ISSN 1657-8961
printed version

INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

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

Pensamiento Psicológico represents an opportunity for the publication of research findings in the field of basic and applied psychology and disciplines related to mental health, human wellbeing and the quality of life.

I. Information for authors

Objective and Scope

Pensamiento Psicológico is a peer-reviewed electronic scientific journal which offers an opportunity for the publication of research findings in the field of basic and applied psychology, and disciplines related to mental health, human welfare and the quality of life. Its aim is to strengthen the means of circulation for national and international researchers of psychology and related disciplines. It is published on a half-yearly basis by the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Cali, Colombia.

The journal is circulated among professionals, researchers and students of the social and health sciences, in the American continent as well as in other parts of the world. The journal has its own website, https://revistas.javerianacali.edu.co/index.php/pensamientopsicologico, which offers free access to all of its content.

Pensamiento Psicológico is indexed in PsycINFO of the American Phychological Association (APA), SciELO (Colombia), SciELO Citation Index, the LatinoAmericans index Literatura Latinoamericana y del Caribe en Ciencias de la Salud (LILACS), and Índice Latinoamericano de Revistas Científicas y Tecnológicas (LATINDEX), the Colombian national index Índice Nacional de Publicaciones Seriadas Científicas y Tecnológicas (PUBLINDEX). In addition, it is registered in the databases Red de Revistas Científicas de América Latina y el Caribe, España y Portugal, Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades (REDALYC), Citas Latinoamericanas en Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades (CLASE) of Mexico, DIALNET of Spain, Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) from Switzerland, ProQuest of the United States and Biblioteca Virtual en Salud, of Colombia.

II. Instructions for the presentation of manuscripts

·       Types of contributions

·       Research Articles

The primary objective of Pensamiento Psicológico is the publication of empirical or theoretical research articles which present original results of completed studies in a detailed and systematic writing. Such articles are especially welcomed and should make a significant contribution to the field of psychology and related disciplines.

• The manuscripts must be divided into the following sections, corresponding to the Introduction, Method, Results and Discussion (IMRaD) format :
• Introduction: should include the development and background information of the problem and a clear description of the objectives of the study.

Method: divided in the following sections: (a) design (optional), to describe the type of study; (b) participants, sample or units of observation; (c) instruments to describe the techniques for gathering information; (d) procedure, where ethical considerations must be included, and (e) data analysis.

• Results: include a clear and descriptive report of the results of the study
• Discussion: this section includes the analysis, interpretation and discussion of the results and compares them with other similar or different conceptual or empirical studies, state the strenghts and weaknesses of the study, as well as the general conclusions.

Review articles show the results of completed research in which results of published or non-published research are analyzed, organized and compiled with the intention of setting out the advances and tendencies in the development of a particular topic in the field of psychology and/or related disciplines. This type of article uses retrospective observational study, in order to synthesize the results of primary research. They require specifying the search and selection criteria of the primary researches analyzed in the text. Under this category, systematic revisions and meta-analyses are included depending on whether the analysis of the information collected in the primary sources include statistical analysis or not.

These type of articles rigourosly details the method used for the review and analysis of the selected literature. Among the elements that should be included are: (a) criteria used for for choosing these studies, to answer a research question; (b) the searching process for this material; (c) the criteria used to evaluate the quality of the bibliographical material finally selected, as well as its compliance of the selection criteria of the mentioned material; (d) description of the categories of analysis that guided the review and that respond to the objectives of the study; and (e) the interpretation of the extracted results of the review of the material selected.

In this category of research articles is also includded the single case designs, where the methodological rigour used in the study is evident. This rigour includes the report of the degree of control of the study, an explicit reference to the repeated evaluation over time (if an intervention is reported, these repeated measures must be taken before, during and after the intervention), and a detailed and systematic description of targeted and secondary measures. In the data analysis, the treatment and processing of the data must be indicated, in order to answer the research question.

·       Letters to the editor

Documents that presents critical, analytical and interpretative points of view on articles published in Pensamiento Psicológico, and which in the opinion of the Editorial and Scientific Committee, make an important contribution to the discussion on the topic. Its maximum length is 10 pages.

B. Article form

• APA publication style

Pensamiento Psicológico follows the guidelines established by the sixth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. These guidelines can be consulted at http://www.apastyle.org/manual/index.aspx. In the Reference section of this document, there are specific examples to adapt this section of your work with the mentioned guidelines and the style of the journal.

