Guidelines for the Submission, Permanence, and Evaluation of Journals in the SciELO Venezuela Collection (2026)

General Information

Evaluation Committee

About the Journals

Structure of Scientific Productions

About the Submission

Permanence and Evaluation of the Journals

• General objective: to contribute to the advancement of scientific research.
• Specific objective: to maximize the visibility of the journals it indexes and the research they communicate, considering articles and other types of documents, as well as associated communication objects.

• Contribute to the development of national and regional infrastructures and capacities for scientific communication according to the state of the art in open science.
• Contribute to improving the policies, management, and editorial operation of journals of increasing quality.
• Contribute to informing public and professional policies and society through the updated communication of research.
• Promote international cooperation in open access scientific communication.
• Foster diversity, inclusion, and accessibility in the global flow of scientific communication.
• Update and improve the methodologies and technologies of the SciELO Publication Model.

1. Scientific knowledge as a global public good. The contents communicated by SciELO journals are available to the whole society, and their availability does not diminish with use, a principle that characterizes SciELO as an Open Science program.
2. Collaborative network work. The systematic adoption of network work is the most efficient means to favor national priorities, create scale, share experiences in the development of capacities and infrastructures, and at the same time, manage asymmetries derived from different national and thematic conditions.
3. Scientific quality. Scientific rigor and quality control must be ubiquitous throughout the research communication flow, with the adoption of standards, good ethical practices, policies, management, and operation, and innovative advances in the search for persistent alignment with the state of the art in scientific communication. This principle supports the indexing criteria for sustainable and increasingly high-quality journals.
4. Alignment with the state of the art. Alignment with the state of the art encompasses updating the methodologies and technologies of the SciELO Publication Model, as well as updating the policies and editorial management of the journals. This principle supports the adoption of innovations in scientific communication in open science.
5. FAIR Principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). The adoption of the FAIR principles as a principle of the SciELO Program guides the adoption of open science practices in all research communication objects of the SciELO Network. The FAIR principles contribute to achieving the specific objectives of maximizing the visibility and interoperability of research communication objects.
6. DEIA Principles (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility). The adoption of the DEIA principles as one of the principles of the SciELO Program guides the SciELO Network and, especially, the policies and editorial management of the journals of the national collections, so that the entire research communication flow of the SciELO Network is carried out under the values of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.

1. Open Access: SciELO Venezuela offers open access to the contents of the peer-reviewed and indexed Scientific Journals in its collection, which means that users can consult and download the productions for free. Selection of Journals: SciELO Venezuela selects Journals that meet editorial and scientific quality criteria to be part of its collection; they must have "Country: Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela or Venezuela" in the web portal of the "International Standard Serial Number" (ISSN).
2. International Visibility: SciELO Venezuela contributes to increasing the visibility of the accepted Journals by indexing them on its platform through the SciELO Venezuela collection; thus giving national and international visibility to the Scientific Productions and Authors.
3. Publication Standards: Journals included in the SciELO Venezuela collection must meet editorial and scientific quality standards, which contributes to promoting research integrity.
4. Indexing and Metadata: Journals hosted in SciELO Venezuela are indexed and assigned metadata to facilitate the search and retrieval of contents. All Journals must have a metadata communication protocol that guarantees the harvesting of scientific productions, such as: MarcXML - NLDT. Dublin Core Model and Qualified Dublin Core. METS. Preservation metadata; or another that is necessary.
5. Interconnection with SciELO International: SciELO Venezuela is part of the broader SciELO International network, allowing interoperability and access to journals from other Latin American countries and other regions.

