Focus and Scope

UNICIENCIA Journal is a publication of the Faculty of Natural Sciences of the National University of Costa Rica. Its areas of interest are mainly related to the work of the Faculty; these areas are the following: Biology, Physics, Computer Science, Mathematics, Chemistry, surveying, and Geodesy. The Journal receives articles resulting from studies using different types of research designs, such as experimental, descriptive and inferential analysis, correlational, observational, and action research, as well as case study analyzed with quantitative or qualitative techniques, or a combination of both. No essays, non-systematic literature reviews, discussions, dissertations, educational proposals or technical notes are published.

Estimated times currently in our journal

Reception and desk rejection: approximately 4 weeks.
Evaluation: approximately 12-14 months.
Publication of accepted papers: approximately 8-10 months (after evaluation).
Publication scheme: continuous.

 

Process of receiving papers and rejection of the editor.

All submissions must be made through our journal's OJS system. From October 2021 onwards, we will no longer receive submissions by email.  It is madatory complying with the basic format of Preprint. The letter of submission of papers duly signed must be sent. Papers that have already been rejected or subsequent versions are not accepted. 

In the first stage, the editor will check that the initial conditions of submission are met and a review of the quality of the scientific writing, sections, writing and citation forms requested, among others, is made. In this stage the editor can make a request for modifications to several elements or, eventually, reject the proposal (desk rejection).

The result of this stage will be communicated to the author who submits the article. If the paper meets the initial conditions, then the process of searching for reviewers will begin.

 

Peer Review Process

Two external reviewers conduct the review process according to the Single-blind peer review strategy (with identifying the authors). The reviewers for evaluation are selected anonymously. See our "About" section for current estimated times. 

The reviewers can submit one of the following three kinds of evaluation (according to the relevance of the paper): 1. Positive with changes in content and format. It is considered that part of the document requires modifications to be published. A new revision is performed to verify that corrections were made. 2. Positive without content modifications. The content and treatment are appropriate. Format changes may be required. 3. Rejected. The article does not fit the quality criteria for the Journal or does not follow formatting instructions.

The reviewers evaluate the manuscripts using an assessment tool that the Journal provides to them. The evaluators provide the main reasons to justify their decision (without being exhaustive).

Once an article is positively evaluated, the Advisory Committee will decide to publish it or not. The opinion held by peers does not necessarily imply that the paper would be published. The publication mainly depends on whether all the observations and corrections were made. 
1. The final decision will be made by the journal's editor-in-chief and it is unappealable.
2. The selection of articles for each volume/issue does not depend on the reviewers’ judgment but on the criterion of suitability for the Journal.
3. The Journal will provide an acceptance letter, signed and stamped by the Editorial Board.

 

Publication Frequency

Until 2021, Uniciencia published two issues per year (31/January and 31/July of each year). From 2022 onwards, the journal will be published on a continuous publication basis.  

 

What is a Uniciencia PostPrint?

A postprint is a paper that 1) has already been peer reviewed, 2) has already been accepted by the journal's committee, 3) has already been reviewed by philologists and translators. This version is released for distribution and is pending final artwork such as layout and graphic design. Several months may pass between the postprint and the final artworks so we are releasing this version to allow the results of the already accepted research to be known.
The postprint does not appear on our official site but rather in our repositories at Zenodo, Academia.edu and others. Since this postprint has already been accepted and scheduled for publication, it will have the volume, issue and year in which it will appear. The final version will appear until the scheduled date.

 

Open Access Policy

Access to articles, review of proposals, or publication of papers is free of charges for authors and readers.

UNICIENCIA Journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle of making research freely available to the public; this policy encourages a greater global exchange of knowledge.  

 

Use and reuse and Self-archiving policy

Both authors and readers may use and reuse the papers and information in the journal according to our policy as guided by CC-BY-NC-ND. Anyone can get all the papers for free on the journal's official site. Uniciencia is an open access journal. The authors can enter into additional agreements separately for the non-exclusive distribution of the version of the article published in the Journal (for example, to place it in an institutional or scientific repository) or publish it in a book (with an obligatory recognition of its initial publication in this Journal). The journal invites authors to share their published papers in as many free repositories as possible.

  

 Preservation, interoperability and identification of information.

The journal uses the following systems and protocols: OAI-PMH, DOI, LOCKSS and keeps their papers in external hard drives, the repository of UNA, CLOCKSS, PKP-PN, and SINABI. interoperability protocol: https://www.revistas.una.ac.cr/index.php/uniciencia/oai

  1. Internally, through external storage.
  2. Preservation at the institution, in the Repository of the Universidad Nacional, Costa Rica.
  3. Long-term preservation, in CLOCKSS, PKP-PN.
  4. Preservation in libraries: In the National System of Libraries (SINABI). 

  

Policy about plagiarism.

The Journal penalizes plagiarism in all its forms. The detection of plagiarism implies the conclusion of any editorial process. In case plagiarism is detected in articles already published, they will be removed from the collection and the employer institutions will be contacted to report this type of behavior.  The Turnitin software is used, among others, to determine matches in the manuscripts submitted with other texts and papers already published on the Internet.  See our Code of Ethics for more information. 

 

Policy on receiving articles in English.

The journal accepts papers in Spanish and English. In the case of English:

1. The author must demonstrate language proficiency through previous publications in that language in journals included in Scopus, Web of Science, Elsevier, Springer, among others.

2. If the person does not have publications in English, once the paper has been corrected, the author must commit to a language review by an expert (translator or philologist) and send the stamped certificate stating that the article was reviewed. In any case, the cost will never be borne by the journal. 

 

Licence

 UNICIENCIA and all its productions are under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 License:Licencia Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas.

 

Sponsors Universidad Nacional, Costa Rica (National University)

  

Journal History

UNICIENCIA Journal is being published since 1984. It is one of the pioneers in publishing academic articles at the National University of Costa Rica. The Journal has been publishing papers in Spanish and English about Biology, Informatics, Computer Science, Physics, Mathematics, Surveying, and Geodesy.