• Language

Pensamiento Psicológico’s oficial language is Spanish, however, papers are also published in English. The reference section of any manuscript, regardless of the language it is written, the titles of bibliographical sources will be presented in its original language. Nor institution names will be translated unless there is an official translation.

§  Extention and Presentation

-     The manuscript has a maximum of 6 authors

-     All authors registered the ORCID ID in the OJS platform

-     All authors filled their insitutional affiliation in the OJS platform

-     All authors signed the presentation letter with readable resolution for printing

-     The manuscript is in Word format

-       The cover page has been made as a Word document. It includes: (a) title centred and in bold, with a maximum of 15 words, in Spanish and English; (b) name of all the authors. If the authors use their two last names in their academic signature, please hyphenate; (c) institutional affiliation; (d) latest education level of each author; (e) contact information and financing.

-     The manuscript has the following format: letter-size page, 2.54 cms margin in each of the four sides (superior, inferior, left and right), Times New Roman font, size 12, double space between lines in text (including summaries and references), justified, with a bleed of 1.25 cm of the first line of the paragraph.

-     The manuscript has a maximum of 25 pages including the abstract (in Spanish and English) tables, figures and references.

-     The manuscript presents a running head (maximum 4 words) and page number in the top-right corner.

The sections of the article have the following order:

-     Abstract: maximum 200 words (in Spanish and English) and must be organized in the following sections: (a) Objectives, (b) Method, (c) Results, (d) Conclusion. Abstracts are written in double space, and should not include quotes nor abbreviations.

The only manuscripts that do not include summary are the letters to the editor. 

-       Keywords: maximum five (in Spanish and English). These words must be registered in the thesaurus used by international databases. We suggest using one of the following theusarus.

PsycINFO thesaurus:

http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=termfinder.displayTerms&id=4A02705E-939A-10CE-A1DC-2A1104AAF769

Colombia Scielo Thesaurus:

http://www.scielo.org.co/cgi-bin/wxis.exe/iah/?IsisScript=iah/iah.xis&base=article^dlibrary&index=KW&lang=e&fmt=iso.pft&form=B

-     Keywords were written in lowercase, separated by a comma and a period at the end.

-     Body of the article: the sections of IMRaD (inmediately after the summaries, with page break)

-     References (after the text, with page break)

-     Tables and figures (place in its final location along the manuscript)

-     Both the author and the co-authors, have not submitted or have other manuscripts in evaluation process in Pensamiento Psicológico, considering a 12 month interval from the last submission

§  General structure of the manuscript

-     The manuscript submitted does not have any clue of the authors identity in any part of the text, for example articles in the press or the name of the institution in any part of the text where the Ethics in Research committee is located. To protect the anonymity of peer review process, this information should not appear anywhere in the text; therefore, the cover page is presented as a separate document. Moreover, only those who have been directly involved in the research or the making of the manuscript should be listed as authors. The inclusion of other people as authors is unethical.

-     The Method section includes the following subtitles (in bold), in this order: design, participants, instruments, procedure (which include ethical considerations) and data analysis.

-     In the text, as well as in figures and tables, notations referring to statistical symbols are in itallics. For example, symbols such as N, n, p, M, Mdn, f, t, ES (among others) should be in itallics and there must always be a space between the symbol and the value to which it refers (N = 34, not N=34).

-     Commas are used for decimal numbers. Decimals below one must be displayed with a zero on the left, example: 0,99. The decimal number must be presented with two digits after the comma, example: 5,94. Only the p-values will have three decimals, example: p = 0.001

-     Conclusions and final considerations were included at the end of the Discussion section without opening a new title for it.

-     All authors are aware the manuscript will be submitted to review originality of ideas, with plagiarism detection tools.

§  Ethical principles

Pensamiento Psicológico meets the ethical norms of the Declaration of Helsinki 1975 and its further revisions, therefore, manuscripts must include an explanation of the ethical procedures followed in research. These include:

·    The existence of an informed consent and any other document that responds to the ethical orientation that guide the research in the country in which the research took place and according to international guidelines

·    Declaration of approval by ethics committees of the funding or executing institution (if applicable, registration number)

·    Privacy and confidentiality of participants

·    Manage and processing of data

·    Compliance of the specific laws of the country where the research was carried out

·    For studies carried out in Colombia, the ethical guidelines must be in line with Resolution 8430 of 1993 of the National Ministry of Health.

