About the Journal

La Palabra Journal is an organ for the dissemination of research results in the field of Literature and its dialogue with other disciplines and discourses. The periodicity of the journal is continuous, receiving articles in Spanish, Portuguese and English throughout the year. The journal is edited by the School of Languages and the Master's Degree in Literature of the Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia. ISSN: 0121-8530 / EISSN: 2346- 3864.

ISSN: 0121-8530 /  EISSN: 2346-3864 /

Email: lapalabra@uptc.edu.co

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.19053/issn.0121-8530

Indexed in: SCOPUS, Ebsco Premier, Ebsco Host, Proquest Prisma, Latindex, Redalyc, Master List Web Of Science, SciELO Colombia, Redib, Academia, MIAR (Matriz de Información para el Análisis de Revistas), Linguistics & Language Behavior Abstracts, Clase, Erih Plus, Publindex última medición Categoría B, EuroPub.

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Focus and Scope

La Palabra is a scientific journal, open access and continuous publication with two issues per year, which is dedicated to the publication of original or research articles, literature reviews and articles of discussion or reflection in the Spanish, English and Portuguese languages in the area of Literature and its interdisciplines. The main topics on which the journal publishes:

⦁ Literature and other artistic manifestations (cinema, music, plastic arts, among others).
⦁ Latin American literature and world literature (analysis of authors or works from any part of the world that meet the research rigor of the area).
⦁ Literature and gender (women's literature, queer literature, masculinities, femininities, literary canon, among others).
⦁ Literature beyond books (performative literature).
⦁ Literature and science (relations of literature with technology, Artificial Intelligence, computation and other sciences that may influence its analysis or creation).
⦁ Literature and Education and Reading Promotion (pedagogical and didactic contributions to the teaching or promotion of literature in different populations either at school, in the library or in non-conventional environments).
⦁ And all the works that contain literature as part of their thematic approach, either as an axis or in a transversal manner.

All manuscripts in the journal are selected through a "double-blind" evaluation system involving active researchers and expert reviewers in each subject. The journal, due to its scientific nature, is an international forum in the area of Literature and is aimed at researchers, university professors, undergraduate and graduate students, and any reader who wishes to be informed about recent research and current discussions in the disciplines covered by the journal.

La Palabra publishes its articles in immediate open access, in PDF and XML formats, but under the diamond model, that is, it does not charge its authors for publishing in any of the phases of the publication process (no Article Processing Charges - No APC) since it is financed entirely by the Editorial of the Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia (UPTC).

The Creative Commons license used by the journal in its published articles is BY-NC-ND 4.0 (attribution, non-commercial and no derivative works).

Publication process

La Palabra has a three-stage publication process:

1) Content management, which includes all the processes of calling for authors for regular and special (thematic) editions, and evaluation by external peers using the "double-blind" system.

2) Editorial production, which is the stage in which all approved manuscripts are submitted for professional editing, in its different stages: enlistment of approved originals, proofreading, checking and insertion of corrections, design and layout of corrected texts, reading and checking of layout proofs and, finally, checking and approval of final versions.

3) Post-publication, which has to do with all the technical processes of markup to generate other formats for reading the journal (e.g. HTML, XML, e-Pub, among others), complementary formats (e.g. videos, podcasts, infographics, etc.) and the indexing of published content in indexes, databases, directories or repositories, in order to increase the visibility of the journal.

In order to submit a manuscript to this publication process, there are some essential conditions and concepts that interested authors should take into account.
Conditions for manuscript submission
Submission. All manuscripts to be submitted for publication in the journal must be uploaded to the Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform after author registration at the following link:

https://revistas.uptc.edu.co/index.php/la_palabra/user/register

To formalize any submission, authors should not forget to attach the following documents:
⦁ Letter of commitment
⦁ Conflict of interest form

Originality. The journal seeks the publication of original articles that have not been previously published by other journals or publishers, and whose rights are not compromised for publication. Authors are requested to refrain from submitting articles that have already been published by other formal means. Likewise, the use of texts from other sources or authors, images or graphic components (figures, tables, etc.) already published and without due authorization to reproduce or publish them in a manuscript are not acceptable. Authors are requested to take special care not to infringe the copyrights of protected works or texts and to avoid unauthorized use.

