ISSN 1909-3667
printed version

ISSN 2422-3670
online version

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18180/tecciencia.issn.2422-3670

INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS

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

Tecciencia is concerned with the different problems that engineering is facing nowadays. In order to promote more efficient alternatives on any engineering area, activities related to R&D has been conducted by several scientist during the last decades. This journal was created in 2006 as a tool to share some of these results with an increasing audience that required more and more advances on the engineering fields in Colombia. Furthermore, this journal is moving towards an international audience in order to make a deeper contribution to scientific understanding. This journal is intended as a medium for publishing work possessing novelty and remarkable results.

Contributions falling into the following categories will be considered for publication and should be submitted via the Open Journal System (OJS):

Original high-quality research papers. Preferably no more than 20 double line spaced manuscript pages, including tables and illustrations. Manuscript should be provided as simple as possible and as a single Word taking into account guidelines included in the Preparation section. Final format will be modified for the publication of the article.

Review articles. This document brings current advances in a specific field. There are no specific guidelines about length although it should include minimum 50 references according to the scope of the manuscript.

Important: If the editors/reviewers feel the paper is longer than it needs to be the authors may be asked to reduce the length of the paper, and therefore authors are recommended to keep their paper as concise as possible to effectively present their research. Please also remember that the longer a paper is, the harder it is to get reviewers to agree to review.

Ethics in publishing

Ethics in publishing and Ethical guidelines are based on definitions and guidelines are based on those defined by ELSEVIER for their journals. More information is available in http://www.elsevier.com/publishingethics and http://www.elsevier.com/journal-authors/ethics. The documents submitted to Tecciencia will be always analyzed against duplicate submission or plagiarism before double blind peer review.

Conflict of interest

Tecciencia solves conflicts of interest following ELSEVIER guidelines available in http://www.elsevier.com/conflictsofinterest. Authors should reveal any conflict of interest including any financial, personal or other relationship with other people or organization.

Submission declaration and verification

As a result of submitting a manuscript in Tecciencia , authors guarantee that work accomplishes the following characteristics. 1) Work has not been published; 2) the work is not under evaluation or publishing elsewhere; 3) all authors approved the manuscript; 4) the document will not be published elsewhere in any other language including electronically without the written consent of the copyright-holder, 5) authors allow Tecciencia to analyze article using anti-plagiarism software.

Changes to authorship

This policy concerns the addition, deletion, or rearrangement of author names in the authorship of accepted manuscripts:

Before the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue: Requests to add or remove an author, or to rearrange the author names, must be sent to the Editor-in-chief or General Director from the corresponding author of the accepted manuscript and must include: (a) the reason the name should be added or removed, or the author names rearranged and (b) written confirmation (e-mail, fax, letter) from all authors that they agree with the addition, removal or rearrangement. In the case of addition or removal of authors, this includes confirmation from the author being added or removed. Requests that are not sent by the corresponding author will be forwarded by the Editor-in-chief or General Director to the corresponding author, who must follow the procedure as described above. Note that: (1) Editor-in-chief will inform the Editorial board of any such requests and (2) publication of the accepted manuscript in an online issue is suspended until authorship has been agreed.

After the accepted manuscript is published in an online issue, any requests to add, delete, or rearrange author names in an article published in an online issue will follow the same policies as noted above and result in a corrigendum.

Copyright

Authors will have certain rights to reuse the work. Nevertheless, as stated before, they could not resend the manuscript to any other journal. If they use it, they should cite the published document in Tecciencia according to standardized styles.

Role of the funding source

You are requested to identify who provided financial support for the conduct of the research and/or preparation of the article and to briefly describe the role of the sponsor(s), if any, in study design; in the collection, analysis and interpretation of data; in the writing of the report; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. If the funding source(s) had no such involvement then this should be stated.

Open access

This journal offers authors open access in publishing their research. This implies that articles are freely available to both subscribers and the wider public with permitted reuse, no publication fee is asked in the publishing process.

Language (usage and editing services)

Authors can submit the manuscript either in Spanish or English (American or British usage is accepted, but not a mixture of these). Presenting the documents in English is suggested and results on a faster publishing process because no translation should be performed. Otherwise, Tecciencia's publisher supports translation of manuscripts but publishing could take longer while modifications are done.

