ISSN 1657-0790
printed version

ISSN 2256-5760
online version

http://dx.doi.org/10.15446/profile

INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

• Scope and policy
• Form and preparation of manuscripts
• Publication ethics and publication malpractice statement
• Sending of manuscripts

PURPOSE

The PROFILE journal is published twice a year (January and July). Its main goal is to share the results of classroom research projects undertaken by primary and secondary school teachers as well as teachers of adults while taking part in the Professional Development Programmes carried out by the Foreign Languages Department at Universidad Nacional de Colombia. It also includes articles written by teacher educators and guest teachers willing to disseminate reflections, innovations, and research findings.

EVALUATION AND PUBLICATION

All submissions go through a blind peer review process provided all requirements have been met. This process takes four to five months, provided there are no unexpected delays. Reviewers' names will not be made available to authors under any circumstances. Authors should wait approximately four to five months until notification of a decision by the editor. If an article is accepted after having been read by at least two evaluators, authors should be ready to revise it if necessary and to meet deadlines established by the editor to complete the editing processes. The PROFILE editor reserves the right to make editorial changes in the manuscripts recommended for publication for the purpose of clarity, concision, or style. It is also under the editor's discretion to reject a manuscript on the grounds of lack of space to publish it.

If major changes are required by the evaluators or the editor, the article will be returned to authors for amending, indicating: revise and resubmit. The improved version should be submitted within three weeks. After this period, the article will be regarded as a new submission.

The revised version of the manuscript should be sent to the editor together with a cover letter. It should include the explanations that the authors have to offer as to how they addressed (or did not address) the reviewers' comments. The resubmission will then be submitted again for evaluation. The final evaluation will determine whether or not the article can be published. Date of publication will depend upon amount of time taken for revision and resubmission.

Once the article is accepted, the edited versionwill be sent to you for approval. Upon publication,authors will receive a PDF copy of their articles. PROFILE does not provide printed versions of the article or of the complete issue to authors. If authors are interested in acquiring a printed version of the journal they should contact the Editor.

To be considered for publication, you should complete the submission process via our platform. There you should upload your manuscript, the consent form—if applicable, the cover letter, the figures, tables, etc. Go to the web page of the journal and register as a user: http://www.revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile

Please, follow the option "register" at the top of the page. You will be asked to fill in a form with your information. Please, do not forget to choose, at the end of the form, the option "Register as: Author". This option will allow you to upload your submission. Important: Manuscripts signed by more than three authors will not be considered for evaluation.

Once you are registered as an author, you can start the five-step submission process. Be careful to follow each step and to upload your manuscript and all the complementary files as you are requested in the checklist for submissions.

You do not have to send printed copies. Do also keep in mind that PROFILE does not accept multiple simultaneous submissions from the same author and for the same issue. Please keep this in mind in your academic chronogram.

The manuscript should be saved in single-column format, double-spaced as a Word document, Times Roman 12, and have margins of three centimetres. Block quotations and samples taken from data should be in Times Roman 10 and indented at 1.25 centimetres. Only use single-spacing for the contents of footnotes, appendixes, figures and tables. Number all the pages of the manuscript. Insert the page number at the top of the page. Indent the first line of every paragraph. For consistency, use the tab key, which should be set at 1.25 centimetres. Do not do this in the abstract, block quotations, titles, headings, tables and figures titles. Please, use titles and subtitles judiciously to clearly identify the different sections and subsections in your manuscript. Avoid labelling titles with numbers or letters.

Do not write your name or biodata within thearticle. Manuscripts should contain an abstract of nomore than 120 words and should include key words.Avoid the use of abbreviations and references inthe abstract. The abstract and the key words shouldbe in both Spanish and English. Key words shouldbe organized in alphabetical order. In order to guarantee the impact of the key words, authors are advised to contrast them with a thesaurus (two samples of online free access thesauruses are those by UNESCO and ERIC). Likewise, thecomplete bibliographic information for each citationmust be included in the list of references following theAmerican Psychological Association (APA) style, 6thEdition (see some samples of references on the journal's web site: http://www.revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile/about/submissions#authorGuidelines).

Translate all excerpts, appendices, quotes, andother long pieces of information into English indicatingin a footnote the original language and that thetranslation is made for publication purposes. Keep theoriginal language of excerpts only when it is necessaryfor the objectives of the study; in this case, provide theEnglish translation as well. When the samples from participants are just texts, these should be transcribed. Please, avoid pasting text as images unless the characteristics of the study require it.