1. The Evaluation Committee of the SciELO Venezuela Collection is made up of scientific editors representing all the Editors of national Journals in the main areas of knowledge, representatives of academic institutions, as well as researchers or experts in scientific communication.
2. Competences of the Evaluation Committee:
   1. Suggest to the Consultative Committee the "Inclusion" of new titles of Scientific Journals in the SciELO Venezuela collection.
   2. Suggest to the Consultative Committee the "Exclusion" of titles of Scientific Journals from the SciELO Venezuela collection.
   3. Adapt the evaluation criteria for the admission and permanence of Scientific Journal titles in the SciELO Venezuela collection.
   4. Define the performance indicators of the Scientific Journals in the SciELO Venezuela collection that will be published periodically.
   5. Define and improve the functioning of the Evaluation Committee in order to fulfill its objectives efficiently.
   6. Advise and make recommendations to the SciELO Venezuela Consultative Committee to ensure good editorial practices for the journals belonging to the collection.
3. Formation of the Evaluation Committee: The Evaluation Committee will be appointed by the Consultative Committee and will consist of:
   1. A General Coordinator.
   2. The Editors of each of the areas of knowledge defined by the SciELO Venezuela Consultative Committee.
   3. A technician from the Operational Management, who will act alternatively as "secretary" of the Evaluation Committee.
4. The Evaluation Committee will meet when convened by the General Coordinator of SciELO Venezuela; and experts and consultants may participate in its meetings and activities to fulfill specific purposes when necessary.

1. Scientific Character: Journals must publish original scientific productions resulting from scientific research in the specific area of the Journal. They may include other types of contributions, communications, and reviews that will not be considered original articles. The SciELO Venezuela Evaluation Committee may request peer opinions to verify the predominance of original contributions. The journal authorities must clearly define the scope, objective, and editorial policy in accordance with the areas of scientific knowledge.
2. Review Process: The Review process to which the Journal subjects each Production that is published is an important factor that the Author must know before submitting their Manuscript (Proposal of the Scientific Production presented by the Author to the Journal for publication consideration). SciELO Venezuela values and recommends "Double-Blind Peer Review," though this is not a limitation, provided the production review method is accepted by the Scientific Community to which the Journal is directed.
3. Editorial Board: The composition of the Journal's "Editorial Board" must be public and appear in the corresponding section on the journal's web portal (If using OJS, in the Section designed for this purpose). Its members must be recognized specialists, of national and international origin, duly identified with: "Open Researcher and Contributor ID" (ORCID-ID), personal data (First and last names), institutional affiliation, e-mail, and country. Editorial Board members may belong to the same institution or geographic region up to 35%. The journal adopts the DEIA recommendations of C4DISC and the proposals of the Committee on Publication Ethics: as editorial policy for the composition of the Editorial Committee. Selection will be based on academic merit criteria, editorial experience, and commitment to scientific publication ethics. Gender, institutional, geographic, and thematic diversity will be guaranteed to favor plural and equitable representation in the editorial team. The incorporation of professionals from different trajectories and contexts, especially from underrepresented groups, will be promoted. Each editorial committee member must: Actively participate in the assigned tasks (manuscript review, editorial decision making, coordination of special issues, among others). Respect established deadlines and maintain fluid communication with the editorial team. Promote inclusive and quality editorial practices, according to the journal's policies. Journal editors are urged to use OJS as editorial management software with public access, as well as to upload information properly.
4. Periodicity or publication frequency and number of articles per year: As periodicity is an indicator of the Journal's Scientific Production flow and an indicator related to the timeliness and speed of communication, all Journals in the SciELO Venezuela collection must comply with the periodicity indicated in the "International Standard Serial Number" (ISSN) portal file. Since its creation, SciELO opted for online publication and seeks to maximize the use of its potential. One of them is the innovative continuous publication (CP) modality. CP allows publishing documents without having to wait for the complete composition of fascicles or serial editions. This modality promotes speed in the scientific communication process and in the availability of research results in a timely manner for authors, scientific information users, and funding agencies.
   
   Considering that all journals belonging to the SciELO Venezuela collection must move to continuous publication, Table 1 presents the minimum and maximum number of scientific productions per year to be published.
   
