About the journal
About the Journal
1.Focus and Scope
2.Peer Review Process
3.Open Access Policy
4.Abstracting and Indexing
5.Plagiarism policy
6.Ethical and good practices statement
7.APC
Focus and Scope
The Spanish Journal of Health Communication is a publication edited by the Spanish Association of Health Communication (AECS) and the Madrid University Carlos III , Spain. The journal will consider manuscripts for review related to Health Communication in any of its fields, aiming to disseminate and improve health communication in today's society, positioning itself as the scientific journal of health communication in Spanish.
It is published every six months in open access electronic format and its reference languages are Spanish, Portuguese, English and Italian. Articles may be submitted in any of these languages.
Peer Review Process
The peer review process is an anonymous process prior to publishing scientific work.
The peer review process of those manuscripts submitted to the Spanish Journal of Health Communication secretariat will be carried out by, at least, two reviewers (double blind review), who volunteer their expertise, being one of them focused on research methodology and the other one on the relevant field of the manuscript.
When the criteria of both reviewers differ significantly, the manuscript is usually sent to a third reviewer qualified in the field whose evaluation has been negative.
Reviewers must evaluate the scientific quality of the work, the originality and suitability of the information presented in the paper and, in addition, the validity of the conclusión achieved through the style, methodology and discussion that have been used. They should also check if these conclusions meet the objectives of the research following a specific review form.
The average review time is one month.
Reviewers are selected among scientist who are experts in a given field, taking into account their background and their availability to correct as they are expected to act promptly to ensure timely publication.
Open Access Policy
The content of this publication becomes open Access (OA) immediately after being published and with no charge for the user, who can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link complete texts of published articles with academic purposes.
Abstracting and Indexing
- Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), included in Web of Science platform.
- ÍnDICEs-CSIC
- DICE (Difusión y Calidad Editorial de las Revistas Españolas de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales y Jurídicas) (CSIC)
- ERIH Plus
- CIRC
- MIAR (Matriz de Información para el Análisis de Revistas).
- REDIB (Red Iberoamericana de Innovación y Conocimiento Científico). Q1.
- CUIDEN® (Fundación Index)
- Catálogo LATINDEX.
- Dialnet (Universidad de La Rioja)
- Academic Search Premier (EBSCO)
- DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals)
- It has obtained the excellent journal certificate and the FECYT quality seal in 2021
- Category A in ANVUR (Agenzia Nazionale di Valutazione del Sistema Universitario e della Ricerca, Italia), Area 14
Plagiarism Policy
To ensure the journal's academic integrity, RECS is currently using Feedback Studio to review the article submissions in order to identify poor citation practices and to avoid plagiarism.
Ethical and good practices statement
The Editorial team of Revista Española de Comunicación en Salud (RECS), declares that the main aim of the journal is the advance and diffusion of the knowledge about Health Communication. The authors of all published articles assume the responsibility of all the contents of their writings, based always on diverse sources, on originality, rigor, the respect to historical evidences and to the opinions exposed by specialists. The honesty in the treatment of the above-mentioned sources, both primary and secondary, is an essential part of the scientific ethics that assumes and defends this publication.
Plagiarism and scientific fraud
Plagiarism is the act of reproducing a text or any other material from other publications without accrediting or quoting adequately the source. It is considered that this material has been plagiarized or copied independently if the text has been modified or paraphrased. The appropriation of works from other authors by presenting them as own it is not a scientific behaviour neither an ethical conduct. Even more, it is considered a serious violation of the ethical procedure of investigation and research procedures. Plagiarism represents a serious ethical violation and can lead to a violation of the copyright if the reproduced or plagiarized material has been published before. Any text detected with evidences of plagiarism and of this fraudulent behaviour will be immediately rejected. The authors who want to do quotes of other published works must mention the whole original complete reference and always include, between quotation marks, any textual quotation. The graphs and the illustrations can be only reproduced with the pertinent authorization. Also, they must be adequately mentioned in the foot of the graph or the illustration, always following the standards specified in our web page.
Scientific fraud is committed when all the participants of the investigation are not recognized properly in the elaboration of the work. Scientific fraud is committed when the work is sent simultaneously to several publications. Finally, also, scientific fraud is committed when the work is divided into different reports that share the same hypotheses and methods or false, distorted, or not proven information or data are used.
The publication of any work that commits an outrage against the rights established in the articles 138 to 143 of the Law 22/11, of November 11, 1987, of Intellectual Property is an exclusive responsibility of the author. The Editorial Team of RECS is not responsible, in any case, of the credibility and the genuineness of the published works. The Editorial board does not necessarily identify with the opinions expressed in the published works. The authors preserve the copyright of their works without restrictions.
Evaluation
In the publication agreement, the authors guarantee that their work is original and that it has not been published in any other place. The results of the research must be expressed in a clear and coherent manner, to allow the analysis and the review and the following investigation. The method of external evaluation is “the double blind” (“el doble ciego”), guaranteeing both, the anonymity of the author and the impartiality of evaluators in their decision. It is the obligation of every author to remake the suggestions and corrections of mistakes that suggest the reports of the texts evaluators, they must also correct and/or retract themselves before possible mistakes are detected later. The evaluators will be responsible of making proposals for improvement in the assigned articles, in an objective and fair manner, using always their approach of their knowledge as recognized specialists. The information that the evaluators will receive by reading the articles must not be spread or used, being this a fundamental commitment when they accept the order of review and evaluation.
Conflict of interests
If the evaluators detect any conflict of interests, they must advise the Editorial Team of the journal to reassign other specialists. In most cases, an individual who is working at the same institution of the author or one of the co-authors of the text is absolutely incapacitated to carry out its evaluation. The editors must monitor the potential conflicts of interests, and they are forced to disqualify themselves whenever a real or apparent conflict arises.
Confidentiality
Except in cases where the evaluators explicitly renounce their anonymity with the publisher’s agreement, all the evaluations will be carried out under the conditions of strictest confidentiality. The journal and the editors will not reveal the evaluators identity or the contents of reports and the correspondence derived from the evaluation process itself to any individual external to them. The strictest confidentiality binds the evaluators; neither the manuscripts nor the contents of the correspondence of authors with editors in the evaluation process will be able to be shared by third parties without the written permission of the publishers. Strictly speaking, the authors are not forced by similar requirements (they can choose to ask co-authors and colleagues for advice in the review process of a text once they receive the evaluation reports), but the public spreading of the contents of the evaluation reports and the correspondence with the editing team is not appropriate. Any author who acts in this regard loses his rights to the protection of his privacy by the journal.
Commitments of the Editorial Board
The Editorial Team of RECS undertakes to monitor and preserve the ethical principles and the scientific quality of the publication. It has also the responsibility and the authority to accept or to reject an article based on the reviews made by the specialists. It reserves the right to withdraw any received work, accepted or already published in case of plagiarism, scientific fraud, falsification, or duplicated publication. Likewise, it will promote the publication of corrections or retractions against detected errors and detected mistakes. We expect from the different collaborators an understanding of the ethical expectations expressed in the norms, the standards and in this declaration, assuming them as the basic standards among the scientific community of health communication.
