Author Guidelines

General information

The Journal Acciones e Investigaciones Sociales, with ISSN 1132-192X, is a publication of the Faculty of Social and Labour Sciences of the University of Zaragoza (Spain), founded with the same title in 1991 by the University School of Social Studies. Its periodicity is annual.

The journal has not revenue sources, and does not use advertising nor direct marketing activities.

It is a refereed journal that uses the external peer-review system for the researched objects and methodologies used in the research.

The evaluation will be peer-reviewed through the "double blind" method. All papers submitted to Acciones e Investigaciones Sociales will be evaluated according to strict scientific quality criteria. And they will be subjected to plagiarism analysis through the anti-plagiarism program of the University of Zaragoza.

Each issue is published both in electronic version and is available on the Faculty's web page http://sociales.unizar.es and on the Papiro-OJS Platform for journals of the University of Zaragoza.

The scope of the journal focuses on the dissemination of innovative research in the social field at the international level from the point of view of various disciplines and areas such as sociology, anthropology, psychology, social work, social education, legal sciences, law, economics, and business sciences, provided they are related to social work, social intervention, and the labor field. Priority is therefore given to original research studies, as well as systematic or bibliographic reviews. Short opinion articles (letters to the editor) are also welcome.

Articles are accepted in Spanish, English or French. If this is not the authors' native language, it is recommended to check the grammar.  

Manuscripts shall be submitted through the Papiro-OJS Platform. The use of this platform ensures a more transparent and dynamic process for editors, reviewers and authors.

The article must be submitted using the journal template. This template can be downloaded from the following link.    

Presentation and structure of papers

Papers must be original, unpublished and not under consideration for publication in another journal, written in English, Spanish or French.

The following types of papers will be considered for publication:

• Original articles following both quantitative and qualitative methodology. In the case of clinical trials, it is recommended that they follow the CONSORT guidelines.
• Systematic and bibliographic review articles, and/or meta-analysis. It is recommended that they follow the Prisma guide.
• Short opinion articles.

1. Manuscripts shall be submitted through the Papyrus-OJS Platform for journals of the University of Zaragoza using its template and anonymizing documents and files.
2. The manuscript document, in the case of original and review studies, must have a maximum length of 6,000 words (excluding bibliography), following the APA norms (7th edition).
3. The text of the articles should be sent anonymously: all references and other allusions that could directly or indirectly allow the identification of the author should be deleted.
4. Authors shall submit a page with the title of the article and authors (with their affiliations and indicating the author responsible for correspondence), and the manuscript in another document without the authors' data. Manuscripts shall be submitted according to the following order and structure:

First document:

1. Title of the article in Spanish / French, and English.
2. Name and two surnames of each of the authors (consider the signature format for indexing in international databases).
3. Full name of the work centre of each of the authors.
4. Name and full address of the person responsible for the paper or the first author as the person responsible for correspondence, including telephone number and e-mail address.
5. Information on scholarships, grants or financial support for the realization of the work.
6. ORCID identification number of the authors. If you don´t have one, you can get yours at orcird.org.

Second document (anonymized):

• Summary and keyword pages: an abstract of the article in English and the list of keywords. Both the abstract and the keywords will have an English version. The abstract should be 150-250 words in length. In the case of original articles, the content will be divided into four sections (structured abstract): introduction, material and methods, results and discussion. Each of them will describe in a concise way, respectively, the reason and objective of the research, the methodology used, the most important results and the main conclusions. Emphasis will be placed on the novel and relevant aspects of the work. The abstract must also be submitted in English (or in Spanish if the article is written in French or English).
• With respect to keywords, controlled terms of reference should be used. There must be between 3 and 5 keywords.
• Manuscript text: the text of the manuscript, which will conform to the specifications of the instructions indicated for each type of work, will be written from the third page onwards. Following the recommended structure of introduction, methodology, results, discussion, conclusions and references. In addition, the following statements should be included at the end of the manuscript:
• Ethical approval and consent to participate
• Availability of data and materials.
• Conflict of interest
• The role of the funding agency, if any, in the design of the study and the collection, analysis and interpretation of the data and in the writing of the manuscript should be stated.
• Authors' contributions
• Acknowledgments (optional)

Bibliography

- Only papers that have been cited in the text will be included and all cited papers should be referenced in the final list.

- The order will be alphabetical according to the author's last name. In the case of several references from the same author, they will be ordered chronologically by year. First, the references of the author alone will be included, secondly, the works compiled by the author, and thirdly, those of the author with other co-authors.

- Papers accepted but not yet published will be included in the bibliographic citations specifying the name of the journal, followed by the expression "in press".

