ISSN 0121-1129
printed version

ISSN 2357-5328
online version

INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

• Scope and policy
• Form and preparation of manuscripts

The Revista Facultad de Ingeniería, created in 1986, is a scientific open-access international journal published by the Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia (UPTC). The journal aims at contributing to the spread of scientific research by publishing peer-reviewed research and innovation articles that represent original contributions in the field of Engineering. The journal publishes papers in the following areas related to Engineering: Environmental, Electronic, Metallurgic and Computational, among others. Publishing in this journal has no associated costs given that it is funded by the UPTC.

The journal is published every four months: January, May and September. Article submissions are received throughout the year.

The journal only accepts unpublished manuscripts; that is, if an article has been previously published in a journal, memoir, or any informative or scientific publication, it will not be considered for publication. Furthermore, the journal refrains from publishing any manuscript that violates the copyright and ethics codes, or that may offend or attack people or companies. Neither translations nor reviews that lack innovation on the analyzed subject are considered articles.

In preference, the submitted manuscripts should be written in English, and should fulfill all the language requirements: coherence, cohesion, clarity, concretion, pertinence, and centrality.

At submission, the authors certify that they are not in violation of copyright or other personal proprietary right of any person or entity, and that the manuscript has not been previously published and is not concurrently being considered for publication elsewhere.

All received manuscripts are peer-reviewed using a double-blind system and are analyzed with an anti-plagiarism software.

GUIDELINES FOR AUTHORS

Submitted manuscripts must be accompanied by a cover letter stating that all authors have approved its the final version. The article, along with the cover letter, must be submitted to the Journal through the OJS online platform. Figures, tables and other appendices can be attached to the article.

In all cases, the journal refrains from receiving manuscripts that have already been published, translations of published manuscripts, articles derived from class notes, or articles that may offend any person, organization or product.

MANUSCRIPT FORMATTING

The manuscript must be written in Word format (.doc or .docx), and cannot exceed 15 letter-size pages. Use a 12-point Arial font, single spaced, with all margins at 3 cm.

Tables must be submitted in Word format. The original illustrations, photographs or any other visual materials must be attached in JPG format. For copyrighted material, all the information of the author must be provided, along with a written authorization from the material's author to reproduce it if necessary.

Tables and figures must be numbered with Arabic numbers and located as close as possible to the reference in the text. Legends of figures and tables should explain the content clearly, and must be placed below the figures and above the tables.

When using decimals in the manuscript, figures, tables, etc., use only the decimal point.

Equations should be clear. The authors are advised to use equation editors and the International Notation System. Within the manuscript, equations must be centered and numbered with Arabic numbers. The numbers must be placed in parenthesis to the right of the equation. The equations must be referenced in the text as "(1)" or "Equation (1)", for instance:

Equation (1) provides an example of their adequate positioning

2jk ∂u/∂z = ∂2u/∂x2 + k2 u (1)

MANUSCRIPT STRUCTURE

All manuscripts must include:

• Title (in English and Spanish): The title should be informative, clear, concise, short (no more than 15 words), with no abbreviations or acronyms.
• Author(s): Full names of all authors should be included, along with the last academic title obtained, professional affiliation (complete name of the institution, city, and country), E-mail address and ORCID
• Abstract (in English and Spanish): The abstract should not exceed 250 words, and should cover the main objectives, methods, results and conclusions of the research concisely and sequentially.
• Key Words (in English and Spanish): Include between four and ten key words that allow localizing the paper in specific thesauruses (IEEE or Unesco).
• Introduction: The introduction should place the study in context, and it should include background, justification, and fundamental concepts.
• Materials and Methods: All procedures, experimental design, and data analysis methods employed in the study should be described in this section.
• Results: Synthesize and interpret the results obtained, highlighting the relevance of the study.
• Discussion and conclusions: Describe in detail the analysis of the results and the assessment of the authors on the development of the study.
• Author’s contributions: Contributions from each author should be listed in order to evaluate their participation in the study. Note that authoring a paper implies responsibilities over the published material.
• References: A reference should have all the necessary information so the reader can identify it and find it easily. Therefore, an incomplete or incorrect reference may impact the intellectual value of the paper negatively. Follow the IEEE citation style and include the DOI (when available) at the end of each reference.

In any case, the manuscript must be adapted to the request structure, that is, IMRD.

The main sections and their corresponding subdivisions must be numbered with Arabic numbers until the third level (1, 2, 2.1, 2.2, 2.2.1…). If a fourth level is necessary, the use of bullet points is advised.

The writing should be concise, and technical. Authors are advised to avoid redundant terms, unless the use of synonyms harms the meaning of the sentence. For measurements, use the metric system. Abbreviations and acronyms must be defined the first time they appear in the manuscript.

