For reviewers

After a quick initial screening, each manuscript is assigned to an associate editor based on its thematic area. The associate editor then invites reviewers to submit their expert opinion on the manuscript. It is important to note that reviewers are not asked to decide whether or not the manuscript in question should be published. This is the sole responsibility of the Journal’s editorial team. Instead, reviewers are only asked to assess whether the manuscript under review and the underlying work meet certain scientific standards or whether further revisions are required to satisfy these standards. By scientific standards we primarily refer to methodological rigour, adequate sample size, sufficient statistical power, clear hypotheses, distinction between exploratory and confirmatory analyses, presentation of the theoretical background and state of the art in the field, etc. Secondary questions about the expected impact of the reviewed work in its scientific field and in other fields, as well as its relevance for society at large, are assessed through an optional rating during the review process, but in no case affect the editorial decision on publication. These ratings are intended to provide additional information to readers who wish, for example, to rank articles by their perceived impact, or to search for articles that are more socially relevant. The optional rating for the overall quality of the article is considered potentially useful for developing, in the long term, more direct ways of measuring scientific quality and impact, and eventually reducing our community’s dependence on the impact factor.

Reviewers are encouraged to focus on the weaknesses of the work and to specify ways in which it can be improved. They should be direct, concise and constructive. Note that reviews for Psicológica are published, receive a DOI and become citable items. This incentivises reviewers to produce thorough and well-argued reviews that may go beyond recommendations and include their own alternative analyses, replications, figures, etc. Like original contributions, reviews can include, in addition to a mandatory PDF file with the main text of the review, additional files with data, software code, high quality figures, etc. Reviewers are invited to use the available templates for formatting their reviews that can be accessed by following the links below.

.tex review template for Psicológica

.odf review template for Psicológica

.docx review template for Psicológica

If a reviewer considers the evaluated manuscript to be of low quality and that no meaningful recommendations can be made to improve it, instead of submitting a formal review they have the option to write a confidential comment to the editor. Their name and affiliation must still be provided, but in this case neither their identity nor their comments will be disclosed to the authors. Psicológica also welcomes such comments, but it is at the discretion of the associate editor whether or not to take them into consideration.

As soon as a formal, signed review is submitted to the Journal, it is immediately uploaded to the repository, receives a DOI and is linked to the reviewed article. Reviewers can then cite their reviews as any original contribution, regardless of whether the article is accepted for publication to Psicológica or not. Please note that reviews are treated as original publications. They are licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY licence and remain permanently in the public domain. This means that review authors retain the copyright of their work and are free to copy and redistribute it in any medium or format, including for commercial purposes. This also applies to any third party, as long as proper credit is given to the review authors.

Following publication of a review, the authors of the revised manuscript will have the option to respond to the reviewer’s comments. These responses will also be published and linked to the reviews via appropriate metadata. In addition, if a manuscript is eventually published, authors will have the possibility to rate the reviews on a scale of 0 to 100 according to how useful they have been in improving their work. As with article ratings, this information will be made available solely to help readers and the community identify the most thorough and useful reviews and to provide an additional incentive for reviewers.

The associate editor may contact reviewers to request a new evaluation of the revised version of manuscript they have already reviewed. This second round of reviews is identical to the first although in this case, instead of publishing a new item, the existing review item is updated with a new version that refers to the revised manuscript. Reviewers are also asked to update their ratings to reflect the latest manuscript version.

We understand that this peer review protocol is somewhat different from what we have all been used to under the traditional model of academic publishing. We hope that the innovations we introduce will become a first step towards a new culture of collaboration between authors and reviewers guided by a common interest in improving the quality of scientific research. We expect that by increasing accountability and providing the right incentives, openness and transparency in peer review will elevate the role of the reviewer from a nameless pawn in the service of Journal editors to a central element in the process of scientific validation, evaluation and communication.

Should you have any further questions or you wish to discuss this peer review protocol please feel free to contact the editorial team of Psicológica at: info@psicologicajournal.com