Editorial Policy Adjustments

Based on the large avalanche of articles that we have been receiving in Retos in recent months, we are forced to make some Editorial Adjustments in order to meet the needs that have been created since it is totally impossible to submit all of them for review and possible publication. Therefore, from February 2024, a pre-selection of the articles that will be submitted for review by the members of the Editorial Team will be carried out based on the following issues that we will now outline. Those articles rejected at this first moment do not mean that they do not meet quality requirements, but rather that we understand that they are not part of the editorial priorities at this time. Currently, we have raised the rejection rate in the last three months to almost 75%. The effect of the application of these policies should be reflected in early 2025, once the works that are in the process of review have been published. These priorities are:

  1. In theoretical reviews, priority will be given to those from quantitative systematic reviews and/or meta-analyses, as well as scoping reviews (PRISMA, AMSTAR-2, MOOSE, REGEMA). Narrative reviews will not be accepted. For the rest of the reviews, the publisher must be contacted before being sent so that they can authorise or not their submission. Those that do not do so will be automatically rejected.
  2. Articles within the section “Teaching experiences developed and investigated with empirical work” will only be accepted if their applications have been evaluated. Proposals that have NOT been put into practice and do NOT contain results of the implementation will be rejected. Research protocols will not be accepted. Bibliometric analyses are also excluded.
  3. In the section “Articles of a scientific nature: basic and/or applied research works” we will give priority to randomised empirical research and those works that present multivariate analysis. Merely descriptive articles must be of interest and justified, otherwise they will be rejected unless previously authorized by the editor. National surveys may be submitted and published.
  4. We are especially sensitive to plagiarism or self-plagiarism. Articles with plagiarism equal to or greater than 15% will be rejected, excluding bibliographical references. Reviewers will use different programs to detect plagiarism throughout the text evaluation process. Authors who infringe this aspect will be sanctioned with five years of not being able to submit articles to the Retos journal. Authors who have used artificial intelligence must indicate which applications and in which processes and sections they have been used. Likewise, all articles published by the author(s) involved will be withdrawn. The journal, for its part, will use the anti-plagiarism program Turnitin just before its final publication. We have currently started a review of all manuscripts published in the journal Retos to detect articles that have a higher percentage of plagiarism than allowed when they were published. We started in November 2024. We will do so month by month in reverse order of publication until at least 2020. We hope to have this work completed before the end of the year 2024. All articles that contain a higher percentage of plagiarism will be retracted for bad practices.
  5. Likewise, we want to emphasize our most emphatic rejection of bad editorial practices from which the Retos journal has totally distanced itself from its beginnings and which it maintains today. We continue to maintain the editorial policy of transparency and quality in the editing process of all articles in such a way that all are blind way, the list of reviewers is public (a total of 5140 until 07/09/2024) and no article is published that does not have the approval and acceptance of all reviewers. Only articles that fit the editorial line of the journal are accepted. We publish the articles once the deadlines, times and established processes are met in a completely precise manner. We care about quality and legitimacy. Our ultimate goal continues to be to promote, preserve and disseminate knowledge, that is how we started and that is how we continue.
  6. The article will be framed within the topics of interest of the journal and of the world scientific society (works with local problems must have a high level of quality to be sent, otherwise they will be rejected without being sent for review).
  7. The article must be a rigorous work that complies with the basic standards of the scientific and academic field of Physical Activity and Sports Sciences.
  8. The article has a concise but informative title in Spanish and English, consisting of no more than two lines (no more than 20 words, although it is recommended that it has between 12 and 15).
  9. The article has a summary, keywords and the rest of the structure of the work. Both the summary and the keywords will be in Spanish and English, correctly translated by a native speaker who certifies and asserts that it is grammatically correct.
  10. Research papers have a structure with the following points: introduction, material and methods, analysis and results, discussion, conclusions and references.
  11. Bibliographic references follow the APA 7th Edition regulations.
  12. All references where possible must have their corresponding DOI, checking at https://crossref.org/
  13. The references are up-to-date and are consistent and sufficient with the topic being worked on. They must not contain ornamental references.
  14. Author self-citations must not exceed 10% of the total references used. Only in cases of genuine need may they be higher, and permission must be requested from the journal editor. Citations to the Retos journal must be taken with care, not using anything more than what is necessary for the work presented to be completely correct. We will monitor these aspects closely and reject articles that make unjustified abuse of self-citations, whatever type they may be.
  15. All works must have the authorization of all the people who have participated in them, and the journal is not responsible for bad practices by authors who exclude people who have worked on said works. If any of this is detected and proven, all authors will be sanctioned with a five-year ban from submitting articles to the Retos journal. Likewise, all articles published by the author(s) involved will be withdrawn.
  16. From 2025, Retos will try, as far as possible, to ensure that in each issue there is no more than one work signed by a first author and another in which he or she appears as a co-author. In any case, in the same year an author may not have published in the journal more than 1.5% of the total articles published by the journal. The list of authors will be published alphabetically in each issue, indicating the number of works that each author has, in order to comply with this requirement and its transparency.
  17. As of 2025, the maximum number of authors per article is limited to 8. If a research requires a greater number of authors, a letter must be sent to the editor of the journal explaining, reasoning and requesting a greater number of authors. This request will be studied by the Editorial Team according to its scope and a decision will be made and notified to the authors.
  18. From 11/01/2024 it will be necessary to send the articles adjusted to the article submission template found at https://recyt.fecyt.es/index.php/retos/Plantilla

Updated on 01/11/2024