Verification of similarity (anti-plagiarism software). All manuscripts submitted to the journal, once they have completed their documentation verification phase to formally enter the process, will be subjected to a review with anti-plagiarism software to detect if there is any particular similarity or potentially improper use of other sources. If so, the authors will have to make clarifications or corrections, or there is also the possibility that the manuscript will be rejected at this stage, if any serious problem is detected in its originality or copyright.

Pre-publication in repositories (pre-prints). The journal supports open science practices, so the publication of manuscripts as pre-prints, in an area repository or an open access repository, is allowed. However, in the event that the authors have made such a publication in a repository, they should inform the journal and provide the specific location data (DOI, URL) of that non-peer-reviewed version of the manuscript.

Simultaneous submission, content reliability and ethics. Authors submitting a manuscript to the journal must declare, in a letter of commitment (download format), that the manuscript has not been submitted simultaneously to another journal or publisher for publication. Authors must commit to wait for the journal to make a decision on the manuscript before submitting it to another publication (in case the manuscript is rejected).

Likewise, authors must declare that the manuscript has been written under criteria of research ethics, respect for copyrights and following principles of scientific integrity; any ethical dilemma or inconvenience in this respect will be the responsibility of the authors.

ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor IDentifier). For the journal, ORCID registration is a requirement that all authors must meet; La Palabra will not process submissions from authors who are not registered in ORCID. Registration is done at the following link:
https://orcid.org/register
In the ORCID registration process, the Publisher requests that at least three fields be completed: institutional affiliation (Employment), academic degrees (Education and qualifications) and publications (Works). For transparency reasons, these fields should be made publicly available by the authors in Spanish or, if possible, in English. In the letter of commitment, all authors must provide their ORCID and include their primary work affiliation, with which they will appear in the manuscript, if approved for publication.

Authorship. According to the criteria proposed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), the journal considers an author to be one who meets the following four conditions:

⦁ Makes substantive contributions to the conception or design of a paper or to the acquisition, analysis and interpretation of data for a paper.
⦁ The person who writes a paper or reviews it critically and contributes important intellectual content to it.
⦁ Approves the final version of the work to be published.
⦁ Is responsible for all the contents of the work and is able to answer for all the questions that arise about its accuracy, completeness or about any part of the work.
Before submitting a manuscript to the journal, authors should know and follow these criteria that define what an author is in order to avoid the inclusion of authors who are not authors or the elimination of others who are.

Authors' contributions
Based on the above, the contributions of each author in a manuscript can be established without ambiguity. For this purpose, a list of the contribution made by each author should be sent, according to the CRediT taxonomy.
The CRediT taxonomy has fourteen criteria that are used to indicate the roles of authors:

Conceptualization
Data curation
Formal analysis
Acquisition of resources
Research
Methodology
Project management
Resources
Software
Supervision
Validation
Visualization
Writing (original draft)
Writing (draft review and proofreading/editing)

Such contributions should be recorded in a paragraph, including the name of each author and their roles according to CRediT. Example:

Authors' contributions: Carlos Rodriguez: conceptualization, formal analysis, research, resources, supervision, writing (original draft), writing (draft review and revision/proofreading); Sandra Perez: data curation, formal analysis, resource acquisition, research, methodology, software, visualization, writing (original draft), writing (draft review and revision/proofreading); Laura Sanchez: conceptualization, project management, resources, writing (original draft), writing (draft review and revision/proofreading).

The CRediT taxonomy and its promoters can be consulted directly through the following link:
https://credit.niso.org/

Changes in the Authoring Group

Changes in the group of authors of an article, with respect to its submission version, must be fully justified and explained. Preferably, changes in co-authorship, either to add new authors or to eliminate others, should be avoided.
However, if under some special circumstance, authors wish to make a modification in the author group, they should send a letter to the journal editor, explaining the context of the modification and their arguments. This letter must be signed by all the co-authors of the manuscript and by the author directly affected or involved; all must express their agreement with respect to the proposed modification.
The corresponding author is responsible for sending the letter. However, the letter should be sent with a copy to the personal mailboxes of each of the co-authors and the journal will make an individual verification with each co-author about the contents of the letter.
If not done in a correct and consensual manner, changes in co-authorship can lead to serious ethical problems, copyright infringement, with legal and even criminal repercussions for the parties involved.
Finally, in the event of an unresolved dilemma regarding co-authorship or not adequately justified by the authors, the journal may decide not to publish the manuscript and close the process, at any stage, unilaterally.