Referees

Please submit, with the manuscript, the names, addresses and e-mail addresses of 2 potential referees. One of these referees should be an internationally renowned expert in the field, and should not be from the same institute or ideally the same country as the authors of the manuscript. Note that the editor retains the sole right to decide whether or not the suggested reviewers are used.

Preparing your Manuscript

Article structure

Subdivision - numbered sections
Divide your article into clearly defined and numbered sections. Subsections should be numbered 1.1 (then 1.1.1, 1.1.2, ...), 1.2, etc. (the abstract is not included in section numbering). Use this numbering also for internal cross-referencing: do not just refer to 'the text'. Any subsection may be given a brief heading. Each heading should appear on its own separate line.

Introduction
State the objectives of the work and provide an adequate background, avoiding a detailed literature survey or a summary of the results.

Material and methods
Provide sufficient detail to allow the work to be reproduced. Methods already published should be indicated by a reference: only relevant modifications should be described. This section could include a calculation section representing a practical development from a theoretical basis. This will be helpful for

Results and Discussion
Results should be clear and concise. This section should explore the significance of the results of the work, not repeat them. Avoid extensive citations and discussion of published literature.

Conclusion
The main conclusions of the study may be presented in a short Conclusions section, which may stand alone or form a subsection of the Results and Discussion section.

Essential title page information

• Title. Concise and informative. Titles are often used in information-retrieval systems. Avoid abbreviations and formulae where possible.

• Author names and affiliations. Please clearly indicate the given name(s) and family name(s) of each author and check that all names are accurately spelled. Present the authors' affiliation addresses (where the actual work was done) below the names. Indicate all affiliations with a lowercase superscript letter immediately after the author's name and in front of the appropriate address. Provide the full postal address of each affiliation, including the country name and, if available, the e-mail address of each author. An example is presented below

• Corresponding author. Clearly indicate who will handle correspondence at all stages of refereeing and publication, also post-publication. Ensure that the e-mail address is given and that contact details are kept up to date by the corresponding author. Indicate the corresponding author by using a superscript bullet (*) immediately after the corresponding author's name.

Abstract

A concise and coherent abstract is required. The abstract should state briefly the purpose of the research, the principal results and major conclusions. An abstract is often presented separately from the article, so it must be able to stand alone. For this reason, References should be avoided. Also, non-standard or uncommon abbreviations should be avoided, but if essential they must be defined at their first mention in the abstract itself.

Keywords

Immediately after the abstract, provide a maximum of 6 keywords, using American spelling and avoiding general and plural terms and multiple concepts (avoid, for example, 'and', 'of'). Be sparing with abbreviations: only abbreviations firmly established in the field may be eligible. These keywords will be used for indexing purposes.

Acknowledgements

Write acknowledgements in a separate section at the end of the article before the references and do not, therefore, include them on the title page, as a footnote to the title or otherwise. List here those individuals who provided help during the research (e.g., providing language help, writing assistance or proof reading the article, etc.).

Nomenclature and units

Follow internationally accepted rules and conventions: use the international system of units (SI). If other quantities are mentioned, give their equivalent in SI. You are urged to consult IUPAC: Nomenclature of Organic Chemistry: http://www.iupac.org/ for further information.

Math formulae

Please submit math equations as editable text and not as images. Present simple formulae in line with normal text where possible and use the solidus (/) instead of a horizontal line for small fractional terms, e.g., X/Y. In principle, variables are to be presented in italics. Powers of e are often more conveniently denoted by exp. Number consecutively any equations that have to be displayed separately from the text (if referred to explicitly in the text).

Footnotes

Footnotes should be used sparingly. Number them consecutively throughout the article. Many word processors can build footnotes into the text, and this feature may be used. Otherwise, please indicate the position of footnotes in the text and list the footnotes themselves separately at the end of the article. Do not include footnotes in the Reference list.

Artwork
Formats

If your electronic artwork is created in a Microsoft Office application (Word, PowerPoint, Excel) then please supply 'as is' in the native document format. Regardless of the application used other than Microsoft Office, when your electronic artwork is finalized, please 'Save as' or convert the images to one of the following formats (note the resolution requirements for line drawings, halftones, and line/halftone combinations given below):

EPS (or PDF): Vector drawings, embed all used fonts.
TIFF (or JPEG): Color or grayscale photographs (halftones) keep to a minimum of 300 dpi.
TIFF (or JPEG): Bitmapped (pure black & white pixels) line drawings, keep to a minimum of 1000 dpi.
TIFF (or JPEG): Combinations bitmapped line/half-tone (color or grayscale), keep to a minimum of 500 dpi.

