Scope and Editorial Policy

Bordón. Journal of Pedagogy is a scientific journal in the field of education published by the Spanish Society of Pedagogy. Since its foundation in 1949, Bordón aims to cover a multidisciplinary scope for the exchange of ideas and experiences and for shared reflection among all specialties involved in research, pedagogical thinking, and educational action.

It is one of the oldest education journals in Spain (founded in 1949) that has maintained its recognition and prestige continuously since its inception, traditionally receiving a good evaluation in research merit assessments. It has adapted to the rapid evolution of journals, publishing in electronic (PDF, HTML, and XML) and print formats and is indexed in the two most important international databases: WEB OF SCIENCE (ESCI) and SCOPUS (SJR).

Additionally, since 2012, it has held the QUALITY SEAL of Spanish Scientific Journals awarded by FECYT (Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology), the most important and rigorous recognition granted in Spain to journals with proven quality.

Bordón publishes an annual volume divided into four issues on a quarterly basis, released in the quarters of January-March, April-June, July-September, and October-December.

Bordón is a founding journal of the Blog of the consortium of scientific education journals Aula Magna 2.0. This blog aims to place at the center of the debate the aspects that determine the quality, excellence, and editorial prestige of the best Spanish and Ibero-American scientific journals in the field of Education.

To consult the bibliographic databases that include Bordón, see the link to Indexing

Bordon accepts scientific multidisciplinary works in the field of education. The presented works can use any scientific method accepted in our sciences. Bordon and the SEP protect non-empirical research (theoretical, philosophical and historical) if they stand for their scientific rigor in the treatment of the subject matter.

All works, regardless of its nature must include:

• A significant and updated revision of the object of the study that embraces the international panorama (as an orientation and with the justified exceptions for the study theme, at least 30% of the references will be of the last five years. In addition, a significant percentage of the quotes will come from other scientific journals of international impact).
• A precise description of the adopted methodology, such as specified in this editorial policy.
• It should include the main findings, discuss the limitations of the study and provide a general interpretation of the results in the context of the research field.
• The editorial board has decided to adopt the format IMR&D (Introduction, Method, Results and Discussion) because it allows you to standardize the abstracts of all the articles published at Bordon, adopting a multidisciplinary international format to communicate the research results. On the other hand, it favors enormously the capacity of citation of every specific article and of the journal in general. It finally responds to the recommendations of FECYT for the publications with a quality seal like Bordon.

The editorial board is aware that not all the methodologies adjust, by nature or tradition to this abstract format, therefore it is flexible about its use in specific cases. However, all research, beyond its methodology and epistemological approaches raises from a problem or some objectives to achieve some results that are not necessarily measurable but identifiable and to reflect this, some method might have been used (that does not necessarily correspond with the experimental method or with the statistical methods; for example, History, Philosophy, etc. have their own research methods).

Overall and applicable to any scientific area, The INTRODUCTION searches to identify the topic of the object of study, the objectives or questions that guide it. The METHOD, the methods, sources, instruments or procedures used to answer to the objectives. Empirical studies will always include in this section the size of the sample, the tools and the analysis techniques. The RESULTS will present the main findings that can attract the reading of the article to a research potential that is searching bibliography in databases. The DISCUSSION will confront the results or conclusions that have been reached with those obtained in other similar works, theories or positions, highlighting the strengths and own limits.

Bordon accepts empirical studies. Those works with quantitative, qualitative and mixed approaches must clearly specify the used methodology. In the qualitative research this section should include a description of the research design, the used sample, its representative capacity and its selected criteria. The tools used to measure the variables objectively should also be identified providing the quality indicators (reliability and validity) when necessary. The method section should end with a description of the plan to analyze data, identifying the statistical used and the criteria to interpret them. In addition, whenever possible the size of the effect and the statistical significance data will be specified. Descriptive and correlative studies with a quantitative approach based on small samples, biased or local (for example, university students of one degree or university) will have less probabilities of being considered for publication. In any case they must include a sufficient justification about its contribution to the studied problem; otherwise they will be dismissed. Equally, those works that are mere replicas of existing works will also be dismissed if they do not conveniently justify their necessity and added value for the field of education. In qualitative works the sample and its capacity to generalize are replaced by a justification and description of the sources of information used, prioritizing triangulation. The gathering of information should be organised taking into account the content categories, that must be previously justified in the theoretical framework. It is recommended to use programs of textual analysis like ATLAS.Ti or similar to generate results in this type of research. 

