About the Journal

Focus and Scope

The journal REIRE, from catalan: Revista d’Innovació i Recerca en Educació , is an electronic publication of the Research Section of the Institute of Professional Development of the University of Barcelona.

The aim of this publication is to become a space for consulting and disseminating work on educational innovation and research at different levels and in different fields of professional development.

Researchers, scholars, teachers, administrators, specialists, and advanced doctoral students are invited to submit manuscripts.

REIRE intends to make use of the possibilities afforded by the Internet to offer a permanently open space for documentation, provide the educational community as a whole with channels for interaction and facilitate the publication of materials including different formats and multimedia elements.

The central contents of the REIRE consist in previously unpublished articles dealing with topics to do with research and innovation in the educational sphere, such as:

  • Research from any methodological approach or discipline.
  • Reviews of the literature or theoretical reflections on research and research methodology in education, describing, for example, the current state of the question in regard to some aspect of, or advance in, research methodology.
  • Practical experiences of educational innovation.
  • Methodological article on matters of research methodology, including practical guidelines for readers.

The main objectives of the REIRE are:

  • To disseminate the activity and results of research and innovation in education obtained by projects and groups belonging to Barcelona University’s Institute of Professional Development (IDP-ICE) and any others across the world.
  • To offer documentation and resources supporting educational research and innovation.
  • To become a forum for debate and exchange on innovation and research issues in education.

Peer Review Process

Published articles are subject to a process of assessment by at least two external referees considered to be experts in the field of educational research and innovation.

The intention of the REIRE is to provide rigorous, good-quality articles of interest to the academic and educational community in general.

When a manuscript is submitted it is subject to a review process consisting in the following steps:

  1. it is reviewed in the first instance by the editorial board which may reject it outright if it clearly fails to comply with the journal’s editorial line;
  2. otherwise, two external experts are asked to make a blind assessment of the document. The committee may make suggestions for the article to be revised and improved. The assessment is performed in accordance with the review guidelines issued;
  3. on the basis of the experts’ reports, the editorial board decides whether to publish the article as it stands, return it to the author with suggestions and observations or reject it for publication; at all events the author is informed of the decision as soon as possible together with the reasons for rejection if that is the decision.

Reception of a manuscript does not entail any commitment or obligation on the part of the journal.

Reception of an article for assessment is always acknowledged and the result is notified once the manuscript has been evaluated.

Editorial Activity Statistics

01-01-2021 — 31-12-2022
  • Days to First Editorial Decision: 36
    • Days to Accept: 96
    • Days to Reject: 71
  • Acceptance Rate: 76%
  • Rejection Rate: 24%

Publication Frequency

The journal will be published twice a year, in January and July.

Articles will be published as they are ready without the need for the issue to be completed. All manuscripts are copy-edited to ensure they are linguistically correct. Those that are accepted unamended are sent straight for copy-editing prior to publication. If any amendments have been suggested, the author must make the appropriate changes before the document is copy-edited. Once this process has been completed and the resulting document has been checked by the author, and, where appropriate, passed by the referees, the article is published.

Author's Rights Policy

The authors who publish in REIRE accept the following terms:

  1. At the time a work is accepted for publication, it is understood that the author assigns to REIRE Revista d'Innovació i Recerca en Educació the rights of reproduction and distribution of the article for its exploitation in all the countries of the world in any physical, magnetic, optical and digital support and format.
  2. The authors retain their copyright and guarantee the journal the right of first publication of that work.
  3. The authors may adopt other non-exclusive license agreements for the distribution of the version of the published work (eg: deposit it in an institutional telematic archive or publish it in a monographic volume) provided that the initial publication is indicated in this journal.
  4. Authors are allowed and recommended to disseminate their work through the Internet (eg, in institutional telematic archives, repositories, libraries, or on their website).

Open Access Policy

Acces to full text articles is free.

All articles included in REIRE are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Spain License, which allows any act of reproduction, distribution and public communication if you attribute the work to the author and the journal.

Observation

The Journal REIRE is enrolled on the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and refering to open access follows the conduct code suggested by the Open Access Scholary Publishers Association (OASPA). For instance:

  • REIRE publishes regularly (January and July), original research in Open Access.
  • The Journal clearly provides contact information as well as author’s guidelines.
  • The Journal peer review evaluation process is clearly outlined, as well as the editorial and scientific committee.

Regarding the open access policy, REIRE

  1. disseminates peer reviewed manuscripts containing original research, without profit, or restricting any access through registration and other requirements, and
  2. allows for reproduction, distribution and public communication of its content, if and when, the authority and the journal is recognized and established.
  3. Once published, authors can post a copy of their articles in his/their websites and in an Institutional or subject repository providing acknowledgment is given to the original source.

Archiving and Digital Preservation

This journal utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. LOCKSS publisher manifest of REIRE: https://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/REIRE/gateway/lockss

Interoperability protocol

REIRE implements OAI-PMH protocol (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting), a low-barrier mechanism for repository interoperability that expose Dublin Core structured metadata. OAI 2.0 Request: https://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/index/oai?verb=ListRecords&metadataPrefix=oai_dc&set=REIRE

Participation process

To submit a manuscript to REIRE implies that the author accepts all the regulations and requirement stated into the participation process. Therefore, all manuscripts should be submitted following the ethics code and author guidelines. Manuscripts that do not adhere to these guidelines will not be reviewed.

