EDITORIAL

New year new instructions for authors

Nuno Domingos Garrido^1[*]

¹Director of the Journal Motricidade; Research Centre in Sports Sciences, Health Sciences and Human Development, CIDESD, Vila Real, Portugal; University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro, Vila Real, Portugal

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Motricidade has been publishing scientific articles since 2005. The trend has been in an increase both in the number of submissions and in the number of publications. Among these, the highest percentage falls in the original articles followed by the review articles (figure 1).

 

 

Most articles were considered for peer review after Editor in Chief’s first analysis. At this stage, the majority of rejections were due to non- compliance with submission guidelines or incorrect submissions (figure 2).

 

 

After the double-blind peer review process, a decision was taken to accept or reject the article by one of the editors considering peer reviewing best practices (Figure 3). Unfortunately, it was not possible to accept all articles. However, despite the rejection, authors were always encouraged to review the considerations, improve if possible and re-submit if they wish so.

 

 

The most important fact that I would like to praise is the language of submission. The Portuguese language was the one with the highest number of submissions (figure 4). This data is not surprising since it was not until 2016 (Barbosa, 2016) that the English language was indicated as a requirement at the time of submission.

 

 

In this regard, in the light of the Criteria, Policy and procedures for the admission and permanence of scientific journals in the SciELO Portugal Collection, we decided in the editorial board to change the language of submission to Portuguese, leaving to the authors’ discretion submission in English or Spanish, which are the permitted languages. Authors who wish can send the manuscript in one or several languages, which after acceptance will be both published in the online version. We can verify in the figures below that the origin of the published articles came from countries whose official language is Portuguese. SciELO in its criteria requires that the percentage of articles published in English be between 25 and 50%. Although the emphasis is given to the Portuguese and English language, the pretension is an increasing number of publications in English. Authors who are not native or proficient in the English language are encouraged to apply for specialized assistance to make the editorial process more efficient.

 

(clique para ampliar ! click to enlarge)

 

Another issue that authors should pay attention to is their registration in the system. It is essential that they complete all the fields, indicating the hierarchical affiliation (Department, institution, city, state, and country) and their areas of expertise. In addition to these points it is desirable that all authors obtain their ORCID id (www.orcid.org) and for those who already have it, do not forget to integrate it into the personal area of the system. In an earlier editorial (Garrido, 2018) I had already focused on this point, and it is also a requirement for this new year. In this way, we can list the authors as future reviewers of articles.

The special concern in this editorial with the SciELO criteria relates to the indexing in the SciELO Citation Index in the Web of Science of Clarivate Analytics, a collection of which we are part with great pride, and we intend to continue. In my name and on behalf of the editorial board I would like to thank you for your support as a reader and as an author. At the end of this year, I want to leave a special acknowledgment, which is never enough, to all the reviewers who make this project possible: please have a great 2019.

 

REFERENCES

Barbosa, T. M. (2016). The changes in the research landscape and the revamp of the Journal Motricidade. Motricidade, 12(1), 1-2. https://doi.org/10.6063/motricidade.9547         [ Links ]

Garrido, N. D. (2018). Make yourself discoverable. Motricidade, 13(4), 1-2. https://doi.org/10.6063/motricidade.13815        [ Links ]

 

^[*]Complexo Desportivo da UTAD, Quinta de Prados, 5000-801 Vila Real, Portugal. E-mail: director@revistamotricidade.com