   Table 1. Minimum and maximum number of scientific productions per year
   

   Area of Knowledge	Minimum	Maximum	Recommended
   Agrarian Sciences, Environmental Ecology and Earth	30	240	90
   Biological Sciences	30	240	90
   Computer Science and AI	30	240	90
   Communication Sciences	30	240	90
   Sports Sciences	30	240	90
   Architecture and Urbanism	30	240	90
   Engineering	30	240	90
   Humanities, Philosophy, Linguistics, Letters and Arts	30	240	90
   Legal and Political Sciences	30	240	90
   Educational Sciences	30	240	90
   Health Sciences	30	240	90
   Applied Social Sciences	30	240	90

   
   Journals starting their application to belong to the SciELO Venezuela collection, which have an amount of Productions published in the last year immediately prior to their application below the recommended minimum, may be admitted to the Collection according to the Evaluation Committee's recommendation. After their inclusion in SciELO Venezuela, the minimums and maximums recommended in the previous table must be strictly met.
5. Antiquity: To apply to belong to the SciELO Venezuela Collection, the Journal must be at least 2 years old according to the ISSN portal and have published the corresponding Issues for that period.
6. Punctuality of publication: Journal Issues must be available to the Scientific Community punctually according to their periodicity indicated in the ISSN portal. Journals may present "Special Issues" provided they are declared in their rules; such Special Issues will not be taken into account for any evaluation by SciELO Venezuela.
7. Multidisciplinary Journals: Journals with a "Multidisciplinary" classification in the ISSN Portal must clearly define their specific area of knowledge competence.

1. Title, Abstract, and Keywords: Being a Spanish-speaking Collection, it is recommended that Scientific Productions be developed in Spanish (Not limitative), having a "Title", "Abstract", and "Keywords" or "Descriptors"; for SciELO Venezuela, international visibility is fundamental, which is why the aforementioned sections must also be presented in another language such as English, Portuguese, French, or another deemed convenient by the Journal. The use of the DeCS or MeSH thesaurus will be valued when choosing keywords referring to Health Sciences articles; for Social and Human Sciences, the UNESCO Thesaurus; and for Agro and Sea, the AGROVOC Thesaurus.
2. Standardization: The Journal will specify the standard followed for the presentation and structuring of manuscripts, presentation of bibliographic citations and descriptors, so that its compliance can be evaluated. The adoption of a standard for bibliographic citations, such as ACM, ACS, APA, ABNT, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, MLA, Turabian, Vancouver, or another required by the Journal, is recommended. This standard must be clearly indicated in the Journal's bibliographic format in the instructions for Authors, Editorial Guidelines, or any other section the Journal uses for this purpose.
   Ensuring high quality in Scientific Productions is fundamental for SciELO Venezuela. Therefore, the Journal is urged to define in its Editorial Guidelines the types of Scientific Production (Article, Investigative Advance, Essay, Bibliographic Reference, Systematic Review, Technical Fact Sheet, Case Study, Letter to the Editor, or other) that they will accept to be presented to the academic community. Similarly, the length of the text and the parts that will make it up must be defined, such as: Introduction, Development, and Conclusion (if applicable). It is urged to use fonts like "Arial", "Times New Roman" or another suitable for reading; similarly, the font size should not be less than 10 pts. Regarding text distribution in columns and layout, it will be at the Journal's discretion to satisfy the reading Scientific Community to which the Productions published in the Journal are directed.
3. Identification of Authors: To guarantee the proper identification of authorship, Scientific Productions will contain complete Author information (Principal Author and Co-Authors when applicable), including first and last names, latest academic degree obtained, correspondence e-mail address, ORCID (which is recommended to be public access and properly loaded or filled out), home institution ("Affiliation"), and country. The order of appearance of authors is the authorship team's decision; however, the CRediT taxonomy must be used to register authors' contributions transparently.
   Note: Journals using OJS as editorial management software are urged to instruct authors to validate their ORCID on the platform, so both systems are properly linked and the metadata process is valid.
4. Unique Identifier of Productions: Identifying the Journal's productions is an indispensable factor for the Scientific Community. Following international standards, SciELO Venezuela requires each production to have its unique identifier per Journal production and its respective DOI.
5. About the Reception, Review, and Publication periods of Scientific Productions: Compliance with review periods is a very important factor when guaranteeing the quality of scientific productions published by Journals in the SciELO Venezuela collection. Therefore, the time from the date of reception to the date of acceptance (Review process) should not be less than four weeks. In the case of online Continuous Publication, the period between acceptance and publication should not exceed 15 continuous days. In any case, these dates must be indicated in the publication (Reception Date, Acceptance Date, and Publication Date).
6. Identification of the Scientific Production: To guarantee the identification of the Scientific Production in the academic community, it must contain both in the header and footer of each page the Journal's data (Name, Publisher ISSN, type of Creative Commons License managed by the Journal, Volume, Number, and Year). It must also include the type of production (see Standardization), author identification, Production Identification (Unique Identifier of the Productions), and Reception, Review, and Publication periods of the Productions.
7. Publication Formats: To guarantee both visibility and reading, the Journal will publish each Scientific Production in the most relevant electronic formats to date, such as: PDF, EPUB, and HTML, with other formats being able to be incorporated if necessary.

