Guide for external evaluators

Revista Plumilla Educativa

Guide for Reviewers

Plumilla Educativa Journal, as a peer-reviewed scientific journal, submits all its articles to an external evaluation process aimed at guaranteeing the originality, writing quality, and academic rigor of the original texts submitted to the journal. The journal applies the double-blind review methodology as a strategy to ensure proper transparency in the article evaluation process.

The Editorial Committee of Plumilla Educativa Journal will reject articles that fail to comply with its editorial policy or publication guidelines. Authors will be informed accordingly so that they may use their content for other publications or purposes. Together with the Editorial Board, the Journal Editor will select and classify the articles that meet the quality criteria established by the publication. External reviewers will be assigned according to their expertise and research topics. All articles will be reviewed anonymously under a double-blind methodology, meaning that the author will not know who the reviewers are, nor will the reviewers know the authorship of the text sent for evaluation.

About External Reviewers

External reviewers shall be academic experts in the thematic area of the article who have published scientific articles in that field within the last three years.

Reviewers are responsible for determining the originality, quality, and relevance of the data associated with the research, verifying the relevance, suitability, and originality of the texts submitted to Plumilla Educativa Journal. Their evaluation will be the fundamental criterion for the acceptance or rejection of the articles.

Evaluation Process

The editorial management process begins with the receipt of the article and the automatic acknowledgment of receipt generated by the OJS platform of Plumilla Educativa Journal. Each article undergoes a preliminary review process carried out by the editors within the following ten (10) business days, during which they verify compliance with the editorial criteria established in the authors’ guidelines and review the article using the plagiarism detection tool available at the Universidad de Manizales.

This process may result in rejection, approval, or approval with corrections in order to continue the editorial process; however, this does not imply the article’s definitive acceptance for publication. Once this stage has been successfully completed, the evaluation process continues.

The manuscript is initially assigned to two external reviewers, who evaluate each component of the article based on a review form provided by the journal, under the double-blind modality. This means that reviewers do not know the identity of the author, nor does the author know the identity of the reviewers. Reviewers have seventy (70) business days to complete the evaluation.

The decisions issued by the reviewers regarding publication may be:

• That the article be published without any changes.
• That the article be published after incorporating certain adjustments (which must be specified in the general observations section).
• That the article requires adjustments in content or writing and a new peer review before publication (which must be specified in the general observations section).
• That the article be postponed for a future publication until the appropriate modifications are incorporated.
• That the article must be rejected because it does not meet the technical quality standards required by this journal.

In all cases, the author(s) will be notified of the reviewers’ decision. Acceptance of the article will depend on the satisfactory incorporation by the author(s) of the suggestions or modifications proposed by the reviewers within a period not exceeding 60 days after notification.

Likewise, the Editorial Board reserves the right to introduce any stylistic corrections necessary to adapt the text to the journal’s standards, without in any way altering the content of the articles, which remains the sole responsibility of the authors. The Editorial Board will be the body responsible for deciding the acceptance and subsequent publication of the received articles.

In all cases, the final version of the article, as it will appear after copyediting, will be sent to the author(s) for final approval before publication.

The Editorial Board of Plumilla Educativa Journal strongly encourages reviewers to consider the following guidelines:

• Review objectively the quality of the manuscript in relation to its objectives, methodology, data and interpretation, conclusions, bibliography section, and formal aspects of the text.
• Be impartial in criticism and comments, supporting their statements while maintaining neutrality and respect for the manuscript and its author.
• Inform the editors if plagiarism or self-plagiarism is detected between the article under review and any published work, or if they are aware of a similar work under review elsewhere.
• Submit the manuscript evaluation to Plumilla Educativa Journal on time or communicate with the editor in case of delays.
• Verify that the referenced information sources and the citations included in the work correspond to each other.

Note: After the evaluation process has been completed, Plumilla Educativa Journal will send the reviewer a peer-review certificate by email in appreciation for their work. To receive this certificate, the reviewer must be registered on the journal’s OJS platform.