Correspondence Author

In the case of manuscripts with more than one author, a corresponding author must be designated. This is the one who must interact with the journal, constantly, in all phases of the publication process: editorial filter, peer review, substantive and formal corrections, production readiness, style correction, design and layout, and post-publication.
The corresponding author, in addition to providing his/her unique bibliographic name, ORCID, current institutional affiliation and e-mail, must send a physical address for institutional correspondence (not personal) with nomenclature (career/street), city and country.
Institutional affiliation
All authors of a manuscript must declare their institutional affiliation. This affiliation may include details of the specific academic area to which they belong (e.g., department, faculty, school, etc.), the name of the main organization or institution (e.g., university, research center, etc.), the city and country where the institution is located, and the institutional e-mail address (preferably).
If one or more authors wish to include more than one institutional affiliation, they may do so. They should designate each affiliation with a superscript number. If these affiliations coincide for several authors, the respective superscript should be linked for each co-author.

Example:
Carlos Rodriguez-Hernandez1, 2 , Sandra Perez2 , Laura Sanchez3 , Michael Sullivan1, 3
⦁ First affiliation, city and country.
⦁ Second affiliation, city and country.
⦁ Third affiliation, city and country.
It is suggested, however, to avoid the inclusion of multiple affiliations and to select the main one, the one that is directly involved with the manuscript, for example, that of the funding entity.

Likewise, if you wish to change the affiliation of an author of a manuscript after submission, you must send a letter explaining the reasons for the change and certifying, on behalf of the legal representative or an authority of the previous institution, that the work has not compromised its patrimonial rights through a project or specific funding.
The journal will analyze each individual case of a request for a change of affiliation. It will carry out individual verifications when appropriate and will make a final decision on the matter; in this sense, an appeal not fully justified or resolved by the authors could also prevent the publication of a manuscript.

Costs for authors and access.

La Palabra does not charge authors in any of the phases of the publication process, that is, publishing in the journal is free, it does not generate APC (Article Processing Charges).
Likewise, the journal has no embargo period in the publication, it is of immediate open access in all its approved articles, under the "diamond" model. Its financing comes from resources of the Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia (UPTC) and its Editorial.

Copyright and Creative Commons licenses.

The authors maintain the patrimonial rights over the approved manuscripts, but grant a license to the journal and Editorial UPTC that allows their publication for the entire term of their legal protection and in all territories.
On the other hand, the journal publishes its articles under a Creative Commons 4.0 BY-NC-ND license (attribution, non-commercial, no derivative works).

Digital preservation.

The journal and Editorial UPTC will guarantee that all published content will be preserved over time, so that each issue or volume can be retrieved and consulted in the long term, even in the event of the cessation of an editorial project, and in accordance with its information security policy and the support and maintenance of its electronic platforms.

Editorial UPTC also considers that its catalog of works and its collection of scientific journals are part of the intellectual heritage of the university and of the disciplines in which it contributes to validate, disseminate, divulge and preserve knowledge.

In this way, issues and volumes of the journal are part of the international digital preservation project of the PKP Preservation Network (PKPPN). For more information: https://acceso-abierto.anid.cl/web-of-science-ofrece-un-nuevo-indice-preprints/ or directly to https://pkp.sfu.ca/pkp-pn/

Self-archiving.

La Palabra allows the self-archiving of manuscripts that are submitted in their pre-prints stage (before peer review) and in the editor's version or in the final version in which the manuscript has been published.

However, the journal requests that wherever the published article is deposited or self-archived, the complete reference be included, with its respective DOI (Digital Object Identifier), so that the interested user or reader may consult the article, if he/she prefers, directly on the journal's official site.

