ISSN 0120-3479
Printed version

INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

• Scope and policy
• Form and preparation of manuscripts
• Sending of manuscripts

The journal is published twice a year and its audience is both national and international. The journal accepts only original and unpublished papers, that is, contributions that have not received prior publication in any printed, electronic or digital medium (e.g., other journals, conference proceedings, web pages, preprint sites, etc.). Submitted papers should not be under consideration for publication elsewhere in any medium. The originality and unpublished nature of the paper and the exclusiveness of its submission to the journal (Ingenieria y Competitividad) must be certified by the authors in the cover letter that accompanies the submitted paper.

Papers are accepted for publication on the basis of judgment of their academic quality after a thorough review process. A first evaluation is made by the Editor-in-Chief, together with the Associate Editors of the area of engineering corresponding to the submitted paper, after which point a paper can be rejected without further consideration or admitted for peer review. Papers rejected at this stage are insufficiently original, have serious scientific flaws, have poor Spanish or English grammar, or do not meet the presentation standards required by the journal in accordance with the instructions to authors. Admitted papers are passed on to two experts for review. Reviewers are matched to the admitted paper according to their expertise. The journal employs a double-blind review, in which the reviewers remain anonymous to the authors throughout the review process, and also the names of the authors remain unknown to the reviewers. Reviewers may typically take from one to two months to return their reports. Reviewers are asked to evaluate the organization and presentation quality of the submitted paper, the originality and scope of the work reported, the definition and justification of the problem approached, the soundness of the methodology used, the presentation and discussion of the results, the consistency between results and conclusions, and the relevance and accuracy of cited literature references. 

Authors should submit their papers electronically to the e-mail address inycompe@univalle.edu.co. A paper should be submitted both as a file prepared with a word-processing package (e.g., Microsoft Word, Open Office Writer) and as a portable document file (Acrobat Reader PDF format), together with a cover letter addressed to the Editor-in-Chief including the complete title of the paper, the engineering area that is more closely related to the submitted work, and the complete names of the authors, with their academic titles and positions. This letter should be signed by all the authors of the paper, certifying the originality of the work and the exclusiveness of its submission to the journal (Ingeniería y Competitividad). In the letter, the authors should authorize the journal to pass the paper on to the reviewers designated by the Editor-in-Chief. All the text in the submitted paper (including table titles, figure captions and lettering, and literature references) should be typed with the Times New Roman (TNR) font. Papers should have the following structure and fulfill the following requirements:

Títle.  The title should reflect clearly, accurately and concisely the content of the paper. If possible, the title should not include any kind of undefined abbreviations or acronyms. The text of the title should be typed with bold-faced TNR font, size of 18 pt, centered between margins, and double-spaced.

Authors.  The first name, the initial of the middle name and the last name (s) of each autor should be listed in that order. Composite last names should be linked by a hyphen. Consecutive elements in the list of authors should be separated by commas, typed with a bold-faced TNR font, size of 12 pt, and double-spaced. Symbols (such as a single asterisk, double asterisk, etc.) should be inserted as superscripts at the end of each author’s last name to indicate his / her affiliation. One of the authors must be signaled as the corresponding author by inserting the symbol § as a second superscript at the end of this author’s last name. The corresponding author is responsible for all communications with the journal’s Editor-in-Chief and is the author to whom the readers should address their questions and comments.

Affiliations.  The name of the institution to which each author is affiliated must be provided. For authors affiliated to universities, the name of the school or department should be followed by the name of the university. For authors affiliated to research centers or enterprises, the name of the division, department or section should be followed by the name of the center or enterprise. The symbol that was inserted as a superscript at the end of the last name of each author, must precede the affiliation line. Affiliations should be typed in italicized TNR font, size of 11 pt, and double-spaced. Academic titles or positions of the authors should not be included in the affiliations. The e-mail address of the corresponding author, preceded by the symbol § must be provided in the last line of the affiliations.

Abstract. It should state the scope and objective of the work, giving a clear and concise (no longer than 200 words) description of the results being presented and the conclusions reached. It should be preceded by the word Abstract typed in bold-faced TNR font, size of 12 pt. The text of the abstract should be typed in the TNR font, size of 10 pt.

Keywords. A maximum number of 7 keywords should be provided. The list of keywords should be preceded by the label Keywords:, typed in bold-faced and italicized TNR font, size of 10 pt. The elements in the keyword list should be separated by commas, typed in the TNR font, size of 10 pt. Each element of the keyword list should be comprised of at most four words including prepositions.

Main text. For full-length research papers, the main text should be comprised of five sections: 1. Introduction, 2. Methodology, 3. Results and discussion, 4. Conclusions,          5. Literature references. If necessary, another section can be included for the Acknowledgments. A title should be provided for each of these sections preceded by the corresponding Arabic numeral (1, 2, 3, 4 o 5). The numeral and title of each section should be typed in bold-faced TNR font, size of 12 pt. If subtitles are required within a given section, they should be typed in a bold-faced TNR font, size of 11 pt. The text within each section should be typed in the TNR font, size of 11 pt. The text should be typed to a single-column, with 1 inch-wide left and right margins, and double-spaced. Use of footnotes to the main text is not allowed.