Historical, comparative or philosophical works will be accepted. Empirical studies will equally be considered as well as research and meta-analysis works regarding a problem or particular area:

• Historical, comparative or philosophical works must show that they have been carried out systematically and with rigor according to the methodology of this type of studies.
• Research works must adopt conventional standards with a repeatable systematic revision (PRISMA methodology or alike) as much as possible. Currently the journal receives an enormous amount of works with this methodology, but the work ends up being a bibliometric description with scarce analysis on educational issues. In any case, research studies must include:
  1. Justify the revision of the context about what it is known about the topic. Including any previous research.
  2. Raise explicitly the questions that should be answered. The research must be a relevant contribution to the educational field, prevailing the study of the relation between educational factors opposite to a mere bibliographic description.
  3. Described the used methodology: sources of information, (e.g., databases), eligibility requirements of the studies, search strategy, works finally included or dismissed specifying the reason, etc. The defect analysis between the variables through meta-analysis techniques is a methodological strategy of interest for the journal.
  4. The results should not only be a description of each work or of its bibliometric indicators, it is necessary to reflect to give an answer to research questions linked to relations between elements of educational elements.

Finally, theoretical works that propose a mere summary of the literature about a topic without specific objectives of inquiry or methodological precisions will be dismissed

Process of blind peer review

All the articles that access the revision stage, without exception, are subject to  blind peer review. In the first stage of the process the submitted works suffer a double revision, first of the technical team to verify that the formal requirements established in guidelines for submission normas de envío and then the editorial board of the journal revises that the works fulfill the requirements of the editorial policy. Bordon counts with a team of associate editors editores asociados, who are specialists in different areas of educational research and who are in charge of this labor.

During this stage, all the manuscripts will be analyzed with anti plagiarism tools. Those that include a text of other sources without citation, self plagiarism or those that have more than 25% of information that is not original, this is, quoted literally. All the articles that do not follow these formal requirements and/or the editorial policy of the journal will be dismissed.

The type of answer for this first stage takes around 30 days. If the work passes this first double revision, in the second stage they will be evaluated with a blind peer system. At least two editors will carry out the assessment, generally and whenever possible for the topic of the article. A member of the scientific committee of Bordon will be chosen (experts of the editorial policy of the journal) and another one will be searched among the researches or specialists of the topic of the article or in the methodology that has been used.  The team of associate editors editores asociados is in charge of the assignment and the editors will use a form to carry out the revision of the texts (Access here to the review form) (Accede desde aquí al formulario de revisión). In case a unanimous decision has not been reached between the two editors, the manuscript will be submitted to a third evaluation.

Once it has been revised, and  considering the evaluation report, the text can be accepted, proposed to modifications of dismissed. If the work has to be modified, the authors will receive the commentaries of the editors and if suitable a new round of revisions can start. Therefore, making the modifications does not imply that the work will be published. It is recommended to accompany the modifications with an explanation of the changes carried out, answering to the commentaries included in the evaluation of the text.

If the article is finally accepted, a stage to edit the text starts to adjust it to the format of the journal. The editorial who is in charge to do it will contact the author/s and will request if appropriate to revise format matters. In this stage the content cannot be modified substantially.

Work submissions in English Language

Bordon accepts works written in English but if it is not the native language of the author/s they should accompany the work with a language revision certificate.

Open access policy

The submission and publication of the works does not imply any costs to the author/s. The journal is financed by the Spanish Society of Pedagogy that assumes the publication costs through their members fees. You can contact the Secretary of the SEP by email sep@sepedagogia.es if you are interested in taking part of the Society and support the dissemination of educational research from different approaches.

Bordón publishes its contents open, the Spanish Society of Pedagogy preserves the property rights (copyright) of the published works. The electronic format of the works are under the Creative Commons License (CC-BY-NC). This license allows you to download, adapt and share the material if it is properly quoted and does not have a commercial purpose. In addition, all the articles will include the Digital Object Identifier (DOI).

The journal allows and advises the authors to disseminate the accepted works including them in the institutional or thematic repositories that are open access, if the link is incorporated to the original publication.

Equality and diversity policy

We should pay special attention to use inclusive and non-discriminatory language to avoid gender biased. For this purpose you can check the APA publication guide APA: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/bias-free-language/gender.