Please do not:

• Supply files that are optimized for screen use (e.g., GIF, BMP, PICT, WPG); these typically have a low number of pixels and limited set of colors
• Supply files that are too low in resolution
• Submit graphics that are disproportionately large for the content.

Figure captions
Ensure that each illustration has a caption. Supply captions separately, not attached to the figure. A caption should comprise a brief title (not on the figure itself) and a description of the illustration. Keep text in the illustrations themselves to a minimum but explain all symbols and abbreviations used.

Tables

Please submit tables as editable text and not as images. Tables can be placed either next to the relevant text in the article, or on separate page(s) at the end. Number tables consecutively in accordance with their appearance in the text and place any table notes below the table body. Be sparing in the use of tables and ensure that the data presented in them do not duplicate results described elsewhere in the article. Please avoid using vertical rules.

References
Citation in text
Please ensure that every reference cited in the text is also present in the reference list (and viceversa).

Web references
As a minimum, the full URL should be given and the date when the reference was last accessed. Any further information, if known (DOI, author names, dates, reference to a source publication, etc.), should also be given. Web references should be included in the reference list.

Reference style (IEEE)
IEEE reference style is recommended but authors could use any style while it is consistent throughout the entire document. During publishing process, style and format will be modified according to template employed in Tecciencia .

Text: Indicate references by number(s) in square brackets in line with the text. The actual authors can be referred to, but the reference number(s) must always be given. List: Number the references (numbers in square brackets) in the list in the order in which they appear in the text.

Examples:
Reference to a journal publication:
[1] Van der Geer J, Hanraads JAJ, Lupton RA. The art of writing a scientific article. J Sci Commun 2010;163:51-9.
Reference to a book:
[2] Strunk Jr W, White EB. The elements of style. 4th ed. New York: Longman; 2000.
Reference to a chapter in an edited book:
[3] Mettam GR, Adams LB. How to prepare an electronic version of your article. In: Jones BS, Smith RZ, editors. Introduction to the electronic age, New York: E-Publishing Inc; 2009, p. 281-304.

Submission checklist

The following list will be useful during the final checking of an article prior to sending it to the journal for review. Please consult this Guide for Authors for further details of any item.

Ensure that the following items are presented:
One author has been designated as the corresponding author with contact details:

• E-mail address
• Full postal address

All necessary files have been uploaded, and contain:

• Keywords
• All figure captions

All tables (including title, description, footnotes) Further considerations

• Manuscript has been 'spell-checked' and 'grammar-checked'
• References are in the correct format for this journal
• All references mentioned in the Reference list are cited in the text, and vice versa
• Permission has been obtained for use of copyrighted material from other sources (including the Internet)

PUBLISHING AND REVIEWING PROCESS

Tecciencia follows a double blind peer review process. Before sending the manuscript to peer reviews, the document is anti-plagiarism checked and analyzed in the original form by members of the editorial board. They emit a concept that could be approved without corrections, approved with previous corrections or rejected. Regardless the answer, the authors are notified and instructions are provided. After manuscript is approved for peer review, it is sent to the reviewers who analyze it giving three concepts: approved for publishing as it is, approved for publishing with some corrections or denied. Then, the authors are notified and manuscript follows the internal publishing process.A summary of the process is described in the following flowchart.

After acceptance

Use of the Digital Object Identifier

The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) may be used to cite and link to electronic documents. The DOI consists of a unique alpha-numeric character string which is assigned to a document by the publisher upon the initial electronic publication. The assigned DOI never changes. Therefore, it is an ideal medium for citing a document, particularly 'Articles in press' because they have not yet received their full bibliographic information. Example of a correctly given DOI (in URL format; here an article in the journal Physics Letters B): http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physletb.2010.09.059 When you use a DOI to create links to documents on the web, the DOIs are guaranteed never to change.

Proof correction before publishing

Submission to this journal proceeds totally online using the Open Journal System. After registering, authors can start a new submission and follow instructions to upload the manuscript in the platform. All correspondence, including notification of the Editor's decision and requests for revision, takes place by e-mail and via the corresponding author's homepage, removing the need for a hard-copy paper trail.