1. Publication Policy

The journal's editorial office will acknowledge receipt of a submission within a maximum of ten (10) days.

To ensure the clarity and transparency of its academic and editorial processes, the journal is committed to maintaining the confidentiality of information and upholding rigorous quality standards. Accordingly, it will reject manuscripts that:

• Are not original or have been previously published.
• Contain fabricated, falsified, or manipulated data.
• Include redundant information or involve inappropriate or fictitious authorship.
• Duplicate or fragment previously published content.
• Contain artificially inflated content, excessive self-citation, references to sources that were not actually consulted, or evidence of self-plagiarism.

Under no circumstances will the journal require authors to cite articles published in Comunicación, the journal of the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana. Likewise, it will not publish manuscripts that present conflicts of interest or ethical concerns arising from research involving human participants.

If an author identifies substantial errors in a published article that affect its scientific quality, they may request that the article be corrected or withdrawn. However, if a third party identifies plagiarism, prior publication, unethical conduct, or any other significant error, the author will be responsible for issuing a public retraction, after which the journal will promptly publish the corresponding correction or retraction. This notice will appear both in the next printed issue of the journal and in its online version.

Comunicación follows the ethical guidelines set out in the Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors and the International Standards for Editors and Authors, published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

 

2. Peer Review Process

All manuscripts submitted to the journal undergo a preliminary editorial assessment by the Editorial Committee to determine whether they are suitable for publication based on the journal's scope and compliance with the author guidelines.

Once approved by the Editorial Committee, manuscripts classified as research articles are sent to two anonymous external reviewers under a double-blind peer review process to determine their suitability for publication. If one reviewer recommends acceptance and the other recommends rejection, a third reviewer will be appointed to make the final recommendation. At least 80% of the reviewers are affiliated with institutions other than the publishing institution.

If the editors classify a submission as a reflection article (including essays, chronicles, critical reviews, or other scholarly reflections), external peer review is not required.

Plagiarism screening: All submitted manuscripts are screened using Turnitin® plagiarism detection software. The similarity report is reviewed by the editors, and, when necessary, authors are asked to make the appropriate revisions before the manuscript proceeds to peer review.

The outcome of the editorial or peer review process may be one of the following:

• Accepted for publication.
• Accepted subject to the requested revisions.
• Rejected.

The reviewer evaluation form is available here.

The estimated time from manuscript submission to publication is six (6) months.

 

3. Declaration and Use of Artificial Intelligence Tools

All authors are required to upload the AI Declaration Form, which must be completed and signed by hand. You can download it here.

The use of artificial intelligence tools is not, in itself, grounds for rejection, provided that such use is properly disclosed.

 

4. Editorial Ethics

4.1. Institutional Ethical Commitment

Editorial UPB and the Editorial Committee of Comunicación are committed to upholding the highest ethical standards throughout the editorial process. The journal follows the ethical principles established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) for editors, reviewers, and authors. Reviewers are encouraged to follow COPE's Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers.

These guidelines are based on international standards and best practices established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), and the Council of Science Editors (2012), among others. They also draw upon the guidelines of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the legal framework established by the Political Constitution of Colombia, the National Copyright Office of Colombia, and the internal regulations of the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (2015).

The journal is a signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and adheres to the ethical standards established by COPE, available at: http://publicationethics.org/resources/code-conduct

 

4.2. Editor's Responsibilities

• Publication decisions: Editors will ensure that the most qualified reviewers are selected to provide expert, critical, and impartial evaluations of submitted manuscripts.
• Fairness: Editors evaluate manuscripts solely on the basis of their scholarly merit, without discrimination based on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnic origin, nationality, or political beliefs.
• Confidentiality: Editors and editorial staff will not disclose any information regarding submitted manuscripts to anyone other than the authors, reviewers, and editors involved in the editorial process. The Editorial Committee safeguards the confidentiality of manuscripts, authors, and reviewers to preserve the integrity of the double-blind review process.
• Conflicts of interest and disclosure: Editors will not use unpublished material contained in submitted manuscripts for their own research without the author's written consent.
• Timeliness: Editors are responsible for ensuring that review and publication deadlines are met to facilitate the timely dissemination of research findings. They undertake to issue an initial editorial decision within a maximum of thirty (30) days from manuscript submission through the journal platform, and to complete the scientific peer review process within a maximum of one hundred (100) days from its commencement. Accepted manuscripts will not remain on waiting lists beyond the time reasonably required for editorial production in the next available issue.

