“School of Authors” is a website from Comunicar, Scientific Journal in Education and Communication, indexed in main international data bases, that complements other websites in Spanish, English and Portuguese. “School of Authors” is written and edited, basically, by the Editorial Board of “Comunicar” and it aims to offer different sources, for manuscript submissions in scientific journals in a planned and strategic manner. It is intended to make authors think about scientific information management for publishing scientific manuscripts in high impact journals.

Advertisements

The diffussion of competitive projects on scientific articles

Posted on July 18th, 2018 by rosagarciaruiz

Author rosagarciaruiz – Translation: Erika-Lucia Gonzalez-Carrion

Every researcher with curricular recognition in the academic field must participate in competitive research projects. This type of projects contributes to the professional trajectory of a researcher an extraordinary value, which indicates his commitment to quality science, his relevant role in the dynamics of work of a powerful research team, and the ability to provide new solutions to problems raised in their field of knowledge. It also implies the ability to have passed the first filter at the demanding level of the scientific community, in which the success rate is minimal, compared to the huge number of projects that fail to exceed the requirements demanded in these calls.

The second filter to overcome will be to publish the results in an impact journal, since the most important commitment of the researchers who win a competitive project is the transfer of results to society, and there is no a better way to do that than the publication of articles in prestigious scientific journals to publicize their work and achievements.

A competitive research project requires the collaboration of a team of researchers, as a synonym of scientific quality, which brings together groups and collaborative networks, and has been able to meet the most demanding requirements, standing out against other groups, competing to achieve, usually, financial resources to develop their work in the best possible conditions, in addition to the prestige that is to win a project in a call of these characteristics.

CiteScore: percentiles

Posted on July 9th, 2018 by Ignacio-Aguaded

Author Ignacio-Aguaded – Translation: Erika-Lucia Gonzalez-Carrion

CiteScore is a recent Scopus metric that measures the relation of citations per article published in the database of this important global indexer that contains 25,300 journals of all specialities. It offers, therefore, key information to the authors to be able to compare and evaluate scientific journals according to their impact factor, called here CiteScore, which is based on the division of the number of citations received among the number of articles published. CiteScore calculates the citations of all the documents of a specific year in all the documents published in the previous three years. That number is divided by the number of documents indexed in Scopus (www.scopus.com/sources) published in those same years. It is a very transparent index of citations because it offers links to both the articles published and the citations received.

The biographical note

Posted on July 8th, 2018 by Raidell Avello Martínez

Author Raidell Avello Martínez – Translation: Erika-Lucia Gonzalez-Carrion

Most researchers at some point in their career have to write a “biographical note”. The biographical note is a small verbal “selfie” that goes with a chapter of a book, a journal article or, sometimes, a conference presentation. The biographical note gives the reader key information about you, the author. Most biographical notes are short. Its length can vary, but most often it has a limit of 100-150 words. Therefore, there is not neither much space to communicate much about you, nor there is much space to be creative.

Many doctoral and early career researchers struggle with biographical notes: they believe they have nothing to say about themselves that is particularly remarkable. But quite often, when you look at the biographical notes, for example, at the beginning of an edited book that lists all the collaborators, they are the researchers of the first stage who write the most. Most experienced researchers write less about themselves. This is maybe because they do not feel anxious, or maybe they think that a lot of people already know who they are. The biographical note has multiple purposes, among which are included:

The importance of making a good discussion

Posted on June 24th, 2018 by Ángel Hernando Gómez

Author Ángel Hernando Gómez – Translation: Erika-Lucia Gonzalez-Carrion

Although one of the parts in which a scientific manuscript is structured, as it is included in the IMR&D format (Introduction, Method, Results and Discussion) for the organization of the scientific article among the researchers, is the Discussion, too often we find that this is omitted. And we do not only talk about Final Master’s works or other research reports, where it rarely appears, but in many of the research articles that are subject to evaluation in scientific journals.