These guidelines must be set out in the Method section of the article.

On its behalf, the editorial team of Pensamiento Psicológico is committed to the revision of all ethical considerations under the responsibility of the different roles participating in the editorial process, so that all parties follow the rules of scientific publishing. Regarding authors, it is taken into account:

·    Conflict of interest

·    Authorship dispute

·    Transfer of author rights

·    Responsibility and confidentiality of data

·    Investigation fraud

·    Parcial or total plagiarism

·    Ethical research with animals

Tables and figures

-     Figures and tables must be placed in its final location throughout the manuscript, with high resolution.

-     The words “table” and “figure” in the text must be written in lowercase and followed by the number to which they refer.

-     Its content must be delivered in a legible font size, preferable TNR 12, this must avoid duplicating the results presented in the text. Each table goes with a short title at the top. At the bottom of the table, it must be indicated whether it is its own or another author’s; in the latter case, it must be provided the place where it was taken from and whether you have authorization to copy it.

§  Citations

-     The citations in the manuscript were written in accordance with the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6^th edition, 2010).

-     Self-citation (references from prior researches by the authors and co-authors of the manuscript) are limited to a total of three. 

§  References

-     The references in the manuscript were written in accordance with the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6^th edition, 2010).

-     The manuscript presents a minimum of 20 references, where at least 40% were published in the last five years.

-     If a reference of a thesis and/or dissertation, only use indispensable and necessarily references available online in an institutional or commercial database.

-     All on-line references have a DOI or the document access address.

§  References examples

-     Journal Article

Grady, J. S., Her, M., Moreno, G., Perez, C., & Yelinek, J. (2019). Emotions in storybooks: A comparison of storybooks that represent ethnic and racial groups in the United States. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 8(3), 207–217.

-     Journal articles with DOI

Douglas, B., & Orpinas, P. (2019). Goals and Strategies to Solve Peer Conflict: Comparison by Aggression Trajectories. Pensamiento Psicológico, 17 (2), 23-35. doi:10.11144/Javerianacali.PPSI17-2.gssp

-     Book

Calfee, R. C., & Valencia, R. R. (1991). APA guide to preparing manuscripts for journal publication. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

-     Book chapter

Baker, F. M., & Lightfoot, O. B. (1993). Psychiatric care of ethnic elders. In A. C. Gaw (Ed.), Culture, ethnicity, and mental illness (pp. 517-552). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press.

-     Websites

Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) (2004). Social Panorama in Latin America. 2002-2003. United Nations. Retreived from http://www.eclac.cl/publicaciones/xml/6/15086/PSIcompleto.pdf  

The citation of references obtained from websites should be reduced to the minimum and all available information should be provided (DOI, authors names, etc.).

C. Sending the manuscript

§  Authors should prepare the manuscript with the format provided by the journal.

§  The manuscripts must be sent through the website of the journal Pensamiento Psicológico, clicking on the submission link: http://pensamientopsicologico.javerianacali.edu.co/

§  The manuscript must be accompanied by a COVER LETTER and a COVER PAGE. Both formats are found in the webpage of the journal for its completion.

§  The editorial team will confirm receipt of the manuscript and will inform you of the number assigned to the manuscript for the followed interactions with the editorial team.

§  All correspondence between the editorial team and the authors is carried out electronically. No printed copies of the manuscript are required

D. Review process and articles selection

The article review and selection process is carried out in the following phases.

Phase 1. Articles reception and initial review of the Editorial Board

The autor(s) will send a manuscript through the portal http://pensamientopsicologico.javerianacali.edu.co/, and inmediately, authors are noted of the receipt and the code that has been assigned to their manuscript in the system. In this way, the author can access the system to track the process of the manuscript.

The Editorial Board reviews the manuscript based on the following criteria:

a.     Scientific quality, up to date and opportunity of the information

b.     Originality of the ideas presented. For this purpose, plagiarism detection programs are used

c.     Relevance according to the field of Pensamiento Psicológico

d.     Applicability beyond the place of origin

e.     Follow-up of research stadards on human subjects and on animal experimentation

f.      Coherence of the method proposed

After the review, if considered necessary, the author will be asked to make specific adjustments to continue with the process, on the contrary, if they are major adjustments, it is declined and the author is notified the reasons for this decision. This first phase is usually done in the first two months, from the moment of receipt of the manuscript in the journal’s portal.

