Submissions

Author Guidelines

WRITING AND PUBLICATION GUIDELINES

• Guidelines for Authors

About originality

This journal accepts unpublished materials of a theoretical, methodological, or practical nature, whether of general application or specifically aimed at development or problem-solving, as well as reviews on topics related to the journal's focus. Therefore, submission to this journal implies the author's explicit commitment that the work has not been submitted to another journal, previously published, or widely disseminated in prior presentations, nor does its content form part of another published work.

The arbitration system follows a double-blind peer review process, and the time between submission, evaluation, and approval is 6 weeks. Below, we provide guidelines for the submission of original and review articles:

There are two types of article submissions for publication in the RIAF electronic journal: original articles and review articles. In general, they should not exceed 15 typed pages according to the rules described later, although larger extensions may be considered on a case-by-case basis.

First page:

Title of the article (in Spanish and English). Clear, brief (no more than 15 words), informative of the content of the work. It is recommended not to include the location or date of the research, and avoid using acronyms or abbreviations.

Full name and surname of the author(s), starting with the main author. Accompanied by other details: academic titles, teaching and scientific category, email address, affiliated institution, faculty, and department as applicable, personal or institutional phone number, city/country, and submission date of the article. If the authors belong to different institutions, they will be identified with numbers at the end of each name, followed by the respective institutions' names with the corresponding numbers.

Include the ORCID code of each author. If the author does not have one, they should register for free at: https://orcid.org/register

Second page:

Abstract: (in Spanish and English) An informative paragraph of no more than 250 words, structured (Introduction - Objective - Materials and Methods - Results and Conclusions), containing the purposes, procedures used, most relevant results, and main considerations of the work, as well as any novel aspects. It should not include abbreviations, formulas, acronyms, references, or illustrations. It must be written in the past tense, in an impersonal tone, and without references to the main text, footnotes, or bibliographic references.

Keywords: (in Spanish and English) The author will reflect the content of the document using 3 to 6 terms or phrases (keywords), placed at the end of the abstract in order of importance, that help identify the content of the article, facilitating subject indexing. The keywords should have capitalized initial letters and be separated by semicolons. AFIDE recommends using the UNESCO Thesaurus.

Text: Reviews will be divided into sections, according to the author's judgment on the parts they should contain, and original articles will be presented in the following order: introduction, materials and methods, results and discussion, conclusions, and bibliographic references.

In the introduction, both the topic to be addressed in the work and its background will be defined. The study's objectives will be presented, along with the justification for its execution. Data and conclusions specific to the work will not be included. It should be written in the present tense, with a descriptive-narrative style. It includes the theoretical and rational foundation of the study, explaining the what and why of the research. The problematic situation (specific reality of interest) should be presented pragmatically to engage readers in the solution. The literature review should be presented in a way that allows the reader to understand the gap in the state of knowledge and the potential research gaps. This section should conclude by outlining the main purpose or objective of the research, also highlighting the importance and scope of the solution.

In the materials and methods section, most of this section should be written in the past tense, with a descriptive style that explains the main criteria for selecting the methods to be used, in correspondence with the research objective, the time period, and the scenarios to be studied. It should also discuss the main limitations of the research. The materials used will be described, as well as the inclusion and exclusion criteria for the entities studied, the composition and essential characteristics of the samples, as well as the procedures and statistical techniques (sampling type, tests, etc.) and quality control measures employed. All of this must be under one essential principle: a specialist with similar knowledge to that of the author should be able to reproduce the study conducted without requiring more information than what the author provides about how the study was carried out and the original data used.

When dealing with widely known methods, references will be provided to works where they are explained in detail; when the methods are less known, a brief description should be added. When unknown methods are used, in addition to providing complete information about them, the reasons, advantages, and disadvantages of their use should be explained. The Microsoft programs used for data processing should be specified.

In the results section, the information will be presented in a logical sequence, using only the relevant statistics and necessary graphs to display the most important findings according to the work's objectives. Information presented in tables and figures will not be repeated in the text. Graphs will be used as an alternative to tables, and the information should not be duplicated in both tables and graphs. The use of one or the other depends on their ability to facilitate understanding of the information and the journal's economy. Intellectual priority claims of the presented content should be avoided, as well as references to incomplete works. This section will address the novel aspects contributed by the research, such as strategies, methodologies, models, etc.

In the discussion section, an analysis will be made by contrasting the results obtained with other findings on the topic, revealing their significance, consequences, limitations, differences, etc., with the aim of showing the relationships between the observed facts. First, the information that denotes the research will be presented, that is, those interpretations with enough importance and significance that distinguish it from other studies. Then, the results obtained will be contrasted with those available in the consulted literature (second literature review) to determine whether they align (or not) with what exists in the state of the art. If applicable, the theoretical consequences of the work and its possible practical applications should also be discussed. The discussion should conclude with a brief summary of the conclusions regarding the scope, limitations, and significance of the research.

The conclusions will be developed in accordance with the objectives of the work. The significance of the results and their limitations in relation to similar findings will be explained. The aspects covered in the introduction and development sections will not be repeated. Unjustifiable conclusions or extrapolations based on the data used will be avoided.

In the conflicts of interest statement section, the author(s) will disclose the existence or absence of any conflicts of interest regarding the content presented in the work.

In the authors contributions statement section, a summary of the main research contributions of the authors involved in the work will be provided. This section does not apply if the manuscript has only one author.

Bibliographic references: The APA 7th edition style will be used. The bibliography list should only include works cited within the text and must cover more than 75% of updated sources from the last five years, as required in the literature review of the state of the art.

References to unpublished data such as conference presentations without ISSN, abstracts, term papers, master's theses, reports, etc., are not accepted. Only those published in databases and institutional repositories will be included.