All quoted material must be cited as such in the text. All references cited in the text must be in the list of references, and all works included in the references section must be cited in the text. Please, cite only primary sources, that is, the works you actually consulted when composing your manuscript. Do not include in the list of references material that is cited within an excerpt or a direct quotation except when such material is also a primary source in the manuscript.

Plagiarism and Self-Citation

Self-citation should not be over 20% of all the material quoted throughout the text. On the other hand, failure to properly cite your own previous work, when this is used within the article, will result in self-plagiarism with the same consequences as in plagiarism cases.

PROFILE will reject papers which evidence plagiarism, and its decision will be final. Manuscripts by authors whose articles have been rejected because of plagiarism will not be considered for evaluation in future issues.

Number of Words

Papers cannot exceed 8,000 words, including the abstract, key words, references, appendixes, and footnotes. Footnotes should appear on the same page, not at the end of the document. Please indicate the number of words at the end of the article.

Graphics, Tables, and Figures

All graphics in the article should be in black andwhite. Please avoid the use of colour and send eachfigure or table in a separate file too, in a standardgraphic format (e.g. JPG or TIF). Figures can be sentas a graphic file; JPG is preferred. Tables should becreated in Microsoft Word (since tables have to be included in the word-length of the document, please do not paste them as images). Appendixes, figures, andtables should include a title. They should be centredand follow these models:

Table 1. Ways of Doing Compositions

Figure 2. Results of the Diagnostic Survey

Appendix 3: Lesson Plan Sample

Write your text in good English (American or British usage is accepted, but not a mixture of these) and make sure grammar, punctuation, and style have been revised. Italics are not to be used for expressions of Latin origin; for example, in vivo, et al., per se.

Ethical Issues

One of the requirements for the publication of articles about teaching or research experiences in which others have participated is to have a consent form signed by them or their parents-if they are under 18-in order to authorize the use of the information in the publication. If your article contains information provided by participants, please obtain consent forms and send the format used to get them to the editor, together with your manuscript. PROFILE does not provide the forms; they are the ones designed by the teachers while doing their projects. Identify samples from participants using codes and keeping anonymity. Be consistent in doing so and follow samples included in our latest issue.

If acknowledgements are included, do so in ashort paragraph of no more than 100 words at the end of the presentation letter (not in the manuscript).

Cover or Presentation Letter

Please address a cover or presentation letter to the editor specifying the following: title of the article (in both English and Spanish; the title in English with a maximum of 70 characters, including spaces), author's(s') name(s), institution, address, a short biographical statement (biodata) of no more than 50 words per author, and the date or period of time the document was written. Please, note that the way your name is written in the biodata (pen name) will be the one to follow once the article is published. For two or three authors, the order in which they are mentioned in the biodata will also correspond to the order in the published article (order of authorship). If the paper presents initial or final results of a project, please indicate so. Include the name of the code number (if there is one) and the name of the institution that sponsored the project. Additionally, you should include a statement indicating that your article has not been submitted to another publication and that it has not already been published elsewhere.

All the requirements mentioned above will be checked and no evaluation will start until all of them are met. Delay in complying with our policies will have an impact on the time required for evaluation processes.

Publication ethics and publication malpractice statement

PROFILE journal is committed to following the international standards for scientific publications, guaranteeing an ethical and fair use of the content submitted to and published in the journal. To this end, the following guiding aspects have been identified to facilitate and clarify the work of the editor, the authors, and the reviewers.

Editor

The Editor is responsible for the overall quality of the journal (content, editorial processes, design and publication) and should ensure that the articles published are relevant to the academic community and that the journal in general complies with accepted publication guidelines for scientific journals.

The Editor must follow practices of "fair play" in the sense that manuscripts are evaluated for their intellectual content without regard to the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, institutional affiliation, or political philosophy of the authors. The Editor should maintain constant and prompt communication with authors and reviewers along the process of evaluation to keep them informed about the state of any given manuscript.

The Editor assigns reviewers based on their expertise on the topic of a given manuscript. Initially, each manuscript is revised by two reviewers. However, if the concepts from the two reviewers are at variance, the Editor should assign a third reviewer to help reach a decision. The Editor takes into account the reviewers' suggestions but the final decision as to accepting or rejecting a paper lies with the Editor.

