they transfer the economic rights to Albores and the Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro for its first publication, open access distribution, reproduction, and dissemination. Upon acceptance of the manuscript for publication, authors will receive a rights transfer agreement form that must be signed. In this context, authors maintain control over the integrity of their works and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited when their works are reproduced or distributed. Furthermore, they are responsible for any claims related to intellectual property, indemnifying Albores and the Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro from any liability.

Open Access Policy

The published material may be used to create new articles, as long as proper credit is given to the original author and the journal, in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), which can be accessed at the following link: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Repository and Self-Archiving Policy

Albores invites, permits, and encourages authors to deposit their published works in institutional, national, and international repositories to contribute to the dissemination and preservation of academic knowledge. However, it is important that the manuscript is deposited only after its publication in the journal to ensure that the work is considered unpublished and to maintain anonymity during the blind peer review process.

Albores allows the self-archiving of all versions of the manuscript, including:

  • Submitted version
  • Accepted version
  • Published version

Manuscripts should be deposited under the same open access license used by the journal to ensure that the content remains freely and openly accessible to readers. Additionally, it is required that deposited works include complete metadata, such as:

  • Name of the journal
  • Issue number and volume of publication
  • Publication date
  • DOI (Digital Object Identifier)
  • URL of the published version on the Albores website.

Code of Ethics

Albores, Revista de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales, alings its code of ethics with the best editorial practices of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) to guarantee transparent and high-quality editorial management at all stages of the process and by all parts involved.

Editors’ Ethics

The editor's decision to accept or reject a submission is based on its relevance, quality, clarity, and thematic appropriateness, drawing on the reviewers’ observations and comments, as well as on plagiarism detection and AI-generated text identification software (Turnitin). Through the blind peer review policy, Albores ensures the confidentiality of the identities of both authors and reviewers.

Albores is committed to transparency and to providing information to interested parties about the stages of the editorial process and the status of a submission. Manuscripts are evaluated without consideration of the author's ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, institutional affiliation, nationality, or any other personal characteristics.

Authors’ Ethics

All submitted work must be original, not previously published, and not currently under review or pending publication in any other medium, whether print or electronic. A text will also be considered previously published if it contains substantial portions of material that have been published before or if it is part of published conference proceedings.

Authors commit not to submit their manuscript simultaneously to another journal for evaluation. In case of non-compliance, the manuscript will be removed from the editorial process, and the author will be barred from submitting new manuscripts to this journal for a period of two years. Authors also guarantee that the work does not contain illegal material and that any content taken from other scientific documents (their own or others’) is properly cited, does not infringe copyright, and does not exceed 30% of the article’s content. Plagiarism, in any of its forms, is considered unethical conduct; if detected, the manuscript will be removed from the editorial process, and the author will be sanctioned with a two-year ban on submitting new manuscripts to the journal.

As a mandatory part of the process, an originality statement will be signed at the beginning, and a declaration of conflicts of interest and copyright will be signed at the end of the process, both of which will be sent via email. 

Reviewers’ Ethics

Manuscripts sent for review are confidential documents and should not be shown or discussed with others without Albores' authorization. If a reviewer cannot evaluate a manuscript, they should delete all copies of the document (printed and/or digital) that they possess.

Reviewers must notify the journal as soon as possible whether they can review a manuscript. They should report any unethical behavior or irregularities detected during the review process and support any rejection decision objectively, avoiding personal criticism. It is essential that they express their opinions clearly and provide valid arguments.

It is imperative that no unpublished material disclosed in a reviewed manuscript be used for personal benefit without the author's written consent. Privileged information obtained through the peer review process must remain confidential and not be used for personal gain. Reviewers must refrain from evaluating manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest.

Readers’ Ethics

Readers and users have free and unrestricted access to the content published in Albores, as soon as a new issue is published on the platform. They are permitted to cite, share, print, and distribute the material, as long as it is clearly acknowledged that the work was originally published in the journal. The material must not be used for commercial purposes.

Artificial Intelligence Usage Policy

In order to guarantee quality, transparency, ethics, and good editorial practices, Albores presents its Artificial Intelligence Usage Policy, which covers the different phases of the editorial processes, as well as those who participate in each of them.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has brought about significant transformations in editorial management activities and has disrupted the dynamics of academia and research; therefore, it is of utmost importance to establish guidelines for its use.

AI is a digital technological tool that cannot be recognized as an author or co-author, since it cannot assume any moral, legal, or ethical responsibility regarding the content (Penabad-Camacho, et al., 2024); therefore, Albores establishes that the use of AI is reserved for supporting style or orthotypographical editing tasks. Its use for writing texts, creating content, or during scientific research is not permitted. Use of AI in Editorial Processes

Albores guarantees that AI does not replace or substitute the editorial team, the Editorial Committee, or the Scientific Committee in any of their tasks and that it does not use any AI in the editorial stages. Albores is committed to authors and readers to ensure that editors have the capacity to make decisions and mediate editorial processes ethically and appropriately. Likewise, the editorial team has the obligation to continuously train, update, and develop their skills, given that AI is a novel and evolving tool (Penabad-Camacho, et al., 2024).

