About the Journal

1. Focus and scope

Esferas is an academic publication with content in Spanish and English that brings together different essays and academic articles on community outreach projects carried out in Latin America. These projects are aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations in order to eradicate poverty, protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all. The objective of Esferas is to publish texts that serve to disseminate recent social projects and to understand the depth of the relationships established with the community, the work methodologies, and the approaches taken from different fields of knowledge.

Esferas is an annual monographic series of the Office of Community Outreach of the Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ. Its main audience is all those who are interested in learning about different knowledge transfer projects, methodologies, results, and an analysis or discussion about them. This publication shows how some of the problems and needs of society are addressed and how the projects have benefited people"™s lives.

2. Policies of the monographic series

Esferas seeks and publishes both empirical and theoretical research articles, as well as conceptual reflections on community outreach projects related to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), whose relevance in society allows them to be approached from formal academic writing, as well as through reflective essays.

2.1. Subject area of the journal

Esferas publishes articles on community outreach projects that are aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations, responding to the latent needs of society.

2.2. Types of articles

Two types of articles will be accepted in the monographic series, given they are related to the subject area of the journal:

     -Essays: articles whose central point is an outreach project. They can explore in depth the outreach to society, work methodologies, results and achievements, sustainability of the project, empowerment of society, and others. All essays must have a reflection on the outreach project.

    -Papers: Academic articles of research developed within social projects that show results of impact on society.

2.3.  Frequency of publication

Esferas is published once a year, in April, in digital format. The format is open access and free of charge.

3. Submission policy

Esferas has an open access policy and is a not-for-profit publication. There is no monetary charge for submission and publication of articles.

Information for authors who wish to propose an article is available in the Author Guidelines section.

3.1. Conditions of collaboration

• -The article must comply with the Esferas publication guidelines detailed in the Author Guidelines.
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• - All articles must be original, unpublished, and not have been presented in any other publication or be evaluated in another publication simultaneously.
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• - Authors must accept the code of ethics of the monographic series.
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• - Authors must accept the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 License. CC BY-NC-SA.
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• - Authors assume responsibility for the content of their articles.
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• - The editorial board of Esferas reserves the right to publish the article and to select the section in which it will appear.
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• - Esferas reserves the right to make any style corrections it deems appropriate, without altering the content of the article.

3.2. Verification of originality

The editorial board of Esferas verifies the originality of the articles received with Turnitin software for the verification of similarities and possible cases of plagiarism and academic dishonesty. This software evaluates the article by comparing similarity percentages with other articles published on the Internet. In this way, Esferas guarantees that the works are unpublished and ensures compliance with editorial quality standards.

Articles should present the author's own ideas. The editorial committee will only accept original articles.

4. Evaluation policy

Articles are received through the Open Journal System (OJS), a system managed by USFQ PRESS, since the system ensures a record of the entire editorial flow from submission to publication. Submissions are accepted within the deadlines established by the annual call for papers, from May to August.

The submission is first reviewed by the editorial committee (September - October) and if it is within the subject area of the journal, meets the minimum quality parameters, and considers the guidelines for authors and standards of the monographic series, it will pass to the peer review process (November - January). Originality, pertinence to the call, clarity of expression, methodological discussion, results, conclusions, and reflections proposed or raised by the article will be considered.

Accepted articles are sent to two peer reviewers for a double-blind peer review. Peers will be external to the committee and knowledgeable about the proposed topic. They will anonymously determine whether the article is:

          -Publishable without modifications.

          -Publishable with minor modifications.

          -Publishable with major modifications.

          -Not publishable.

The delivery time of the results may vary depending on the volume of texts received for the call for papers. However, authors will receive updates on the process and responses on the decisions made by the evaluators through January. If there are discrepancies between the two evaluators, the articles will be sent to a third evaluator.

Once the discrepancies have been settled, the decisions will be final. At this stage the editorial committee will also review the content of the article, evaluate whether the article complies with the scope and policies of the series, and may make suggestions to the author to improve the quality of the article.

Deadlines for corrections/modifications will be approximately 7 to 15 days, depending on the complexity of the changes. Once the deadline for corrections is over, the editorial committee will review that the authors have implemented the suggestions of the peer reviewers and the committee in their article. If the articles follow the recommendations given, the committee will accept the article for publication. Otherwise, the article may be rejected.

Once the articles are accepted, they are sent for proofreading, design, and layout (January - April).

For this process to run smoothly, it is important that the author agrees to meet the deadlines established by the editorial committee. If the deadlines are not met, the editorial committee may postpone the publication of the article to a later volume.

