About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Investigations in Science Education (IENCI) is a quarterly international journal indexed and devoted entirely to research in the area of teaching/learning of the sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Biology or the Natural Sciences studied through a holistic approach).

The main goal of this periodical is to disseminate key works and original research studies on the teaching of the Sciences to the international research community, particularly in Latin America and the Iberian peninsula.

Currently, IENCI can be found in the following search engines/databases: SCOPUS, DOAJ, EBSCO, LATINDEX, LivRe, Portal of periodicals CAPES and IRESIE. The Google scholar h5-index is 10.

Only articles on the following will be accepted for publication:

1) investigation (i.e., on well-defined research questions with a theoretical framework/methodology and references to related studies);

2) review of the literature a) in a particular research area of teaching/learning the sciences b) in a period of time not less than ten years, c) covering the main periodicals in the area at a national and international level;

3) theoretical grounding - with clear implications for an investigation into the teaching of the sciences and setting out benchmarks that are still not widespread in the area;

4) methodology for educational research - with a direct bearing on the investigation into science teaching;

5) críticism (or support) and comments on articles published in the journal itself .

Reports of experiences, teaching programs not linked to research, and articles that are only surveys of opinions, ideas or numerical data (obtained from questionnaires, interviews or publications ) will not be included for assessment by the referees.

What is considered for refereeing, are articles of any kind of theoretical and methodological orientation that are concerned with any aspect of teaching/learning of the sciences, on the understanding that they are original and are not being submitted for publication to other journals. Works are appraised in Portuguese, Spanish or English.

IENCI is an Open-Access journal which can be read without the need to pay any charges either for the submission or processing of the articles. The journal has adopted the definition of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI), which states that, the users have the right to read, copy, distribute, print, carry out searches and create links with the complete texts of the published articles.

At the end of the revision and desktop publishing, each accepted article is published separately in the current edition (which has open-ended publications), and is recorded in the contents page.

All the articles are published in a PDF format and have a Creative Commons-License Attribution Non-commercial 4.0 International. The authors keep the copyrights of their work and must be contacted directly if there is any commercial interest in the use of their works.

Peer Review Process

All the articles that pass through the editorial filter are revised anonymously by at least two researchers involved in the teaching of the sciences and in turn, their identities are not revealed to the authors (i.e. in a Double-Blind Peer Review)

The average time required for the editorial filtering is four weeks.

On the procedure for reviewing

If the submitted article fulfils all the formal requirements, the editors will make an initial assessment. If they think the article is not suited to the profile of the journal or fails to reach the minimum required standard, it can be rejected without being sent to the other assessors.
If the article does not fulfil the formal requirements, the editors reserve the right to reject it.
The articles that pass through this first filtering stage, will be sent to two external referees who are researchers in the Teaching of the Sciences.
If there is a disagreement between the referees, or for any other reason the editors deem necessary, the article will be sent to a third referee.
On the recommendations of the referees, the editors can decide:

To accept the article submitted: as it is, or with minor alterations;
To publish it with alterations: counting from the date when the referees sent back the article to the editor, the author will be allowed up to 30 days to address and comment on the adjustments suggested by the referees and/or editors and to explain in detail whether or not each suggestion was put into effect. These alterations must be restricted to those recommended by the referees and/or editors. In a situation where the author goes beyond the deadline for making the changes and fails to give any explanation, the article will be automatically rejected. The editors reserve the right to refuse to publish the work if the alterations do not meet the requirements and no convincing reason is given.
Rejection: the work will not be published in the IENCI.
Resubmission for assessment: the work can be sent back for a new appraisal and thus again set in motion the submission procedure for publication in the journal.

The final revision of the article will be undertaken by the authors. The periodical will not be responsible for making any grammatical revisions to the works.
Before publication, the authors will be sent a copy of the final version for them to check and this must be carried out within a deadline of one week.

Publication Frequency

IENCI is a quarterly periodical (published in April, August and December) in which, after being accepted, each article is published separately in the current edition (which is an open-ended publication), and appears in the contents of the edition.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that freely available scientific knowledge to the public supports a greater global democratization of knowledge.

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Our publication ethics and publication malpractice statement are mainly based on the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Code of Conduct.

Editorial committee responsibilities

* To evaluate manuscripts exclusively on the basis of their academic merit. The committee have complete responsibility and authority to reject/accept an article, always encouraging debate, academic integrity and the protection of individual data. They also have a duty to act if any misconduct is suspected and to ensure the integrity of the academic record. When mistakes are found in the published paper, they should promote publication of correction or retraction.

* Always to evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.

* Do not disclose any identity information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the authors. Also, they preserve the anonymity of reviewers. The Double-Blind peer review process is described here.

Author's responsibilities

* To maintain accurate records of data associated with their submitted manuscript, and to supply or provide access to these data, on reasonable request;

* To ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others that this has been appropriately acknowledged or quoted. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Proper acknowledgment of the work of others must always be given. Authors should cite publications that have been influential in determining the nature of the reported work.

* To ensure that the submitted work is original and has not been published elsewhere in any language. Relevant previous work and publications, both by other researchers and the authors’ own, should be properly acknowledged and referenced. The primary literature should be cited where possible. Translations and adaptations for different audiences should be clearly identified as such, should acknowledge the original source, and should respect relevant copyright conventions and permission requirements.

* Do not submit articles describing essentially the same research to more than one journal or primary publication. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.

* To limit authorship to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made significant contributions should be listed as co-authors.

* To disclose in the manuscript any financial or other substantive conflict of interest that might be construed to influence the results or its interpretation. All sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed, including grants and scholarships.

* The corresponding author in connection with co-authors must participate in the peer review process, accepting or not all comments made by the reviewers. When the comments are not accepted, they must state why.

* If an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in his/her own published work, it is his/her obligation to promptly notify the journal editor or publisher and cooperate with the editor to retract or correct the paper.

* If the editorial committee learns from a third party that a published work contains a significant error, it is the obligation of the author to promptly retract or correct the paper or provide evidence to the editor of the correctness of the original paper.

Reviewers' responsibility

* To assist the editorial committee in making editorial decisions and through the editorial communications with the authors, without identification, the reviewers may also assist the author in improving the paper.

* To treat any manuscripts received as confidential documents. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for any personal advantage. They must not be shown to or discussed with others except as authorized by the editorial committee.

* To notify the editor if he/she feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript or knows that its prompt review will be impossible.

* To alert the committee to any substantial similarity or overlap between the manuscript under consideration and any other published paper of which they have personal knowledge.

* Do not accept manuscripts to review if he/she have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, research funders, or institutions connected to the work.

Publishing ethics issues

* The IENCI editorial committee follow COPE's rules for retracting articles (the full procedure can be found here). The committee will consider retracting a publication if:

there is clear evidence that the findings are unreliable, either as a result of misconduct (e.g. data fabrication) or honest error (e.g. miscalculation or experimental error);
the findings have previously been published elsewhere without proper cross referencing, permission or justification (i.e. cases of redundant publication);
it constitutes plagiarism;
it reports unethical research.

* The committee take responsibility to have procedures and policies in place to ensure the quality of the material they publish and maintain the integrity of the published record.