1. Open access and copyright policies
All articles published by ColNes are open access, meaning they are freely available without any kind of subscription nor restriction. The articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) which permits copying and redistributing the material in any medium or format, adapting, transforming and building upon the material as long as the license terms are followed. More information about this license can be found here.
2. Publication fees
There is no fee or charges applied for articles processing and/or publication in ColNes.
3. Peer review
The peer-review process operates using the double-blind model. The following document typologies will undergo full peer review:
- Original article
- Review article
- Short communication
- Opinion article
The typology ‘editorials’ are written by the journal’s Board Members or Guest Editors, while the ‘errata’ or ‘retraction notices’ are written by the members of the Editorial Office. These documents are not peer-reviewed.
3.1. Post-submission stage
Once a paper is submitted, the journal’s Editor(s)-in-Chief, in coordination with the Associate Editor(s), check its relevance to the journal, completeness of metadata and content, such as technical quality and presentation. At this stage, the Editor might reject the paper if he/she considers it as not suitable for peer review.
3.2. Editorial assignment and review phase
When the Editor-in-Chief moves the paper to the peer review phase, a Handling Editor is assigned to coordinate the review process. The Handling Editor invites two potential reviewers of considerable expertise in the field and who are willing to collaborate. Reviewers perform voluntary work; nevertheless, they are asked to consider the timeliness, confidentiality, possible conflict of interests, and ethical behavior.
3.3. Editorial decision
Once the review process is completed, the Handling Editor in coordination with the Editor-in-Chief makes a final decision, which can be one of the following:
- Accepted
- Considered with minor revisions
- Considered with major revisions
- Rejected
When the papers are ‘considered with minor revisions’, ‘considered with major revisions’ or ‘rejected’, the author(s) will receive the comments resulting from the evaluation process. Those authors whose papers are accepted in their current form may receive comments regarding the journal’s guidelines in order to publish the final version.
The review process is closed when, after all the required review rounds, the author(s) addresses all the comments raised by the reviewers and/or editors.
4. Editorial policies
ColNes ensures the publication of high-quality content derived from transparent and trusted research practices. ColNes follows all the guidelines and best publication practices defined by the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE).
4.1. Authorship
ColNes demands that all authors listed in the manuscripts have taken a real responsibility during the research process and article creation. We encourage the corresponding authors, project leaders or institutions to avoid adding people who did not contribute to the research output (Gift authors) or to exclude people who did contribute and its name is not finally included (Ghost authors). In order to prevent so, it is strongly recommended to decide the authorship prior to the project writing.
Before considering a paper for possible publication, a decision needs to be made regarding the definition of the ‘corresponding author’ and the ‘order of authors’. The corresponding author will play an administrative role since he/she will be contacted by the Editorial Office during the manuscript evaluation, production, and post-publication processes.
A contribution statement needs to be submitted together with the manuscript where the role per author is described. The authors can find support on the roles defined by CRediT. This information will be published together with the full text. All those whose contributions are not listed in the taxonomy defined by CRediT can be listed in the Acknowledgements section.
In case someone requests to withdraw his/her name from a paper, or even claim for inclusion, a formal declaration needs to be submitted to the Editorial Office. This request will be considered once a letter of agreement is signed by all authors.
4.2. Complaints
Any allegation of misconduct or questionable practice must be reported to the Editorial Office, either during the pre or post-publication stages. ColNes will follow the COPE’s Core Practices to decide on any ethical issue.
4.3. Conflict of interest
A Conflict of Interest (COI) takes place when authors have personal, academic or financial relationships with third parties that could influence the content of research work submitted for publication.
At the time to submit any type of paper, authors are requested to complete the COI Statement by which all potential interests are declared, if applicable. By means of this statement, the following issues might be declared:
- Direct or indirect resources received by any institution to complete the research work.
- Financial relationships with entities that supported the performance of the research work.
- Patents and copyrights, whether pending, issued, licensed and/or receiving royalties related to the research work.
- Personal relationships with people who can influence the research content.
These are some examples of COI statement:
- ⦍Author name⦎ has received ⦍state the received benefits⦎ from ⦍Institution name or equivalent⦎.
- ⦍Author name⦎ has ⦍type of relationship⦎ with ⦍Institution name or equivalent⦎.
If there is no conflict of interest, the authors must declare:
- The author(s) declare that there is no conflict of interest.
4.4. Research data, reproducibility and transparency
The authors are encouraged to share the data behind the research work. The ColNes’ policy is to make all scientific data of open access since we follow the Guidelines on Open Access to Scientific Publications and Research Data defined by the European Commission.
The data sharing process can occur in the following ways:
- Depositing data in a public repository. The Registry of Research Data Repositories can be of help to select a platform to host the data. The link(s) to access the data should be included in the manuscript.
- Data as supplementary material. During the submission stage, authors can submit supplementary files containing relevant data to share. These files will be available during the peer-review process and will be also published together with the paper main text.
- Data on request. Prior to the publication process, authors may be asked for research data at the request of the editors or reviewers.
Citations to research data should appear in the full text in the reference section. Authors need to follow the Joint Declaration of Data Citation Principles to provide the correct citation and referencing of the data.
4.5. Statement of data consent
In order to make science more transparent, open and reproducible, ColNes encourages its authors to submit a data statement; which will be publicly available. These are some examples:
- The (Name/type of data) generated during the development of this study has been deposited in (Repository name) and it is accessible at (Data URL).
- The (Name/type of data) generated during the development of this study has been included in the manuscript.
- The (Name/type of data) generated during the development of this study has been published as supplementary material.
- The (Name/type of data) generated during the development of this study cannot be freely available due to (reasons) but they might be requested to (contact information).
- The (Name/type of data) generated during the development of this study cannot be freely available due to restrictions imposed by (Name of the restrictor).
- No data have been generated during the development of this study.
4.6. Post-publication discussions, corrections, and retractions
Retractions and corrections occur when, once a paper is published, it is detected error, plagiarism, content falsification, data manipulation, or legal issues regarding privacy and copyright. In each case, all actions will be made with the consent of the author(s) and, from the Editorial Office, we will proceed according to the COPE’s Guidelines.