Phase 2. Peer review selection and consult

Peer reviewers are selected based on their experience in the field of the research, the publication of scientific papers in international journals, in the last two years and its privileged the invitation of external peers to the journal’s editor.

Peer reviewers are invited to participate in the evaluation of an article, initially sending them the abstract of the article and indicating a proximate date to send its revision. Initially, a request for review is sent to two (2) expert peers; if within a week, there has been no response of their availability to make the review of the manuscript, new peers are selected, with whom it is proceed in the same way.

The arbitration process used by the journal is double-blind. Also, the manuscripts review is done according with authors’, reviewers and editors right to confidentiality.

Phase 3. Peer review

Once the participation of the peer reviewers is accepted, the complete manuscript and the review format according to the type of article under review are sent to them. In the same message, they are notified that the time limit for the revision is approximately two weeks from the date of mailing. However, the review time depends on their availability.

Pensamiento Psicológico has different evaluation forms depending on the type of manuscript being reviewed. Evaluation criteria include an assessment of the following sections: title, abstract, introduction, method (type of study and sample or participants characteristics, instruments or techniques of information collection, procedure, ethical considerations, and data/information analysis), results, discussion and citations and references (based on APA style, 6^th edition).

At the end of the review format, peers must indicate whether they consider the paper is:

a.     Accepted in its current presentation

b.     Accepted under the condition that the author will include in the text the comments and recommendations of peer reviewers and of the Editorial Board.

c.     Rejected

Reviewers also have the possibility to indicate in a special section, their confidential comments addressed only to the editor.

The assistance of the peer reviewers in the arbitration process is recognized through the Publons platform.

Phase 4. Second review by the Editorial Board and notification to the author of the status of its manuscript

The Editorial Board of Pensamiento Psicológico reviews of peers comments and takes the decision to accept the manuscript unconditionally, in which during the editorial process the paper skips to phase 6; to request a second review of the manuscript by the author(s) with a deadline of 2 to 3 weeks or to reject it, where the editorial process with the manuscrips ends.

In the case where a peer denies the manuscript and the other does not, the Editorial Board evaluates the option to send it to a third peer reviewer or the Board itself reviews again the manuscript in detail, makes new suggestions and refers the manuscript to the author(s) for review and adjustment.

Phase 5. Review of corrected versions by the editor and Editorial Board

Once the authors send their corrected version of the manuscript, the Editorial Board proceeds to review the new version along with the letter the authors must send to the editor explaining one by one the adjustments and modifications made to the manuscript, based on the recommendations of the experts. If the author(s) disagree with any of the recommendations they should explain the reasons in detail. The Editorial Board can ask the autor(s) for further explanations or modifications that have not been sufficiently detailed in the manuscript. The editor reserves the right not to publish the manuscript if the author do not respond to the requests made.

Phase 6. Decision by the editor and transfer of copyright

The editor reviews the last version sent by the authors and makes the decision on the manuscript. The decision is notified in written to the corresponding authors as soon as possible. This decision can be:

a.     Accepted for publication

b.     Rejected

From this phase, the editing of the preliminary version of the manuscripts that would be included in the next edition of the journal. This process includes proofreading, adjustment of tables and figures according to the format of the journal, and revision and verification on bibliographic references. The edited version is sent to the autor for approval.

Note. The editorial process of a manuscript will be finished if after two (2) months the corresponding author does not respond to the emails sent.

Editing and publication of the article accepted

Once the manuscript has been accepted, it will be edited and sent to the author in charge of correspondence for approval of the revisions made to the final version of the manuscript. Once the editing has finished, a copy of the publication is sent to the corresponding author.

F. Copyright

By sending their articles to Pensamiento Psicológico, the author(s) accept that for their publication they will transfer the rights of reproduction and distribution of the work to the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana Cali, so their content can be diffused as the journal sees fit.

It is understood that the opinions and evaluations expressed by the authors in the papers are made under their sole responsibility, and do not compromise in any way the opinion or scientific policy of Pensamiento Psicológico or of the Pontificia Universida Javeriana de Cali.