5.      Open Access policy

Esferas is a not-for-profit publication funded by the Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ. This monographic series has an open access policy; all articles are freely available immediately after publication. Articles can be found and downloaded at https://revistas.usfq.edu.ec/index.php/esferas/index. If it is necessary to share them, please cite the sources following the recommendations of the letterheads located at the beginning of each article.

6.      Archive policy

Esferas is preserved in the digital repository of the Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ. The layout files of the monographic series will be managed by the Office of Community Outreach of the Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ.

Additionally, this monographic series uses the LOCKSS system for conservation and restoration purposes.

7.  Copyright and intellectual property

Esferas is a publication of the Office of Community Outreach of the Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ and USFQ PRESS. The copyright is owned by the authors of each article.

All content of the publication, except where otherwise noted, is published under the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, which encourages scholarly debate and the dissemination of ideas.

Therefore, all persons are free to share (redistribute and adapt published material in any medium or format) under the following terms:

-Attribution: Credit must be given for the original authorship of the work in an appropriate manner, a link provided to the license, and indications of any changes that have been made. This may be done in any reasonable manner, but not in such a way as to suggest having the licensor"™s support or receiving it for the use of the material.

-Non-Commercial: The material may not be used for commercial purposes.

-Share Alike: If the material is remixed, transformed, or recreated, the contribution may be distributed as long as the same license is used as the original work.

-No additional restrictions: No legal terms or technological measures may be applied that legally restrict others from making any use permitted by the license.

This is a summary and not a substitute for the license. To read the full detail of the current license terms and conditions, please visit this link: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode

8.      Code of ethics of the publication

Esferas adheres to the Code of Honor and Coexistence of the Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ, with emphasis on Title II: Ethics of Research and Creation, which details the rights and responsibilities of researchers and conflict resolution protocols.

In addition, it adheres to the code of ethics established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)

The responsibilities of the different stakeholders are detailed below:

8.1. About the authors

To participate in the editorial processes of Esferas, authors are expected, prior to submitting a proposal, to:

• - Accept the submission policy, publication standards, statement of rights, and ethical practices in research and publication.
• - Declare that their proposal is original, unpublished, and that it has not been submitted for evaluation simultaneously with another monographic series.
• - Acknowledge and respect the intellectual property of third parties in their sources. In other words, that they correctly cite the references they use for their proposal. Esferas uses the APA Seventh Edition format.
• - Avoid fraudulently obtaining materials for their research. The monographic series does not accept proposals obtained through plagiarism.
• - Duly acknowledge the participation of co-authors and collaborators in their proposals and do not resort to the generation of ghost authors who have not participated in the processes of the proposal.
• -Report any errors detected in the article to the editorial committee before, during, and after publication.
• - Explicitly declare the existence of possible conflicts of interest within the article and within the comments to the editor when the submission is made.
• - Assume responsibility for the published content.

8.2. About the peer reviewers:

To participate in the editorial processes of Esferas as peer reviewers, reviewers or evaluators are expected to:

• - Recognize any conflicts of interest with the proposal to be evaluated that result in the loss of impartiality to perform the evaluation.
• - Conduct a critical, honest, and unbiased review.
• - Submit their evaluations within the deadline requested by the editor of the publication; otherwise, notify in advance before accepting an article.
• - Maintain absolute confidentiality in the handling of content.
• - Notify the editors in case the identity of the authors has not been correctly suppressed. Always guarantee anonymous review.
• - Use the rubric of the monographic series. Evaluations have four possible outcomes:

• • Publishable without modifications;
  • Publishable with minor modifications;
  • Publishable with major modifications;
  • Not publishable.
• - In the case that publications are accepted with additional modifications or revisions, comments should be sent through the OJS platform.

8.3.   About the editor and editorial board

The Esferas editorial team will have the following responsibilities:

 

- Work in favor of the quality of the monographic series, disseminate the call for papers, and ensure compliance with its policies.

- Select articles with a critical and unbiased assessment. Perform the first filter of acceptance or rejection of submissions.

- Select two or three reviewers for each article during the review process.

- Evaluate articles for content without discrimination on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, nationality, or political orientation of the authors.

- Work under confidentiality in the editorial flow of the journal in order to preserve the integrity of the monographic series.

- Do not use the articles submitted for publication without the author's authorization in the OJS platform.

- Commit to comply with the time limits published within the editorial process and frequency of publication. Editors are ultimately responsible for compliance with the time limits established by the editorial board of their journal.