About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Purpose: MHSalud Journal purpose is to disseminate scientific knowledge of quality generated in the field of Human Movement Sciences and Health through a digital, scientific, international, bilingual and multidisciplinary journal.

Thematic coverage: The areas in which manuscripts will be received are all those related to the Human Movement and Health sciences such as, Physical Education, Promotion of Physical Health, Exercise Physiology, Motor Behavior, Sports Performance, Movement Medicine human, Physical Therapy, Nutrition and human movement, Psychology and human movement, Physical Activity, among others.

Target audience: It is aimed at professionals in the Human Movement and Health Sciences and the general public.

Language: The publication of articles is done in both Spanish and English.

Publication formats: PDF, HTML, EPUB, XML, Audio (for abstract)

Financing System (Sponsor): The MHSalud Journal does not charge fees for processing the articles. To guarantee the free of charge of the Journal, Universidad Nacional and the CIEMHCAVI fund the editing time, assistants, language-style review and publication formats.

Documentary typologies: The documentary typology of the journal is the Contribution to the Journal, that is, the scientific article. The MHSalud Journal receives the following types of articles: Research article, Scientific article derived from bibliographic reviews, Theoretical article derived from systematized practical experiences, Scientific articles derived from a meta-analysis and Editorials. According to the Controlled Vocabulary for Resource Type Genres (COAR, Version 2.0) it is classified as follows: periodical> journal> contribution to journal> journal article (research article, editorial).

For more information you can consult the document: Types of manuscripts

Peer Review Process

MHSalud Journal reserves the right of rejecting articles not relevant to its subject profile or not adjusting to the present style guidelines.

The articles received by the MHSalud Journal will be reviewed in the first instance by the editor to identify fullfilment of the format. After this, the Editorial Board determine thematic relevance. All communication with the Editorial Board is done through face to face or virtual meetings and email.

Once this first filter is passed, the manuscripts will be evaluated by two external specialist reviewers and, if its necessary, by a third party. The entire peer review process is done anonymously with a double-blind peer review in witch the author doesn't know about the reviewers and vice versa. These people are selected by high standars defined by the Editorial Board. To do the review, they are given an official notification of the evaluation request, the manuscript without the authorship data, the evaluation form, a copy of this regulation and a copy of the Journal's Code of Ethics. The evaluating specialist will return the article and the opinion form with the respective comments of the article to the journal within a period of 4 weeks.

After completing the review process, the authors will be notified of the decision, which may be one of the following:

  • Accept without restrictions
  • Accept with improvements
  • Conditioned to a complete and exhaustive review
  • Rejected

It is recommended to download the ARTICLE EVALUATION FORM to know the evaluation criteria for each type of manuscript before the author send the article to the Journal.

The authors must incorporate the requested adjustments. The editor will check the modifications made by the author and depending on each case, it will be forwarded to the reviewing person to give approval to cases in which the modification was significant. After the evaluation process the Editorial Board indicates the final acceptance for publishing an article.
Once it has the approval for publication will proceed with the stage of editing, review and style and review of abstracts. Subsequently, the article will be marked in XML. When the previous process ends, the authors will receive their manuscript for a final revision, before the publication of the article. The authors are responsible for making the final revision and requesting the necessary changes regarding the format.
The Journal MHSalud reserves the right to make changes or introduce modifications in the manuscripts, in order to better understand them, without this deriving the change of its content.
The Journal MHSalud assumes no responsibility for possible conflicts arising from the authorship of the works that are published.

When two or more articles are approved for publication whose research teams and their co-authorship have more than one member in common, those articles will be scheduled for publication in different issues of the journal. The same happens when two or more articles from a single author are approved in the same season, they will be scheduled for publication in different issues of the journal.

Publication Frequency

Biannual as a volume with the first number published January 1st and July 1st.
As of Volume 15 (1) and 15 (2), 2018 we begin a process of modification in the periodicity of the Journal. From Volume 16, each issue will be published from January 1 and July 1 with a periodicity with semester closing.

Previously: the publication of the MHSalud Journal is semi-annual, in a volume with the publication of the first issue on August 31, and the second, on January 31.

Evaluation Time

Since the approved articles are submitted, evaluated and published, an approximate time of 7 months is estimated.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides Open Access "Open Access" to all articles. MHSalud Journal does not charge for its publication, it does not compromise to remunerate the authors, since they give it the right to publish their articles. It is clear that this Journal is not for profit because of its activity and that the actions are aimed at the expansion of scientific and educational knowledge in the area of Human Movement and Health Sciences. Every author who submits an article to be published in this journal assumes that he accepts this rule.

Gratuity

MHSalud Journal does not charge the author for admission, processing or publication of articles.

Identifier of each publication

Since 2014, the Journal has used the DOI digital identifier to provide information on the description of articles and their location on the Internet through metadata. To quote an article from MHSalud you can make use of this code that is labeled along with each article.

Ethics policies and plagiarism detection

This corresponds to the control of the ethics of the publication. MHSalud Journal will ensure that all the people that make up the editorial management ecosystem, namely: the journal's team, peer reviewers and authors, comply with the ethical standards necessary in the publication process. To do this, the Journal has a Code of Ethics and Good Practices for the publication of scientific articles in the MHSalud Journal that guides the work of the Journal to resolve cases of controversy. It can be consulted in the following link: Code of Ethics and Good Practices. This was prepared with criteria such as those established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), specifically: Code of conduct and guidelines on good practices for Journal editors
To review and detect plagiarism, the MHSalud Journal has the Turnitin software that allows the verification of coincidences in the text. Any case of coincidences in the text will be checked before the peer evaluation of the article and the authors will be asked to: (1) clarify the status of the coincidences, (2) correct them if its possible or (3) proceed with the rejection if it is assessed that the amount of coincidences contravene the originality requirement of the manuscript. In all cases the Journal will provide a document with the observations on the coincidences detected.

Self-archiving policy

The journal allows the self-archiving of the articles in their peer-reviewed version, edited and approved by the Editorial Board of the Journal to be available in Open Access through the Internet. More information in the following link: http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/issn/1659-097X/

General conditions
The journal is hosted in open access repositories such as the Institutional Repository of the National University, the Kimuk Repository of Costa Rica and the Reference.
The editorial source must be recognized.

Creative Commons License

Licencia Creative Commons

MHSalud: Journal in Human Movement Sciences and Health by the Universidad Nacional is cover under a Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 3.0 Costa Rica license.

Journal History

The initiative of  MHSalud Journal dates back to the year 2003 under the direction of the Program of Education Technologies for Human Movement and Health, School of Human Movement Sciences and Quality of Life (formerly known as School of Sport Sciences), belonging to the Faculty of Health Sciences of the National University of Costa Rica.

This initiative responds to the concern of creating a means of dissemination for scientific works produced in the Academic Unit, to later widen reception and offer of scientific articles to other national and international universities.

The first publication came out in the year 2004 with one single volume as was the following year. From 2006 and up to this date, it became a journal with one annual volume in two biannual numbers.

Aspects of interaction with users

The journal offers tools to facilitate interaction between users and researchers, either through the social networks Facebook, Twitter LinkedIn or through each article, with the option for comments. It is important to clarify that the opinions of those who decide to contribute in these spaces do not necessarily represent the criteria of the Journal. For any participation in these spaces we consider essential a framework of respect and criticism, providing contributions to science.