About the Journal

Approach and Scope

"Biocenosis" is a biannual publication managed by the Centro de Educación Ambiental (CEA) of the Universidad Estatal a Distancia de Costa Rica (publishing entity).

The aim of the magazine is to contribute to the process of raising awareness towards action through environmental education, with the goal of reversing the impact our actions have had on the environment. Additionally, it serves as an international communication medium between the scientific community and the general public interested in the published thematic areas. It is a magazine of scientific and cultural dissemination that provides free and open access, under the principle of facilitating research on environmental topics, sharing successful experiences in environmental education, and promoting the exchange of knowledge.

 Target audience

The scientific journal is addressed to educators at all areas, high school and college students, natural resources administrators, and educators and environmental managers as well. Thus, articles written in simple language are published, without losing scientific accuracy, so that scientific information is disclosed in an accessible way to general public.

 Periodicity

Biocenosis Journal allows to publish twice a year (June and December) on line (ISSN 1659-4991). It is possible to have special publication where extraordinary magazine number are edited with relevant topics.

Thematic lines

Scientific papers disseminations send to Biocenosis Journal -informative texts based on academic investigation´s projects, scientific articles or argumentative papers whose principal goal is to disclose academic investigation between general public will be subscribe to the following thematic general investigation lines: environmental education, sustainable development objectives, environmental institutional management, environmental issues, climatic change, natural resources handling, ecology, animal welfare.

It is important to note that articles related to the whole thematic lines written above will be received as long as the journal´s target audience is respected, which means articles must be written using simple language suitable for all audiences, under the informative and expository approach that is Biocenosis Editorial hallmark.

 Language: articles can be received and published in English or Spanish.

 Publication formats: PDF, HTML, EPUB.

 Journal funding (Sponsor): Biocenosis Journal does not charge for articles’ information process. In order to guaranty “free charge policy”, UNED and CINED finance editing time, assistance people, language and style revision, and publication formats.

Peer review process

The article that meets the thematic and formatting requirements, reviewed by the director and editor, is sent to two external evaluators (specialists in various areas), who make the necessary recommendations for its approval, acceptance with modifications, or rejection. Preferably, it will be the Editorial Board or the Advisory Board that proposes several possible evaluators to review the article. Evaluators are provided with an evaluation guideline once they agree to review the document.

 Editorial work

  1. The article is submitted by the author. The submission must comply with all publication guidelines (originality, theme, format, authorship statement).

  2. Thematic, formatting, and accompanying documentation review by the director and editor. If the submission does not align with the thematic areas, it is rejected outright, and the author is notified. If the format, requested information, or documentation does not meet journal requirements, the author is asked to complete the submission appropriately (one week).

  3. If the formatting corrections made by the author are accepted, plagiarism detection tool (Turnitin) is applied (one week).

  4. Sent to two reviewers under the double-blind system (three weeks).

  5. The Editorial Board reviews the reviewers' comments (two weeks).

  6. If the evaluations are negative, and the Editorial Board agrees with the criteria, the manuscript is rejected. If there is no agreement with the reviewers' criteria, it is re-arbitrated.

  7. If the submission is accepted with modifications and the Editorial Board approves, the author must make the necessary changes (three weeks).

  8. The editor verifies that the reviewers' recommendations have been incorporated (one week).

  9. Writing style is reviewed (two weeks).

  10. Linguistic and style revisions (philological review) are sent to the author, who approves or rejects them (two weeks).

  11. The final decision of acceptance or rejection of the article lies with the director and the general editor of the journal, based on the opinions of the reviewers (peer review) and with the support of the Editorial Board and the Advisory Committee (one week).

  12. The article is formatted after two to three revisions by the layout designer and the editor, and each article is assigned a Digital Object Identifier -DOI- (three weeks).

  13. The collaboration is published in the corresponding volume and issue of the Biocenosis journal, in the OJS (Open Journal Systems) platform of the UNED Journals Portal at the Universidad Estatal a Distancia, Costa Rica, and a publication notice is sent to the authors (one week).

 Open access policy  

This journal provides free immediate access to its content under the free availability principle for all audiences, which promotes an increased global knowledge exchange. No charge is done for submitting or publishing texts on the scientific magazine. All of the published papers can be downloaded freely, and they can be used and re-used according to Creative Commons license, as it is indicated at UNED´s web portal.Creative Commons Attribution-NoComercial 4.0 International. 

 Privacy Statement

Names and electronic emails included in this scientific magazine will be only used for the magazine´s stated goal, and there will not be available for any other purpose or person.

 Code of Ethics

The Scientific Magazine Biocenosis is oriented by the rules and codes written on the document Scientific Magazine Biocenosis´ Ethics principles, which can be consulted by clicking here.

 Plagiarism policy

The received manuscripts must achieve the originality requirement stablished in the author´s guidelines in the sending section. That is why, the received texts will be revised by using the electronic tool Turnitin, in order to make sure the text´s originality and the right source´s acknowledge of authorship, as well. It is author´s responsibility to respect all cited sources which will be used in the text by acknowledging appropriately the authorship in each of them, and by citing correctly according to APA format.

 Digital preservation policy

The whole content available in Biocenosis´ website -from UNED-  is backed up daily at UNED´s own servers, which is its Editor entity. The institutional unit in charge of this cycle of backups is the Dirección de Tecnología de Información y Comunicaciones (DTIC) (Information Technology and Communication Management), which performs this task by two kinds of saving: one is done in the hard disc in a system called SAN, and the other one is recorded on a backup robot´s tape drive. This journal uses the LOCKSS system to create a file which is distributed in the participant libraries to allow them to create magazine´s permanent files for preservation and restoration goals. Extend information.

 

Interoperability Protocol

This journal provides an OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative - Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) interface, allowing other portals and information services to access metadata of the published content. To view the interoperability protocol, please refer to the URL: https://revistas.uned.ac.cr/index.php/biocenosis/oai

Specifications:

OAI-PMH Protocol Version 2.0 Dublin Core Metadata

Author´ s guidelines

To visualize the author´ s guidelines, follow the link:

Author´  s guidelines.