Choosing a publication of quality

Posted on June 17th, 2018 by Mª Amor Pérez-Rodríguez

Author Mª Amor Pérez-Rodríguez – Translation: Erika-Lucia Gonzalez-Carrion

Once a job has been completed and wants to be published as an article, the challenge for the author or authors is to choose the right journal. The selection process will depend on the scope of the work, as is logical, but also on the editorial quality of the journal. The latter is not something minor. Aspects such as the policy and transparent editorial process, the editorial team, and the impact of the publication can be decisive for success. In addition to the formal and the promotion of the magazine itself.

Therefore, when starting a publication process, some aspects must be considered for a work to be received and accepted.

The seriousness and objectivity of the editorial management process. This implies, fundamentally, the availability and visibility of the information that the authors need, the neatness in terms of editing and format, the scientific nature of what is published, and the ethical guarantee of the commitments of authors, reviewers and editors.

Thesaurus: Keywords

Posted on June 11th, 2018 by Angel Torres Toukoumidis

Author Angel Torres Toukoumidis – Translation: Erika-Lucia Gonzalez-Carrion

The incorporation of keywords implies a practical alternative to describe and register a document, for it, the thesaurus is used particularly, that unlike a dictionary, it is a list of words grouped according to the similarities of the meaning and not in alphabetical order. To sum up, thesaurus are used as a means of restricting the keywords by focusing on a controlled vocabulary that allows to order properly knowledge about the subject in matter.

It is estimated that more than 16,000 scientific journals use a thesaurus for the standardization of terms. Within this field, thesaurus are known for their functionality in the retrieval of information as well as in the search for specific terms, thus facilitating the refinement of the results and detailed comparisons of the categories. Therefore, the idea of ​​integrating a thesaurus in a scientific journal, not only benefits the editors, but also the authors themselves, managing to locate publications under the same theme that can serve as bibliographic support, ideas for future research and suggestions regarding the limitations of the study.

Thesaurus can be organized according to areas of knowledge. In medicine, it stands out Mesh (Medical Subject Headings), engineering the IEEE thesaurus, ERIC thesaurus education, however, nowadays the plurilingual thesaurus are increasingly being used as is the case of AGRICOLA oriented to biological sciences and that is found in Spanish and English, OECD Macrothesaurus on economic and social development in Spanish, French and Spanish, and last but not least, there are two multidisciplinary thesaurus, Eurovoc that is published in the 27 languages ​​of the European Union and the UNESCO thesaurus presented in English, Spanish, French and Russian. This last one, exposes a list that incorporates terms of education, science, culture, social and human sciences, information and communication, politics, law and economics. In fact, Comunicar journal applies the UNESCO thesaurus for the use of descriptors in both Spanish and standardized scientific English.

It is recommended to review the publication keywords of Comunicar School of Authors to know more about the matter.

Cover letter: the first step to publish your work

Posted on June 4th, 2018 by Ana Pérez-Escoda

Author Ana Pérez-Escoda – Translation: Erika-Lucia Gonzalez-Carrion

The scientific manuscript has become in the jewel of the crown in the current academic standards of accreditation and recognition of research sections, thus the importance of moving to the review process when the authors send their manuscript to a publication becomes a fact of vital importance in the academic cycle. Undoubtedly, the theoretical and methodological quality of the work, as well as its results and contributions to the field of science that is studied will be fundamental for a positive evaluation of the reviewers.

But what is the categorical element for the editor or editorial team, once the article is uploaded to the platform, to open the door of our work to the review process of the journal? The cover letter.

The cover letter is the first document that the editor will open when a submission is made to a scientific journal, it will be the first thing that will be checked to decide, without opening your manuscript, if your submission begins the long-awaited evaluation process or by the opposite sends you a letter of dismissal for underestimating formal aspects. It is, then, the key that will allow any author to start or not the evaluation process.

The cover letter can be a default template for the publication:

or a freestyle document in which it is essential to include the following sections, always addressed to the Editor or Chief Editor of the publication:

• Complete data of all authors (usually each journal specifies what these data should be).
• Title and keywords in Spanish and English.
• Financing entity (if any).
• Small text specifying: originality of the work, authorship of the signatories, assignment of rights to the journal and declaration of conflicts of interest.
• Signature of all authors.

It is essential that the authors pay adequate attention to the cover letter that will guarantee the possibility of starting the long-awaited review process in any scientific journal.