Policy of Peer Review

The peer review process at Editorial Salud, Ciencia y Tecnología is a crucial task for selecting articles that meet the required standards of quality and impact in the scientific and professional community to which this publication is addressed.

This essential task, in a rigorous peer review process, is carried out by external reviewers, recognized experts in their field, who are unrelated to each other and unaware of the authorship of the work being evaluated, through a double-blind peer review system.

The role of the external reviewer is to collaborate with the Editorial Committee in verifying the originality and quality of the manuscript, its relevance in the areas of interest of the publisher, and compliance with the necessary formal requirements for publication. To do so, the reviewer's task will focus on a rigorous analysis of the content and form of the manuscript, with a critical and constructive attitude.

The reviewers for Editorial Salud, Ciencia y Tecnología constitute an expanding international list of specialists with a doctoral degree or individuals of recognized prestige in research fields, giving priority to authors who have published in Web of Science and Scopus indexed journals.

The documents submitted for evaluation are confidential information, so reviewers must refrain from disclosing them in any way or using the information contained in the text for their own benefit or that of third parties. If data verification or expert advice is needed, the authors will be notified.

Steps and timeline of the review process:

1. The manuscript will be received by the publisher, who will send you an acknowledgment email with a unique reference number.
2. The Editor-in-Chief or assigned Editor initially considers the newly submitted articles.
3. Within 72 hours, you will receive an email if the manuscript is rejected at this first stage. Manuscripts may be rejected at this stage if they do not align with the focus and scope, if they are incomplete, if the findings are not sufficiently described, or if the content is plagiarized.
4. The remaining articles are sent for double-blind peer review. You will receive an initial decision on the manuscript on average within 30-45 days.
5. If a revision is required, all editor and reviewer comments will be sent to the author along with the original version of the manuscript. You will need to submit the revised version along with your response to the editorial office within 15 days.
6. If accepted, your article will be published online approximately 15 days after acceptance. All accepted articles will be published online and will be citable by the digital object identifier (DOI). The editorial team will take care of sending the published articles to indexed databases or registering them as necessary.

Stages and timeline of the review process:

Interaction between reviewers and the editorial team is conducted through the web portal to maintain a digital record of all events during the process (traceability).

Once reviewers receive the editorial invitation via email, they will have a maximum period of 7 days to accept or decline the review proposal. This proposal includes the title and abstract of the manuscript, as well as the established schedule for the review. Only if the proposal is accepted, the link to the full text of the work to be evaluated, along with the corresponding review form, will be enabled.

Reviewers must provide their report and recommendations within 4 weeks (28 days) from the date of acceptance. As an alternative to submitting the report, reviewers may attach a separate document with notes or comments they consider relevant.
The final recommendation by the reviewer should be in line with the observations made in their qualitative evaluation and/or, if applicable, the numerical score assigned.

In the case of a significant discrepancy between the recommendations of the two reviewers, a third opinion (third reviewer) will be requested.

If, based on the recommendations of both reviewers, the editorial decision is to subject the article to a second round of peer review, it will be carried out by the same individuals who conducted the initial evaluation.

Anti-Plagiarism Policy

The publisher guarantees that all published academic articles are original, unpublished, and have not been previously published in any other format (in whole or in part), and does not participate in any evaluation or decision-making process of another journal or any other type of publication.

To enforce these policies, the publisher uses the Turnitin platform to assess the similarity of articles and may additionally use other platforms when deemed appropriate (DupliCheker, Plagium, Copyscape, etc.).

Plagiarism checks will be carried out before the peer review process begins. If the similarity report exceeds 20%, authors will be informed via email, which will include the complete similarity report and the expert's reflection. This is done to allow authors to provide any relevant comments that can help determine whether the behavior is related to plagiarism or not. In the former case, the work will be dismissed for evaluation.

The editors may offer authors alternative online programs to analyze their work before submission.