- The complete list of bibliographical references will be placed at the end of the text, under the heading "Bibliographical references". For its writing, please follow the October 2019 APA 7th ed. guidelines . Until 2022, the use of 6th ed. will be allowed, according to the following examples:

EXAMPLES:

Bandura, A. (1999). Social cognitive theory of personality. In Journal of Biological Chemistry. Guilford Publications. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0021-9258(19)40792-8

Consejo Social y Económico de Aragón (Economic and Social Council of Aragon) (2021). Informe sobre la situación económica y social de Aragón: Panorama social. [Report on the economic and social situation of Aragon: Social panorama]. Consejo Social y Económico de Aragón (Economic and Social Council of Aragon)

Epstein, J. L., Coates, L., Clark, K., Sandres, M. and Simon, B. (1997). School, Family and Community Partnerships. Your handbook for action. Corwin Press, Inc. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/ERIC-ED467082/pdf/ERIC-ED467082.pdf

González Cabanach, R., Fernández Cervantes, R., González Doniz, L., and Freire Rodríguez, C. (2010). Estresores académicos percibidos por estudiantes universitarios de Ciencias de la Salud [Academic stressors perceived by university health science students]. Fisioterapia, 32(4), 151-158. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ft.2010.01.005

Instituto Aragonés de Estadística (Aragonese Institute of Statistics) (2011). Definiciones de indicadores demográficos [Definitions of demographic indicators]. Retrieved from Instituto Aragonés de Estadística (Aragonese Institute of Statistics)

https://bonansa.aragon.es/iaest/met_el/Metodologia%20Indicadores%20Demograficos.pdf

Karasek, R. (1979). Job demands, job decision latitude and mental strain: implications for job redesign. Administrative Science Quarterly, 24, 285-308.

Lobo, A., Artal, J., and Pérez-echeverría, M. J. (1986). Validity of the scaled version of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28) in a Spanish population. Psychological Medicine, 16(1), 135-140. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291700002579

Martinez, R. A. (2000). Partenariado familia-centro escolar a través de la metodología de investigación-acción [Family-school partnership through action-research methodology]. In A. M. Fontaine, (Ed.). Parcería familia-escola e desenvolvimiento da crianca [Family-school partnership and child development]. (pp. 303-319). Oporto, Universidade do Porto.

Sandín, B. (2008). El estrés psicosocial: conceptos y consecuencias clínicas [Psychosocial stress: concepts and clinical consequences] (^2nd edition). Editorial Klinik.

Bibliographic citations

According to APA standards (7th edition):

- Bibliographic citations should be taken from the original documents.

- Citations should appear in the body of the text and footnotes should be avoided.

- It will be cited in parentheses, including the author's last name, and the year and optionally the page or pages cited; for example: (Boudon, 2004: 73).

- When two works by the same author have the same year, they should be distinguished with lowercase letters after the year; for example: (Boudon, 2004a).

- If there are two authors, the two surnames joined by "and" should be cited: (Bowles and Gintis, 2005); when there are more than two authors, the surname of the first author followed by "et al." should be cited (Bowles et al., 2005), although all authors may be included in the final bibliography reference.

- Verbatim quotations shall be placed in quotation marks and followed by the corresponding reference in parentheses, which must include the pages cited; if they exceed four lines, they shall be transcribed separately from the main text, without quotation marks, with greater indentation and smaller font size.

Selection and publication process

Once a text that meets all the formal requirements is received, its receipt will be acknowledged and the evaluation process will begin.

In a first phase, the Board of Directors will carry out a general review of the quality and thematic adequacy of the work, and may directly reject without external evaluation those works whose quality is ostensibly low or do not make any contribution to the thematic areas of the journal. For this first review, the Board of Directors may request the assistance, if deemed necessary, of the members of the Editorial Board or the Advisory Board.

The articles that pass this first review will be sent to two external evaluators, specialists in the subject or line of research in question. In the event that the evaluations are discrepant, or for any other reason, the Board of Directors may send the text to a third evaluator.

In view of the evaluators' reports, the Editorial Team may make one of the following decisions, which will be communicated to the author:

• Publishable.
• Publishable after review. In this case, publication will be conditional upon the author making the changes requested after the evaluation. The deadline for such changes will be one month. A brief report must be attached explaining the changes made and how they meet the requirements.
• Not publishable.

In the event that a paper is accepted for publication, the proof copies must be reviewed by the author within a maximum period of two weeks.

Publication rights

Acciones e Investigaciones Sociales is published under the Creative Commons licensing system under the "Attribution - NonCommercial (by-nc): Derivative works are permitted provided no commercial use is made. Nor may the original work be used for commercial purposes".

Thus, when the author submits their contribution, they are explicitly accepting this assignment of production and publication rights. They also authorize Acciones e Investigaciones Sociales to include their work in an issue of the journal for distribution.

In order to promote the dissemination of knowledge, Acciones e Investigaciones Sociales adheres to the Open Access journal movement (DOAJ) and submits all of its contents to various repositories under this protocol; therefore, the submission of a paper for publication in the journal presupposes the explicit acceptance by the author of this distribution method.