Peer review process

Editorial review

The authors who submit an article for possible publication in Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Forestales must send the documents —in full and in their final version— indicated in requirements for manuscript submission. Once the editorial team verifies the submission meets all the requirements, the text will be sent for editorial review, which consists of the following stages:

  1. Accredit a review under the tool approved by the Editorial Committee for plagiarism detection, only after this will it be possible to go on to the next stages of editorial review.
  2. It will be verified that the text correlates with the journal’s focus and scope. Works which do not explicitly regard the regional dimension as a relevant component will not be considered.
  3. It will be checked that the text meets each and every format indication stated in requirements for manuscript submission and delivery of manuscripts, as well as those in guidelines for authors.
  4. It will be revised that the reported bibliography is relevant and updated and that it is duly presented standardized according to the norm exemplified in guidelines for authors.
  5. In accordance with the editorial policy guidelines, approved by the Editorial Committee, priority will be given to texts whose bibliography is delivered using reference management software and with active hyperlinks to the respective DOIs, where appropriate.

Once the submitted article accredits editorial review, the corresponding author will be formally notified about the registration and beginning of the process of academic review.

Academic review

The articles must favorably accredit the process of academic review, which works under the modality of double-blind peer review, where the identity of both the authors and reviewers will remain anonymous:

  1. The articles that accredit editorial review will be sent to academic experts in the same discipline and topic as the submitted text. The reviewers will be selected from the panel of referees —which comprises specialist of national and international institutions— they will produce comments about the relevance and academic quality of the submitted text and will decide on the feasibility of publishing the paper in question.
  2. The reviewers will be in charge of revising and analyzing the academic, theoretical and methodologic relevance of each and every article assigned to them. They will be responsible for verifying the explicit presence of the theoretical-methodological section, consistency between academic output and the findings’ relevance, as well as the up-to-dateness and appropriateness of the bibliography resorted to.
  3. All the texts will be sent to two experts —ascribed to institutions other than the authors’— who will comment on the text.
  4. In case of discrepancy between the rulings, the assistance of a third reviewer will be sought in order to resolve the case. Finally, on the basis of their recommendations, the decision of the editorial board of Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Forestales will be:
  5. Recommend its publication without modifications.
  6. Recommend its publication with minor changes and which do not make a second peer review necessary.
  7. Condition its publication on making major changes, which makes a new peer review necessary, if referees thus indicate. This process can be repeated up to three rounds, if upon reaching this point the document is not recommended for publication yet, the article will be rejected without option to resend it
  8. Not recommend its publication.
  9. For a text to be approved for publication it is indispensable that at least two of the three reviewers’ rulings are positive.
  10. The editorial board will ensure, in all cases, that the rulings delivered to the authors contain sound arguments to support the editorial decision.
  11. The results of the academic review process will be unappealable in all cases.
  12. If observations are received, the author(s) will have a 20-calendar-day deadline to send the new version of the work to the editor. Failing to meet this deadline will mean the manuscript has to begin a review process anew.
  13. The time for the document to be sent to review will be in function of the number of articles in waiting list. The referees, once receiving the article, will have four weeks to carry out the review and deliver their ruling.
  14. The accepted documents will start the edition process (proofreading, metadata marking up, layout and typesetting) to later be included in the corresponding fascicle, according to the decision of the editorial coordination.
  15. Once the editorial process concludes (proofreading, metadata marking up, layout and typesetting), the preliminary version of the text will be sent to the authors for their final revision and approval. The authors will have three calendar days to give their consent, if no comments are received within this period, the journal’s editorial coordination will assume the authors have tacitly approved.