To guarantee good practices, transparency, and ethics, editors must notify authors when the percentage of AI in their texts exceeds the permitted limit of 20%. Similarly, they will ensure that authors add a disclaimer informing readers about the use of AI.

Albores uses Turnitin software to detect the percentage of similarity or AI-generated writing and guarantees authors that their manuscripts will not be used to train any AI.

Use of AI for Authors

The use of AI should be limited to style correction and text editing; its use in research, writing, or content creation is not permitted. The maximum permitted percentage of AI use in a text is 20%, which will be verified using Turnitin software. If this limit is exceeded, the manuscript will be rejected or returned for the necessary clarifications and corrections.

Authors are responsible for reporting within the body of the text if AI was used. This information should be included in the Introduction section or in a footnote. By submitting a text for possible publication, authors confirm that they understand and accept our AI policy and are aware that failure to comply with the rules will result in the rejection of the text and the inability to submit a manuscript for a period of two years.

Use of AI in the review process

Reviewers evaluating manuscripts may use software to detect similarities or AI-generated writing, always with the commitment and care that no text is incorporated into databases or used as AI training.

The use of AI is not permitted during the text evaluation process. Therefore, reviewers commit to ensuring quality and ethics in their reviews, personally reading and validating the requirements that articles, essays, photographic works, or reviews must meet.

References

Penabad-Camacho, L. ., Morera-Castro, M., & Penabad-Camacho, M. A. . (2024). Guide for the use and Reporting of Artificial Intelligence in Scientific-Academic Journals. Revista Electrónica Educare, 28(S), 1-41. https://doi.org/10.15359/ree.28-S.19830

Penabad-Camacho, L., Penabad-Camacho, M. A., Mora-Campos, A., Cerdas-Vega, G., Morales-López, Y., Ulate-Segura, M., Méndez-Solano, A., Nova-Bustos, N., Vega-Solano, M. F., & Castro-Solano, M. M. (2024). Heredia Declaration: Principles on the use of Artificial Intelligence in Scientific Publishing. Revista Electrónica Educare, 28(S), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.15359/ree.28-S.19967

Digital Preservation Policy

Albores is committed to ensuring the access, integrity, and long-term preservation of the content published in the journal, including articles, essays, photographic works, reviews, complete issues, and metadata. To achieve this goal, the following actions are taken:

  • Internally, backups are stored on hard drives and in the Google Drive of the journal's official email account, which are updated every semester.
  • To guarantee the preservation of metadata, Albores uses DOI (Digital Object Identifier) ​​registration with CrossRef.
  • Regarding institutional preservation, all Albores content is deposited in the institutional repository of the Autonomous University of Querétaro (UAQ). Furthermore, the UAQ's Directorate of Information, Technology, and Innovation implements the following measures:
    • Periodic website backups.
    • Constant monitoring of the technological environment to anticipate security incidents and update outdated software.
  • The journal's editorial management is carried out on the Open Journal System (OJS) and uses the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) program to ensure the deposit and preservation of versions of articles, essays, photographs, reviews, and complete issues published on the website.

The responsibility for implementing and monitoring this policy rests jointly with the journal's editorial team, the Periodicals Coordination, and the Information, Technology, and Innovation Department, who are responsible for reviewing and updating it to meet Albores' technological and editorial needs.

 Metadata and Interoperability Policy

Albores strives to describe the metadata of articles, essays, photographic works, and reviews in a complete, standardized, and consistent manner to facilitate or ensure the discoverability, indexing, and use of the information. The following metadata is included: title, authors, affiliation, ORCID, DOI, abstract, keywords, references, language, source, copyright, licensing, publisher, and publication date. The schema used is Dublin Core, following the parameters of the OJS Indexing Manual: Best Practices for the Latin American Region (Flores Chávez, 2023). The journal's editorial team is responsible for verifying the quality and consistency of the information before publication.

Albores provides an OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative – Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) interface that allows other information systems and services to access the metadata of the published content.

Specifications:

OAI-PMH Protocol, Version 2.0

Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, Version 1.1

Access address: https://revistas.uaq.mx/index.php/albores/oai

References

Flores Chávez, M.A. (2023). Manual de indización en OJS: Buenas prácticas para la región latinoamericana. (2ª ed.). Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México/Dirección Nacional de Bibliotecas de Colombia. https://biblat.unam.mx/archivos/pdf/manual_indizacion_ojs_2ed.pdf