As a guarantee of academic and scientific quality, all works submitted to Revista de Discapacidad, Clínica y Neurociencias (DCN) will be examined by its Editorial Board to ensure compliance with academic quality standards as well as with the journal’s formatting and publishing guidelines. This will be followed by a peer review process.

Articles will be peer-reviewed by external referees to make sure that all published works are of the highest quality. Specialists in various fields of education, medicine and psychology will therefore assess the quality of submissions and decide whether they should be published or not. Authors will be informed of the outcome within 3 months. The peer review process is detailed below.

1 First stage: Initial assessment

Authors will be notified following receipt of their manuscripts. Next, an initial assessment will be conducted by the editor to ensure that:

1. The content is in line with the journal’s purposes and lines of research, and, where applicable, with the topics covered in a monographic issue for which a call for papers has been released.
2. The article meets all formal requirements set out in the Guidelines for authors section.
3. The article does not contain plagiarism. Please note that our anti-plagiarism policy will be applied.

If the initial assessment outcome is negative, the author may be required to make all necessary changes within 15 days.

Bear in mind that the manuscript may be rejected. In that case, the grounds for rejection will be duly explained to the author.

While letters to the editor are not peer-reviewed, they are subject to an initial assessment.

2 Second stage: Peer review

Following initial assessment, articles will be double-blind peer-reviewed by two external referees. The referees, chosen by the Editorial Board, will be experts in the relevant field of study.

First, two referees will be required to review an anonymised version of the manuscript within four weeks and draft a report by completing an online form. For the sake of transparency, the manuscript evaluation form (PDF) is publicly available so that authors are aware of the criteria considered by referees. Novelty of results and methodological accuracy in research and analysis are highly valued. A third referee may be called in if the others differ in their assessment.

Based on the referees’ reports, the Editorial Board will assign one of the following statuses to the manuscript:

• Accepted.
• Accepted for publication with modifications.
• New assessment required.
• Rejected.

Accepted manuscripts will be published in the corresponding issue with no changes required.

 

If a manuscript is accepted with modifications, minor changes will be required. The author will receive an anonymous copy of the referees’ reports and will have to introduce the proposed changes within 15 days. The revised article will be sent to a referee to ensure the changes were correctly made. Next, the editor will review the article.

If a new assessment is required, major changes (drafting, structure, approach, etc.) will be needed. The author will receive an anonymous copy of the referees’ reports and will have to introduce the proposed changes within 30 days. The revised article will be sent to a referee to ensure said changes were correctly made.

If the manuscript is rejected, the grounds for rejection will be duly explained to the author.

 

3 Acting as a referee

Those wishing to act as referees for this or other journals available on the University of Alicante portal can request it from their user account (Edit Profile - Roles). If they do not have an account, they must create one . They may also send an email to the journal’s contact person to request a certificate stating that they have collaborated with the journal as referees.

Referees must comply with the publications ethics policy, in place and preserve the confidentiality of the manuscript and the peer review. They are not entitled to monetary compensation.