Editorial process

Initial Evaluation

All articles received are reviewed by at least two editors who assess whether their topic, presentation, novelty, and scientific content warrant publication. Manuscripts deemed irrelevant or that do not meet the formal requirements will be rejected. The journal's editorial board will inform the authors of their reasoned decision within approximately two weeks.

If the journal's editors consider the content to be of interest and meet the formal requirements, its originality will be verified by Similarity Check (a service offered by Crossref with iThenticate technology). The matches identified in each report will be reviewed individually by the editorial board.  If the matches found exceed what is aceptable, the manuscript will be rejected without the option to be resubmitted.

In other cases, the manuscript will be sent for peer review. If it is provisionally accepted, authors will be advised that they must come up with more original wording to continue the editorial workflow.

Peer-review process

The peer review process is double-blinded. The editors or a member of the editorial board will invite two or three external reviewers to evaluate the manuscript in a three-week period. The peer-review process is double-blind type and reviewers are selected according to their field of expertise and previous performance. They must inform the Editor of any competing interests before accepting the invitation to review the manuscript. A statistician editor evaluates also the design and results of articles. Editorial and Letters to the Editor are evaluated by the editorial team; if they are unsolicited, they will be evaluated by the editorial team and/or subjected to peer review before decide on their acceptance.

Reviewers are asked to evaluate the scientific quality, relevance and originality of the manuscript. They also address if design, results and discussion support the conclusion, which must give answer to the aims of the study. In case of the two recommendations being discrepant each another, editors will ask a third reviewer from the area of the negative recommendation.

The reviewers’ reports are analyzed to take an initial decision: the manuscript is accepted, requires revision, or is rejected; this decision should be taken within six weeks from the reception of the manuscript. The reviewers’ comments, along with those from one editor, are submitted to authors. The modified manuscript is expected to be returned within a fixed time depending on the extension of the suggested modifications but less than two months. Manuscripts not submitted within this time frame are subject to withdrawal from editorial process. A first decision asking for a revised manuscript does not imply that acceptance will automatically follow.

The modified manuscript will be assessed by the editorial team and/or will be send to a new review round. The last version of the manuscript will be accepted or rejected according to the reviewers’ recommendations along with the editorial team opinions. The decision of the Editor-in-Chief is final and is aimed to be taken within eighteen weeks from submission. Final editorial decision will be notified to authors by the Draft Committee through RECYT. Authors must respond with the clean copy of the manuscript containing the last modifications and all the personal data previously removed.

Editing

Within 15 days of manuscript acceptance, the authors will receive the accepted postprint version, which complies with the journal's open access policy. This version can be posted on any repository or website.

If the work is accepted, the authors must comply with the formal requirements of the copy editor. The copy editor will contact the corresponding author from RECYT, attaching the edited manuscript and any suggested modifications. These changes must be accepted or corrected through change tracking and comments, and the document must be attached to the discussion panel. Several stages of editing and correction may be required.

The editing process will produce an organized, concise, and correct manuscript, which will be approved by the authors and editors. All authors of the manuscript must indicate their agreement with this final edited version in writing.

Production

Translation. Accepted articles are published in the language of submission (Spanish or English). It is possible to publish in English after completing the editorial process in Spanish, but authors must indicate this when submitting the article and translate the final edited version into English.

The journal employs the services of a professional translator to check English language of accepted manuscripts. This service is free for authors.

Review of the layout (galley) version. The corresponding author will receive a message from the editorial board from RECYT, attaching the PDF of the galley proof of the electronic article.

The objective of this review is to detect typographical and formatting errors and ensure that the content (text, tables, figures) is consistent with the final approved version. Major changes or new information will not be accepted.

The corresponding author has 48 hours to submit corrections in a single document, preferably the PDF file with comments. Review of galley proofs is the responsibility of the authors; delaying submission results in delayed or unrevised publication of the article.

PUBLICATION

Open Access

The manuscript will be published in Diamond Open Access electronic format, free of charge and without processing fees, and will be immediately available on the journal's website in RECYT (in PDF format); in the following weeks, it will be available in SciELO (in PDF, HTML, and XML formats) and in PubMed Central. (in XML and PDF formats). The article will be indexed in PubMed within a few days of publication.

The publiser is the Department of Health of the Government of Navarra (Spain), which holds the copyright over the published content, that is open access distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. 4.0.