Manuscript evaluation

La Palabra evaluates all manuscripts it receives under a "double-blind" peer review system. This evaluation process consists of the following phases:
Editorial filter. All manuscripts submitted to the journal will go through an editorial filter. This filter consists of verifying that the authors have correctly submitted the documents that formalize the submission (letter of commitment, conflict of interest form) and subsequently, the manuscript is verified through an anti-plagiarism software. If problems are detected in the manuscript, the authors will be informed.

If the manuscript reports no problems of formalization or originality, the editors will verify whether it is of sufficient quality to be sent to a full external peer review process. At this point, the editor in charge reviews the structure of the manuscript, its bibliographic support, its most important conceptual or methodological aspects and its correspondence with the thematic spectrum of the journal or of the particular edition to which it has been submitted (in the case of a submission for a special edition). If everything is correct, the manuscript will be assigned to external peers. Otherwise, authors will be informed if the manuscript is not accepted or if aspects need to be corrected or clarified before proceeding.

Selection and call for reviewers. The journal will locate and call for reviewers for each of the manuscripts accepted for evaluation, according to their academic background, research experience, the specific area of the article and recent related publications.

The deadlines for an evaluation will depend on the complexity of the subject of the manuscript or any specific circumstance raised by the reviewer. However, the journal will always suggest a period of 2 to 4 weeks to send the verdict, once the reviewer has agreed to be the evaluator of the article. In exceptional cases in which no peer reviewer accepts to evaluate the article after two months from the beginning of the peer review process, the author will be informed so that he/she can decide to withdraw the article from the submission process of the journal on a voluntary basis. If the author wishes to keep it in the process, the search will continue for a maximum period of 8 more weeks. If at the end of this period the manuscript is still not evaluated, the author will be informed and the manuscript will be withdrawn from the submission process.

In case the article has a tie-breaker evaluation in which one concept is approved and the other rejected, the journal will establish a maximum of two months for an evaluator to settle the result and establish a final verdict. If at the end of this period, the third reviewer is still not found, the author of the manuscript will be informed so that he/she has the possibility of voluntarily withdrawing the article. If he/she wishes to keep it in submission, he/she will be offered an additional month to find the third peer reviewer. If after this additional month a peer reviewer is not found to settle the controversy, the article will be definitively withdrawn from the submission process.

Evaluation criteria

The journal has a form that serves as a guide for the evaluation of any manuscript. This form will allow a quantitative and qualitative assessment of the status of each manuscript. Aspects of form such as structure, quality of language, handling of figures and tables, and aspects of theoretical and methodological background, depth of analysis, relevance and timeliness of the bibliographic support and relevance of the results or conclusions will be reviewed.

The evaluation of each manuscript will also depend on its textual typology, i.e., whether it is an original research article, a review of the literature, a discussion article, or an article on current events, among others.

Outcomes

The results of a peer review process can be fourfold: approved without corrections, approved with slight corrections (of form or format), approved with deep corrections (of substance and form) and rejected. The editors will be responsible for reviewing each concept received and consolidating with them a response to the authors. Authors will be free to express to the editor their disagreement with a peer review result, but always using academic or scientific arguments or showing evidence to support their disagreement with what a reviewer has said.
Despite the reply, the journal will not be obliged to reconsider its decision, but each case will be studied to assess whether the authors' complaint is justified and whether it would be necessary to request clarifications from the reviewers or even to call for the intervention of a new reviewer.

Corrections and verification

Once the feedback from the two or three reviewers has been consolidated, the journal will issue a consolidated result to notify the authors. Articles that are accepted under the condition of being corrected should be returned with a letter of reply explaining in detail the adjustments and responding to the comments of each reviewer. These adjustments will be verified by the reviewers and, based on their approval or final recommendations, the editor will make a final decision on each manuscript.

If the case arises in which a corrected manuscript persists in some flaws already pointed out by one or more reviewers, the authors will be given one more opportunity to correct. If the flaws are not satisfactorily corrected, the manuscript may be rejected at this point. Likewise, failure to submit a corrected version within the time agreed upon by the authors and the editor may be a cause for rejection, unless a reasonable extension of the deadline for corrections is requested.

Timing of the process

On average, the entire evaluation cycle of a manuscript, which manages to pass all phases of the process, lasts about a quarter. In the event of difficulties in obtaining available peers or non-compliance in the delivery of concepts, the journal will take measures to reassign the manuscripts and will notify the authors.

