About the Journal

Focus and Scope

RELIEVE is a weekly electronic academic journal providing free full texts to the educational community. It publishes articles that have been previously reviewed by expert panels (double-blind review system) on the topics of research and educational evaluation, approaching these two areas in the broad sense. Articles are published in Spanish and English, accepting empirical research articles, reviews (‘state of the issue’) or methodological advancements.

Peer Evaluation Process

In order to guarantee quality and that articles fit the aims of the journal, articles submitted for eventual publicaiton in RELIEVE will be evaluated by specialists in the area using a ‘double blind’ review approach (ensuring anonymity of both authors and reviewers during the publishing process).

Review guidelines and process outline:

  • Submitted articles will first be reviewed by the Editorial Committee, which can directly reject any document that clearly does not meet the Editorial Policy laid out by RELIEVE. In the case of prior acceptance, at least two reviewers will be requested to evaluate the article. Based on their reports, the Editorial Committee will decide whether the article is to be published, whether the author will be requested to make improvements proposed by the reviewers or whether the article is to be rejected. In the case of disagreement between reviewers, the article will be sent to a third reviewer.

  • Estimated response time is 3 months, in any case, authors will be informed as soon as possible, justifying the decision made, particularly in the case of rejection (and, eventually, providing suggestions for potential publication).

  • During the review process, experts will be provided with a worksheet to assist them with article evaluation, this worksheet is public and can also be consulted here.

  • A list of reviewers collaborating with the latest issues of RELIEVE will be published periodically, alongside the number of reviewers involved in reviewing each article (access to the list of reviewers). 

  • Acceptance rates for articles submitted in recent years are: 5.3% in 2018 (11 accepted out of 207); 6.34% in 2019 (12 accepted out of 189); 7.53% in 2020 (18 accepted out of 239). 8% in 2021 (13 accepted out of 175); 13% in 2022 (17 accepted out of 208); 8% in 2023 (21 accepted out of de 253). 

  • Capitalising on the capabilities of new technology, a system will be developed to enable open review processes going forward. In other words, any reader will be able to make comments, suggestions or criticisms pertaining to published articles.

Publication Frequency

Two issues will be published each year (per volumen). Individual articles will be able to be published as soon as they are ready, adding them to the table of contents of the volume open at the time. Each issue will be finalised at the end of each calendar semester (January-June and July-December).

Unless stated otherwise, the journal will be open to receiving articles continuously.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content based on the principle that making research freely available to the public promotes greater exchange of overall knowledge.

RELIEVE holds the rights to all articles published in the journal. Nonetheless, given that its aim is the dissemination of knowledge, it allows the reproduction and distribution of articles (via any type of media), always provided that the following conditions are met:

  • Content must not be altered.

  • The origin of content must be cited (RELIEVE, volumen, issue and electronic location of the article).

Thus, RELIEVE allows and encourages authors to keep and disseminate aritcles presented in RELIEVE on their personal webpages or institutional repositories both before and after publication, providing the bibliographic details that accredit, where applicable, their publication in this journal. This could lead to interesting exchanges and increase citations of the work. 

Antiplagiarism policy

The Editorial Committee will submit articles to an antiplagiarism review, via the antiplagiarism system URKUND or TURNITIN, prior to their publication. In cases of detected potential plagiarism, the article will be discarded, with authors being informed of this. In this way, RELIEVE guarantees the originality of all of its articles.

Editorial practice regarding gender equality

RELIEVE is committed to gender policies that promote true equality between men and women in our society. This committed is established through a number of core actions.

a) Editorial participation

It is important to RELIEVE to achieve a balanced composition of men and women throughout its editorial management bodies. Currently, 44.4% of its editorial committee members and 50.9% of its reviewers are women.

Likewise, the percentage of women reviewers of articles in RELIEVE in the last three years is over 40%. Specifically, in 2022 there are 51.94% of women reviewers; in 2021 the percentage is 50.9% and, in 2020 there were 46.6% of women among all the reviewers of the journal.

b) Inclusive language

RELIEVE urges articles to use inclusive language that considers the presence and status of women in society and is adheres to the priciple of equality regardless of sex.

c) Sex and gender in research

Research reports should avoid stereotypes and gender biases that adopt that which is masculine as a universal reference, exaggerate biological differences or normalise socially constructed differences. Equally, all types of research are urged to consider the variable of sex, reporting the sex distribution of study samples and analysing potential differences and giving results broken down according to sex. In this regard, researchers are urged to consult the manual: gender in research

 

Digital Preservation Policies

Secure copy. With the aim of ensuring that a secure copy is permanently available to the journal, the University of Granada Publishing House makes a backup copy every 24 hours. This allows content to be archived and retained, preserving it in the case of any possible eventuality. Should the content of any journal be lost or corrupted at any point, the UGR Publishing House accesses its daily backup copies to ensure its recovery.  

Digital Object Identifier. The journal assigns DOIs (Digital Object Identifier), which are persistent identifiers, managed through Crossref, that guarantee identification and avoid issues with localising articles due to URL changes or other factors.

PKP Preservation Network (PN). An archiving system is available to the journal, through OJS (Open Journal System), that guarantees the digital preservation of all content. The preservation network PKP offers a free preservation service for any OJS journal that fulfils basic criteria. In this sense, with a view to their digital preservation, articles compiled in RELIEVE are archived in LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe), thus ensuring a permanent and safe record of the journal.

LOCKSS. Open Journal Systems, which houses RELIEVE, is compatible with the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) program, which ensures a permanent and safe record of the journal.

Archived issues can be consulted in the LOCKSS Publisher Manifest at https://revistaseug.ugr.es/index.php/RELIEVE/gateway/lockss. In this way, articles are progressively archived, as a means to ensuring that stored digital information is retained and can continue to be used in the future.

Indexing of databases. The RELIEVE journal can also be accessed in its entirety and via open-access through different databases, which guarantees identification and avoids issues with localising articles due to URL changes or similar problems. Indexing.

HTML and EPUB versions. Finally, the journal publishes a version of each article in HTML and EPUB formats, enabling them to be exported into formats other than PDF that are currently available or may become available in the future.

With these digital preservation policies, the University of Granada’s Scientific Portal ensures long-term conservation of content, guaranteeing accessibility and utility for future generations of researchers and readers.

 

Interoperability protocol 

The journal follows the OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) protocol which enables sharing of digital resources. The protocol can be accessed at: https://revistaseug.ugr.es/index.php/RELIEVE/oai

 

Ethics

Taking as a model the criteria proposed by the Code of Conduct and Best-Practice for Journal Editors (Committee on Publication Ethics, 2014), the RELIEVE journal adheres to rigorous ethical norms with regards to its handling and publication of articles. In this regard, it firmly rejects and strongly intends to prevent inappropriate conduct in the ambit of editorial practice and scientific dissemination. With this purpose, it establishes this code of ethics for the duties of publishing, evaluation and authorship in the RELIEVE journal.

 

Sources of Support

The main financial sponsor of the RELIEVE journal is its parent organization, AIDIPE (Inter-university Association of Pedagogical Research) 

Background of the Journal 

RELIEVE is the first electronic journal in Spain (conceived in 1994), it is academically oriented and completely free. Its main financial backer is its parent organisation, AIDIPE (Inter-university Association of Pedagogical Research) and it is included in the University of Granada’s collection of scientific journals. It is a communication tool for the educational community, particularly in the areas of research and educational evaluation, taking a broad perspective. It strives to effectively capitalize on the communication and interactivity potential provided online.