The Editor must ensure that the information gathered during the evaluation of a manuscript (evaluation forms, reviewers' comments) is kept confidential and disclosed only to those involved in the process.

In collaboration with the editorial staff and/or the publisher (Universidad Nacional de Colombia), the Editor must decide on how to proceed in cases of a legal nature (libel, copyright infringement, plagiarism). In the case of plagiarism, the Editor will proceed according to the journal's guidelines and policies.

Author

Authors must send contributions that are original (not previously published), valid (containing data that can be replicated and processed according to given methods or processes), and relevant (information that advances the knowledge in the field). Falsification and manipulation of data are unethical and unacceptable practices. Manuscripts must also be written with clarity and authors are encouraged to proofread their manuscripts before submission.

Parallel submission (submission of a manuscript to more than one journal at a time), plagiarism, and self-plagiarism are unacceptable practices and may result in the retraction of an article. Manuscripts by authors whose articles have been rejected because of these practices will not be considered for evaluation in future issues. Authors must carefully read the "Guidelines for authors" and prepare their submissions accordingly. Any submission that fails to comply with the guidelines will not be sent to evaluation until the problems are addressed by the authors.

As expressed in the "Guidelines for authors", authors must include in the list of references and properly acknowledge throughout the manuscript all the works that were directly consulted in the composition of the paper.

Authorship of a manuscript can be granted only to the people who made significant contributions either during the development of the study or in the composition of the manuscript. Practices like including "guest" or "ghost" authors must be avoided. People who made contributions not as important as that of the author(s) can be treated as collaborators and their help may be acknowledged in a note at the end of the manuscript. PROFILE accepts submissions of an article by a maximum of three authors. In the case of multiple authors, they all need to previously agree on the version of the manuscript that will be submitted (or re-submitted when reviewers ask for changes to be made).

As stated in the "Guidelines for authors", the consent form used to ask for permission from participants to use data obtained from them must be provided by authors. In case the participants are underage the consent form must be signed by their parents or legal guardians. It is highly advisable that in the manuscript the identity of participants is always concealed, either by the use of pseudonyms or codes. Authors are also responsible for obtaining permission to replicate any copyrighted material used within the manuscript.

Authors must disclose any potential conflict of interest that may arise during the evaluation of their manuscript. Authors are requested to provide information about the sources that funded their study.

Authors should maintain a respectful and professional communication with the Editor. They are entitled to appeal a review in case they consider it was poorly done or without enough arguments.

After publication, authors still hold copyright on their manuscript (the right to first publication being granted to PROFILE) and therefore it is their responsibility to notify the Editor if they find any error. They will work with the Editor on how to better deal with the error, whether through an erratum or, in an extreme case, by retracting the article.

If the work described in the manuscript involves animal subjects, psychological procedures, or any hazardous element (e.g., chemicals) the authors must provide the necessary information to verify that they followed the international ethical standards for these cases.

Reviewer

Based on their expertise, reviewers should assist the Editor in the evaluation and selection of manuscripts.

Reviewers must respond promptly to the Editor's evaluation requests, whether to accept them or decline them.

Reviewers must comply with the deadline established by the Editor to complete the review. The corresponding evaluation form must be adequately filled in and reviewers are also entitled to write comments to the authors directly on the manuscript. Reviewers must perform their evaluations in a respectful and objective manner, trying to give the necessary arguments to support their comments or suggestions.

As part of the evaluation process, reviewers must treat the information used or produced with confidentiality.

Reviewers must also disclose any potential conflict of interest as well as any other major problem that they may detect during evaluation (falsification of data, plagiarism, parallel submission, etc.).

Manuscripts and related documents should be uploaded on the journal web site: http://www.revistas.unal.edu.co/index.php/profile/index.

Letters to the editor should be sent to:

Revista PROFILEIssues in Teachers' Professional Development
Universidad Nacional de Colombia - Sede Bogotá
Departamento de Lenguas Extranjeras, Grupo de Investigación PROFILE
Ciudad Universitaria. Carrera 30 No. 45-03, Bogotá, Colombia
Teléfono: 57(1) 3165000 Ext. 16780 Fax: 57(1) 3165000 Ext. 16780 /16773
E-mail: rprofile_fchbog@unal.edu.co