REFERENCES

All assertions throughout the manuscript that come from another document or publication must have a citation. References must be numbered in the order they appear in the manuscript, and the list of all references must be placed at the end of the text after the authors’ contributions section; all literature listed in the reference section should been cited in the manuscript.

The journal follows the IEEE stile for references, therefore, do not place the references as footnotes. Within the text, references should be cited with numbers inside square parenthesis in the same line of the text, before any punctuation, with a space before the square parenthesis: [2] for individual references, [3, 5] for two non-consecutive references, and [8-12] for consecutive references. For example: “The theory developed in 1987 [1]…”, “Scholtz [2] states that…”, “For instance, see [7]…”, “Recent studies [3, 4, 15, 22] suggest that…”. Never use “Ref. [3]” or “reference [3]”.

Every reference can include up to six authors; for references with more authors the “et al.” abbreviation should be used. Examples of references following the IEEE are shown below:

•Books:
Author(s), Title of the book. Location: Publisher name, Year.

[1] W. Strunk, and E. B. White, The Elements of Style. New York, NY: The Macmillan Company, 1959.

•Book chapter:
Author(s), “Title of the chapter”, in Title of the book. Location: Publisher name, Year, pp. xx-xx.

[1] E. D. Lipson, and B. D. Horwitz, “Photosensory reception and transduction,” in Sensory Receptors and Signal Transduction. New York: Wiley-Liss, 2001, pp-1-64.

•Journal article:
Author(s), “Title of the article”, Title of the journal, vol. (issue), pp. xx-xx, month abbreviated, Year. DOI.

[2] K. S. Cole, and R. H. Cole, “Dispersion and absorption in dielectrics I. Alternating current characteristics,” The Journal of Chemical Physics, vol. 9(2), pp. 341–351, Apr. 1941. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1750906.

•Article or Conference report:
Author(s), “Title of the article”, in Name of the conference, City, Country, Year, pp. xx-xx. DOI.

[3] E. Detyna, “Perfect inviscid fluids and gauge theory in Mathematical Methods in Hydrodynamics and Integrability in Dynamical Systems,” in AIP Conference Proceedings, Roma, Italia, 1982, pp. 99-107.

For additional examples, visit the documentation provided by the IEEE (https://ieee-dataport.org/sites/default/files/analysis/27/IEEE%20Citation%20Guidelines.pdf).

Additionally, the authors are encouraged to validate their references through the system offered by the IEEE (http://refassist.ieee.org/).

The Editorial Committee reserves the right to return the paper to the author without revision if the references do not follow the required style.

For authors interested in publishing in the Revista Facultad de Ingeniería, the journal inform that the rejection rate for 2017 was 36%

INSTRUCTIONS FOR REVIEWERS

Peer-review process is fundamental in publishing science to guarantee the quality, originality, pertinence and innovation of the published articles; hence, a high degree of responsibility is required.

Reviewers must verify that the subject of the submitted manuscript is in his/her area of expertise, and that there is not any conflict of interest (professional, personal, academic or moral) to review the manuscript. Reviewers have 15 days since the moment they receive the manuscript to deliver the evaluation.

In order to facilitate the revision process, reviewers will receive an evaluation form along with the manuscript.

REVIEW PROCESS

The reception of the manuscript does not imply its automatic publication because, first, it must be revised and evaluated, which may take between four and eight weeks, depending upon the reviewers’ availability. After submission, the Editorial Committee reviews the manuscript to verify whether it fulfills the instructions provided here; concurrently, the Committee analyzes the manuscript with a plagiarism software and if an important coincidence is found, the Committee rejects the manuscript.

If the manuscript surpasses the preliminary revision, it is sent to two qualified peers for revision and evaluation; this revision follows a double-blind system. The Editorial Committee selects the reviewers based on their research and academic expertise; they deliver a concept and evaluation on the originality and quality of the manuscript, taking into account the instructions for reviewers. The concepts delivered by the peers may be a) approved, b) approved with changes, or c) rejected. If one evaluation is negative and the other is positive, the manuscript is sent to a third peer; the article is also sent to a third reviewer when, after 20 days, one of the first two peers fails to respond to the evaluation request.

Once the Editorial committee receives the evaluations and concepts from the reviewers, the manuscript is sent to the authors with the decision made by the reviewers and the Committee (i.e., approved or rejected). If necessary, authors must adjust the manuscript and must submit the corrected version to the Editorial Committee within the next ten days.

Afterwards, the adjusted manuscript is sent to copyediting and diagramming, and the final version is sent to the authors for approval. It is important to note that submitting and publishing in the Journal has no associated costs for the authors.

The Editorial Committee reserves the right not to publish manuscripts that fail complying with the described instructions, or that fail incorporating the reviewers comments and suggestions within the specified time to do so.