 

4.3. Reviewers' Responsibilities 

• Contribution to editorial decisions: Peer review assists editors in making publication decisions and helps authors improve their manuscripts. Reviewers undertake to provide critical, honest, constructive, and unbiased evaluations of both the scientific quality and the clarity of the manuscript.
• Timeliness: Reviewers who consider themselves unqualified to evaluate a manuscript or who are unable to complete the review within the requested timeframe should promptly notify the editors. Reviewers are expected to complete their evaluations as quickly as possible to meet the journal's deadlines.
• Confidentiality: All manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents and must not be discussed with third parties without the editors' explicit permission.
• Objectivity: Reviews should be conducted objectively and without personal criticism of the authors. Reviewers should provide well-reasoned assessments supported by sufficient evidence and submit a complete evaluation report, including appropriate references, in accordance with the Comunicación review form and the journal's published policies, particularly when recommending rejection.
• References: Reviewers should identify relevant published works that the authors may have overlooked.
• Conflicts of interest and disclosure: Information obtained through peer review is confidential and may not be used for personal advantage. Reviewers should evaluate a manuscript only when no conflict of interest exists.

 

4.4. Authors' Responsibilities

• Originality, plagiarism, and multiple publication: Authors guarantee that their manuscript is original, does not contain previously published material by themselves or others without proper acknowledgment, and that the empirical data have not been fabricated or manipulated to support their hypotheses. Authors also confirm that the manuscript is not under consideration, accepted, or published elsewhere, and undertake not to withdraw it before the editorial process is completed, submit it simultaneously to another journal, or publish the same findings in more than one journal, as these practices are considered unethical.
• Acknowledgment of sources: Authors must properly acknowledge all sources and contributions cited in the manuscript.
• Authorship: Authors guarantee that all individuals who made substantial scientific and intellectual contributions to the conception and design of the study, interpretation of the results, and writing of the manuscript are appropriately included as authors, with authorship reflecting the level of responsibility and contribution.
• Data access and retention: When requested by the editors, authors should provide access to the data or source materials supporting the research. Such materials may be retained for a reasonable period after publication and, whenever possible, made publicly available.
• Conflicts of interest and disclosure: All authors must explicitly declare that no conflicts of interest have influenced the reported results or interpretations and must disclose any funding received from agencies or research projects related to the manuscript.
• Errors in published articles: If an author discovers a significant error or inaccuracy in a published article, they must promptly notify the editors and cooperate in the correction or retraction process described in the Policies section.
• Responsibility: All authors accept responsibility for the content of their manuscript.

 

4.5. General Principles of Scientific Integrity

• Fraud and plagiarism, in any form, constitute violations of scientific integrity, international intellectual property standards, and Colombian intellectual property legislation.
• A conflict of interest exists when members of the journal's editorial bodies (Editorial Committee or Reviewer Committee) have any relationship with a submitted manuscript that could compromise their impartiality.
• When justified by scholarly interests, a previously published contribution may be republished in another language or another country, provided that the authors obtain the consent of both editorial teams, the republication does not generate costs for the journal, and the agreed publication interval is respected. The second publication must target a different readership and acknowledge the original publication in a footnote.
• Authors will be informed of the status of their manuscript throughout the editorial process.
• Authors retain the moral and intellectual rights to articles published in Comunicación.
• Publication in Comunicación does not imply that the journal endorses or shares the views expressed by the authors.
• The journal reserves the right to make formal editorial changes to manuscripts for grammar, language, and style.

 

5. Copyright and Intellectual Property

Comunicación is committed to protecting and safeguarding the copyright arising from the original intellectual work of its authors. Accordingly, the journal adheres to Colombian legislation on intellectual property and copyright, including Andean Decision 351 of 1993. It also follows the guidelines established by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

 

6. Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate, free, and unrestricted access to all of its content, based on the principle that making research freely available to the public promotes a greater global exchange of knowledge.

As the publishing institution, the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (UPB) covers all publication costs. Accordingly, authors are not charged any fees for the submission, processing, or publication of their manuscripts.

 

7. Digital Preservation

The journal's digital content is preserved and backed up automatically through weekly backups, which are stored on an international cloud server. The journal's contents are also available through the UPB Institutional Repository, available at: http://repository.upb.edu.co/

This journal uses the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archive among participating libraries, allowing those libraries to maintain permanent archival copies of the journal for preservation and restoration purposes.