Equations. These should be centered between margins. Arabic numerals, enclosed by brackets and typed near the right margin of the paper, should be used to label all equations. Equations are cited in the main text using the abbreviation Eq. followed by the corresponding Arabic numeral enclosed by brackets. A uniform format should be used for all equations: variables should be typed in italics, subscripts and superscripts in normal font, and vectors and matrices in bold-faced font. A horizontal line should be used for division in the main text of an equation. A slash should be used to indicate division in exponents (e.g., q^3/2). The meaning of all the variables or symbols that appear in the equations, and the units to be employed for them, must be provided right after the equation in which they are used for the first time. Otherwise, variables or symbols should be compiled in alphabetical order in a Nomenclature section, in which not only the definition but also the units to be employed for each variable or symbol should be provided. This section should be placed right after the Conclusions (or the Acknowledgments) section.

Literature references.  Within the main body of the manuscript, the Harvard citation system, in which the last names of the authors are followed by the publication year (in parentheses), should be employed. For instance, a paper published by B. Ekelhof and D. Schliephake in 1995 should be cited as Ekelhof & Schliephake (1995). If more than one work is cited for the same set of authors, lowercase letters (starting from “a”) should be inserted after the publication year to make references distinguishable in the list at the end of the paper. If more than two authors are involved for the work to be cited, only the last name of the first author should be included followed by the abbreviation et al. For instance, a paper published by P. Kadlec, R. Bretschneider, and Z. Bubník in 1983 should be cited as Kadlec et al. (1983). The list of cited references should be provided at the end of the paper, right after the Conclusions section. References should be given in alphabetical order according to the initial of the last name of the first author of the cited work. Only those references actually cited in the main text of the paper, or in the tables and figure captions, should be included in the list of references. The text within each reference should be typed in the TNR font, size of 11 pt.

Citations of journal articles should be provided in the following way:

Barat, J., Fito, P., & Chiralt, A. (2001a). Effect of osmotic solution concentration, temperature and vacuum impregnation pre-treatment on osmotic dehydration kinetics of apple slices. Journal of Food Science and Technology 5 (7), 451-456.

The article of this example was published in Volume 5, Issue 7 of the given journal, whose complete title is given (i.e., without using any abbreviations). This article is the first cited work (letter “a” after the publication year) by the same group of authors. The title of the cited article is provided in its original language.

Citations of books should be provided as follows:

Prausnitz, J.M., Anderson, T.F., Grens, E.A., Eckert, C.A., Hsieh, R., & O’Connell, J.P. (1980). Computer calculations for multicomponent vapor-liquid and liquid-liquid equilibria. New Jersey: Prentice Hall Inc.

Citation of chapters in books with editors should be given in the following way:

Haas, J.R. (1992). Rigorous distillation calculations. In: H.Z. Kister (editor), Distillation design. McGraw-Hill Inc., (Chapter 4).

Citation of presentations given in conferences or meetings should be provided as follows:

Ekelhof, B., & Schliephake, D. (1995). Description of the crystal growth rate in pure and impure sucrose solutions by a combined kinetic approach. In Proceedings of the 20th General Assembly of the Comission Internationale Technique Sucrerie (CITS), Munich, Germany, p. 216-235.

Citation of information available via the Internet should be given in the following way:

International Association for the Properties of Water and Steam (IAPWS). (1998). Revised release on the IAPS Formulation 1985 for the thermal conductivity of ordinary water substance. http://www.iapws.org

Citation of theses should be provided as follows:

Das, R. (1998). Determining the locations of faults in distribution systems. Doctoral Thesis, Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada.

Tables. Tables should be numbered consecutively and not included within the main text of the paper. They should be placed at the end of the paper (right after the list of references), one table per page, in the same order as cited in the main text. The title of each table must include the word Table (in italics) followed by the corresponding Arabic numeral and a brief description of the contents of the table. Table titles should be typed in italicized TNR font, size of 9 pt. Headings should be provided for all table columns. Horizontal gridlines should be used to separate the column headings from the table entries. A horizontal rule should be typed after the bottom row of the table. No vertical rules should be used to separate columns. If a footnote to the table is required, this should be typed in the TNR font, size of 8 pt. Tables should not duplicate results presented in graphs.

Illustrations. Figures (and photographs) should be numbered consecutively and not included within the main text of the paper. They should be placed at the end of the paper (right after the tables), one illustration per page, in the same order as cited in the main text.  Figure captions should include the word Figure (in italics) followed by the corresponding Arabic numeral and a brief description of the content of the figure. Figure captions should be typed in italicized TNR font, size of 9 pt. Figures should be prepared to be printed in black and white. Because color figures are not allowed, use of various kinds of symbols and lines should be made to prepare line drawings in cartesian coordinates, and gray scales should be employed for photographs and pie charts. All figure lettering should be typed in a font size large enough to be legible when figures are reduced to a suitable size (e.g., one column on a two-column page) during the production of the journal. Figures should be pasted into the submitted paper as images from a graph tool (e.g., Microsoft Excel) with a resolution good enough such that their legibility is not lost as the size of the figures is adjusted during the editorial production stage.

As part of the submission process, the Journal required that the  authors to check off their submission meets all of the following elements, and agreeing to have submissions that do not meet these guidelines may be returned to the author.
Authors must certify in a letter originality and novelty of the work, and the exclusivity of its submission to the journal Ingeniería y Competitividad.

The paper is in Microsoft Word format, not exceeding 20 pages including tables and figures, double-spaced, letter paper, 12-point font size and in a single column

The article meets bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, and uses the system Harvard citation references: http://libweb.anglia.ac.uk/referencing/files/Harvard_referencing_2011.pdf

The tables are not included in the main body of work but are placed at the end of the text (after the list of references), one per page, sorted according to the order of citation in the main text. In addition tables follow the requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines

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