COPYRIGHT

The journal authorizes the total or partial reproduction of the published article, as long as the source, including the name of the Journal, author(s), year, volume, issue, and pages are cited.

The ideas and assertions expressed by the authors are their solely responsibility and do not represent the views and opinions of the Journal or its editors.

All articles included in the Revista Facultad de Ingeniería are published under the Creative Commons (BY) license, which can be consulted in https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/.

Authors must complete, sign, and submit the form provided by the journal authorizing the revision and publication of the manuscript; this form should contain all the originality and copyright information of the manuscript.

ARTICLE EVALUATION AND PUBLICATION LICENSE AGREEMENT*

I(we) hereby grant the Revista Facultad de Ingeniería (Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia) license to publish and distribute my(our) article both printed and electronically _________________

I(we) declare full responsibility of the article’s content and authorship, and warrant that the content does not violate third person’s rights, such as intimacy and good name, among others. Therefore, I(we) assume the legal consequences resulting from violating the above stated.

I(we) certify this article complies with copyright regulations, and, given the case, it has the necessary permit to reproduce copyrighted material.

The authors retain the right to authorize a third party to reproduce the article after it has been published in the Revista Facultad de Ingeniería, as long as the original source of publication is cited. Any printed or electronic version of this article published after signing this agreement must comply with the copyright regulation of the Revista Facultad de Ingeniería.

I(we) warrant that the article's content is original, unpublished, and that the paper is not being concurrently considered for publication elsewhere.

Considering the above, the authors sign:

_______________________
Signature**
Full Name
Identification Number

*This agreement must be signed by all authors; however, if this is not possible, the signing author(s) declare to be authorized to do so by the non-signing authors.

ETHICS CODE

The Revista Facultad de Ingeniería follows the “Good practices guide for journal publishers” (http://publicationethics.org/files/u2/Best_Practice.pdf), the ethics regulations by the Committee On Public Ethics (COPE), and the ruling of the habeas Data-Law bylaw 1266 of 2008 on how to handle personal information stored in databases.

Authors, please note:

All manuscripts submitted for publication to the Revista Facultad de Ingeniería must have been exhaustively revised by the authors and should follow the regulations and guideless dictated by the journal.

Research conducted on humans or organizations should have the corresponding authorizations, which must be attached to the manuscript during the submission process.

Every manuscript must constitute an original contribution from each one of the signing authors. A translation is not considered an original work.

Although including assertions made by the authors in previous publications in different sections of the manuscript (e.g., definitions, introduction or methods) is not considered self-plagiarism, it is fundamental that the results and conclusions constitute unpublished and original material.

All authors must warrant that the contributions made in the article are original and unpublished, and that the paper is not concurrently being reviewed for publication elsewhere.

All authors must have contributed to the research and the preparation of the manuscript. People who did not participate in these activities or that participated only partially should be included in the acknowledgment section but should not be authors.

If the author of a manuscript is part of the Editorial Committee of the Journal, he/she will be unable to participate in the revision and evaluation of such manuscript.

Reviewers, please note:

The Editorial Committee invites peers who are recognized by their research experience on the topic of the manuscript to serve as reviewers. However, if the reviewer considers she/he does not have the qualifications, or the time, or has a conflict of interests to review the manuscript, he/she must notify the Editorial Committee so it can assign a different reviewer.

The reviewers’ concept must be as clear and rigorous as possible, avoiding any offensive language, so the Editorial Committee can make an informed decision on the acceptance or rejection of the manuscript.

All documents sent to the reviewers by the Revista Facultad de Ingeniería are confidential and, therefore, should only be used for evaluation purposes. Citing the manuscript as unpublished or using its content before publication constitutes an inappropriate and non-authorized action.

Additionally, any plagiarism will be penalized by vetoing the author(s) for two years. Reproducing or rephrasing any section of a previous work without the corresponding citation is considered plagiarism. The following are also considered plagiarism:

• Using fragments from another document without quotations or the corresponding references.
• Copying and pasting directly from other sources without including the corresponding reference.
• Using tables, figures or any other visual material without acknowledging the source.

Plagiarism, either intentional or not, constitutes a grave and illegal act that may result in legal repercussions.

All dispositions not covered in this document will be solved based on the "Good practices guide for journal publishers" and the COPE (Committee on Public Ethics).

PUBLICATION OF RETRACTIONS AND CORRECTIONS

When necessary, the Journal will publish corrections and retractions of the published manuscripts. The first case, corrections, corresponds to publishing an additional document in which mistakes are acknowledged and corrected. The second case, retractions, corresponds to publishing a document acknowledging any voluntary or involuntary imprecision in the original manuscript, such as plagiarism and manipulation of data or images that invalidate the results obtained, among others.