The manuscripts contents are the exclusive responsibility of the authorship

Authors are the exclusive responsible of the manuscripts contents.

The manuscripts should be submitted via the OJS platform of REIRE.

The editorial board records the reception date of the document. If it is an innovation or research article, the committee will choose at least two referees to review it in accordance with a set of standard assessment guidelines. It is important to note that the assessment carried out is “double blind”. For all other kind of submissions the committee undertakes the review itself. Once the review process has been completed, the author is informed of the result for one of the following purposes:

  1. To inform that the submission has been accepted and give the approximate publication date.
  2. To convey the suggestions made by the reviewers and request that the relevant amendments be made, as appropriate.
  3. To inform the author that the article has not been accepted for publication and explain the reasons for this decision.

If amendments are requested, the author will have ten (10) days to send a new version of the text with an explicative letter on the changes or other comments, and this will be the last chance to include content changes. When the committee receives the new version of the manuscript, it will decide whether it is suitable for publication or whether it still requires further modification.

Once a text is considered definitive it is laid out for immediate publication in the issue under construction (in press) in a pdf version including the author’s details and details of the definitive reception and acceptance. When the whole issue is published, the date of publication is included. 

There are no fees –Article Processing Charges (APC)– on editorial process or peer review.

Article's requirements and assessment criteria

Articles for publication must meet the following requirements:

  1. Updated and not have been previously published. REIRE actively checks for plagiarism using Ouriginal (URKUND) platform.
  2. Be written in Catalan, Spanish or English
  3. Comply with the style guidelines
  4. Be methodologically consistent
  5. Be on a topic of interest or that will have a certain impact
  6. Be linguistically correct and well written.
  7. Contribute new ideas, topics or innovative procedures

The assessment criteria employed are as follows:

  1. The article is a new and original contribution.
  2. The title clearly reflects the content of the article.
  3. The summary provides enough information (synthetically: topic or problem, objectives, method, results and conclusions).
  4. Keywords are appropriate.
  5. The wording of the article is clear and correct. Non-sexist use of language (recommendations).
  6. The references are appropriate and updated.
  7. The content organization is clear.
  8. The goals are clearly formulated.
  9. The description of the materials or methods is appropriate.
  10. The results are presented adequately and with sufficient clarity.
  11. The interpretations and the conclusions are sufficient and coherent with the objectives and the data.

Genre perspective and good editorial practices regarding genre equality

REIRE advocates equality between genres through a number of editorial practices:

  • Editorial board composition (> 40 % of members are women).
  • Incluseve language guideline included in the Instructions for Authors (assessment criteria).
  • The full name of the authors of the published articles is included.

Ethics and code of conduct

The editorial team of the journal REIRE (Innovation and Research in Education) follows a series of rigorous technical and ethical protocols in its review and publication system and carefully monitors any suggestion of malpractice.

Our code of ethics is governed by the criteria set out below.

Editors

REIRE follows the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

The editorial team also takes into account the following specific considerations:

Reviewers are selected on the basis of their specific expertise in the field in question.

Editorial decisions are based exclusively on the scientific, innovative or disciplinary merit of submitted articles and make no distinction between authors on the grounds of gender, race, ethnic or social background, genetic characteristics, language, religion, beliefs, political views, minority status, birth, disability, age or sexual orientation.

All information related to articles received by REIRE is treated with the strictest confidentiality throughout the submission, review and publication process. Authors’ anonymity is guaranteed for articles undergoing double-blind review.

Authors

Articles submitted to REIRE must be original, unpublished work and must not plagiarize other published material, either in whole or in part. REIRE actively checks for plagiarism using URKUND platform.

Potential ethical considerations and/or conflicts of interest must be clearly indicated in all submissions. In addition, authors must state all sources of agency and project funding under which their study was carried out.

To be listed as authors of a published work, contributors must: a) have made a substantial contribution to the planning and design or to the analysis and interpretation of the data reported in the study; b) have contributed to the preparation of the submitted article; and c) be able to offer a detailed description of their personal contribution to the research reported in the article and summarise the main aspects of the overall study. Less extensive contributions must be detailed in the acknowledgements.

The authors withhold the rights to all images, photographs, videos and music contained in their work.

If an error is identified once an article has been published, the authors should notify the editorial team so that the necessary changes can be made.

Reviewers

Articles submitted to the journal are reviewed critically, constructively, honestly and anonymously, following the double-blind method.

If a reviewer lacks the necessary experience in a specific subject area, is unable to complete the review by the agreed deadline, or has a conflict of interest, the details must be made known to the editorial team.

The reviewers will notify the editorial team of any similarities between the submitted text and other published work.

Journal History

The journal REIRE is an electronic publication of the Research Section of the Institute of Professional Development (IDP-ICE) of the University of Barcelona. The central aim of this publication is to become a space for consulting and disseminating work on educational innovation and research at different levels and in different fields. REIRE opens a new stage, but it continues with the work of the Butlletí La Recerca, electronic publication of the Research Section, between 2005 and 2008.
The editorial board of the journal consists of:

  • The advisory board, mainly members of the University of Barcelona, is responsible for analyzing the evolution, assessing the interest and scientific quality, and proposing actions to improve the journal.
  • The editorial board, with a high percentage of its members external to the UB, issues reports, evaluates and suggests topics to publish.
  • The executive board prepares each issue, maintains relationships with authors and reviewers and coordinates the editorial and advisory boards.