Petitions, complaints, replies and requests

In case of disagreement with any result of the evaluation, the process itself or any particular petition or request, please write directly to the journal's mailbox. Such requests will be studied by the editors or the editor-in-chief.

Ethics

La Palabra has three main references in its ethics and scientific integrity policy:

• The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) principles of transparency, best practices and flowcharts for preventing and resolving ethical dilemmas in scientific publication: https://publicationethics.org/
• The recommendations of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) regarding the way to act, report, edit and publish scientific literature, under ethical principles and some key concepts in the edition such as authorship, among others: https://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/
• The Singapore Declaration on Scientific Integrity and the principles and responsibilities to be considered as a framework for research: https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2011.557296

With regard to COPE, the journal adopts the 16 principles of transparency and good practices as its own in its daily management and in the handling of its decisions in the face of ethical dilemmas that arise. These are listed below:

Magazine content

1. Name of the journal: the name of the journal is unambiguous and has not been modified over time.
2. Website: All information on policy, processes, procedures and editorial structure is published in full on the journal's website. This provides a complete and accurate picture of what the magazine is all about.
3. Editorial schedule: the frequency of the journal (continuous publication) and the number of issues per year published.
4. Archive: the journal ensures the digital preservation of all its contents and the stability of its technological infrastructure.
5. Copyright: the journal indicates what type of relationship it establishes with its authors to publish accepted articles under a license.
6. Licensing: the journal uses a Creative Commons 4.0 license and declares it within its policies and instructions for authors.

Editorial practices

7. Publication ethics and related editorial policies: the journal declares the references of its ethics policy and provides indications for a series of aspects directly related to ethics: authorship, conflicts of interest, respect for copyrights, scientific integrity, corrections and retractions, among others.

8. Peer review: the journal has established a structured evaluation process for all manuscripts received, under the "double-blind" system, and describes it in a special section for this purpose.

9. Access: the journal is immediately open access and states it within its policies.

Organization

10.  Editorial and management: the journal states, unambiguously, which institution publishes it (the Editorial UPTC). It also contains institutional information and states its direct link with the university.
11. Scientific Committee: the information of the researchers who are part of the journal's committees or who are editors is complete and transparent. Their curriculum vitae can be consulted directly through their ORCID profiles.
12. Editorial team: the information provided by the journal's editorial team is complete, reliable and updated as soon as any changes are made.

Business practices

13. Costs for authors: the journal's business model is diamond open access. In this sense, the process is completely free of charge for authors, as stated by the journal on its website.
14. Other income: the journal is financed with public resources, from the Editorial UPTC and the Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia.
15. Advertising: the journal does not advertise products and services because its mission is purely academic and scientific.
16. Direct marketing: the journal eventually contacts renowned researchers, guest editors and reviewers, but to ask them to support, ad honorem, its processes of calling for special issues and manuscript evaluation. Since it does not charge authors and its processes are completely free of charge, there is no commercial or monetary interest in any of the cases of contact with academics.

Authorship. As far as the ICMJE is concerned, the journal assumes its concept of authorship as part of its editorial policy. Consequently, we ask authors to avoid bad practices such as "gift co-authorship" or the inclusion or elimination of authors without due participation or justification. The concept of authorship, taken from the ICMJE, requires the fulfillment of the following four conditions:

1. Makes substantive contributions to the conception or design of a paper or to the acquisition, analysis and interpretation of data for a paper.
2. The person who writes a paper or reviews it critically and contributes important intellectual content to it.
3. Approves the final version of the work to be published.
4. Is responsible for all the contents of the work and is able to answer for all the questions that arise about its accuracy, completeness or about any part of the work.

Before submitting a manuscript to the journal, authors should know and follow these criteria that define what an author is in order to avoid the inclusion of authors who are not authors or the elimination of others who are.

Authors' contributions
Based on the above, the contributions of each author in a manuscript can be established without ambiguity. For this purpose, a list of the contribution made by each author should be sent, according to the CRediT taxonomy.
The CRediT taxonomy has fourteen criteria that are used to indicate the roles of authors:
Conceptualization
Data curation
Formal analysis
Acquisition of resources
Research
Methodology
Project management
Resources
Software
Supervision
Validation
Visualization
Writing (original draft)
Writing (draft review and proofreading/editing)
Such contributions should be recorded in a paragraph, including the name of each author and their roles according to CRediT.

Example: Authors' contributions: Carlos Rodriguez: conceptualization, formal analysis, research, resources, supervision, writing (original draft), writing (draft review and revision/proofreading); Sandra Perez: data curation, formal analysis, resource acquisition, research, methodology, software, visualization, writing (original draft), writing (draft review and revision/proofreading); Laura Sanchez: conceptualization, project management, resources, writing (original draft), writing (draft review and revision/proofreading).

The CRediT taxonomy and its promoters can be consulted directly through the following link:
https://credit.niso.org/

Financing (required)
If the authors received funding through a research project or any type of resource for research or for the writing or publication of the work, this should be stated. Likewise, if there is no funding of any kind, this should also be stated.

Conflicts of interest (required)
If any of the authors in their professional practice or in their scientific or teaching work has any kind of potential conflict of interest, with repercussions in the research or in the contents that make up the manuscript, they must declare it. At this point, authors should also complete a conflict of interest form (from the ICMJE) provided by the journal in its documentation to formalize the submission of a manuscript.

Ethical implications (required)
If the research that supports the contents of the manuscript involves any type of handling of personal, private or reserved information, experimentation with animals or living beings, or if the methodology requires evidence of any type of ethical repercussion or risk, this must be declared. Likewise, if the research required the endorsement of an ethics committee or the use of informed consent, it must be declared; in case the journal requires it, the authors will have to submit the necessary supports (endorsement, consent, among others).

Acknowledgments (optional)
If the authors wish to thank individuals, institutions, organizations, communities, among others, who have participated in the research or who, in any way, have facilitated the writing or publication of their manuscript, they may do so briefly.

It is important to point out that acknowledgements should only be granted to third parties who have played an important role, either directly or prior to the preparation of the manuscript or research. Acknowledgements of a personal, circumstantial or general nature will not be accepted or published.

Finally, the journal invites all authors to read the Singapore Statement on Research Integrity and to follow its principles of honesty, responsibility, professional courtesy, respect, and good research agency for the benefit of others. Manuscripts submitted to the journal are expected to have arisen from research processes whose authors have followed, with special care, all of these principles and responsibilities associated with research integrity and scientific integrity.

Complaints or suspicions of malpractice

The journal invites its different collaborators, from their different roles in the stages of the publication process, to denounce or express directly their concerns or doubts in the event of evidence or suspicions of malpractice in a manuscript or on the part of some of the actors involved. Likewise, if a reader presumes to have identified a problem in a published manuscript, he or she is also invited to report it to the journal. Communications, complaints, suspicions or requests related to ethical dilemmas or problems should be sent to the editor-in-chief of the journal, to the official mailbox: lapalabra@uptc.edu.co

Procedures or actions in response to reports of malpractice or suspicions of wrongdoing

Once the journal's Editorial Board receives information about an ethical dilemma or potential ethical malpractice, it will analyze the case and follow the recommendations of the COPE and its flowcharts to investigate the malpractice and take a decision or action against those who violate the ethical framework to which the journal subscribes:

https://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts/complete-set-english

Corrections and retractions

La Palabra may issue corrections or retractions on manuscripts published in its miscellaneous or special issues. Corrections on published manuscripts will be made in the event that minor but important errors are identified that may lead to misunderstandings about the contents of the article, about the authors' information, or about a potential ethical risk or conflict that has not been declared. The journal will apply such corrections, especially if they are unintentional or honest errors on the part of the authors and if they involve potential confusion or disclosure of misinformation to readers. If so, the journal will issue a correction or erratum and publish it along with the article to inform interested parties.

On the other hand, retractions will be made if serious errors are identified in a manuscript, ethical problems that have become evident after publication (data fabrication, manipulation, plagiarism) and that call into question the complete reliability of the manuscript and its results or contributions. According to the seriousness of the problem detected in the manuscript (and its legal implications, if any), it will be determined whether the journal should withdraw access to the article, retract it or remove it completely from the journal.