1. The application: Once the Editor-in-chief or Journal manager verifies each of the criteria in this document, they may formally present their application to the SciELO Venezuela Consultative Committee to belong to the collection via e-mail at comiteevaluador.rev@gmail.com; for this purpose, the SciELO Venezuela Consultative Committee will publish the formats to be submitted, which will be:
   1. Letter requesting incorporation of the Journal to the collection signed by the Journal Editor, which must contain: data of the Institution to which the Journal belongs (Affiliation), e-mail, telephone number, and address.
   2. Authorization from the Institution to which the Journal belongs to be nominated to join the SciELO Venezuela Collection.
   3. Journal evaluation form completed by the editor with all supporting documents required for this purpose.
   Upon receiving the request, the SciELO Venezuela Consultative Committee will forward it to the Evaluation Committee to contact the Journal to request the necessary material for its evaluation.
2. Admission procedure: The admission of a Journal into the SciELO Venezuela collection will require the corresponding positive report from the Evaluation Committee to be submitted to the SciELO Venezuela Consultative Committee. The evaluation comprises three (3) basic aspects:
   1. Format: regarding the adaptation to the Journal's Publication Standards. The evaluation of format aspects includes an analysis of a set of characteristics based on international studies and standards on scientific journal publishing. There are mandatory points and, in general, compliance with at least 80% of them is accepted.
   2. Endogamy: to guarantee the plurality of critical and constructive thought, the evaluation of endogamy will be based on the declared affiliation of the Editorial Board, the people who evaluate the works (Reviewers), and the Authors. To avoid endogamy, 50% of the members (Affiliation) of the Journal's Editorial Board must be external to the Institution to which the Journal belongs; regarding Reviewers, 30% of the members must be external to the Institution to which the Journal belongs.
   3. Content, to ensure scientific quality: All Journals must guarantee the originality, quality, and reliability of the Scientific Productions they publish. For this, they must subject each Production to a review process by specialized software that verifies the similarity of the production, the use of artificial intelligence (Anti-plagiarism); review by specialized peers; and any review method deemed appropriate to guarantee the quality of the Scientific Production.
   Journals that satisfactorily meet the previous aspects will be evaluated regarding their content in relation to the following characteristics:
   1. Representativeness of the Editorial Board, Reviewers, and Authors.
   2. Scientific character of the journal's articles.
   3. Peer review process.
   4. Importance for the development of the SciELO Venezuela collection.
   The documentation will be analyzed by the person the Evaluation Committee designates for each Application, who will present the Journal to the rest of the members for discussion and present their recommendation to the SciELO Venezuela Consultative Committee. The Evaluation Committee's report may contain recommendations for improvements and modifications, which the Journal will implement within the specified period.
3. Journals already included in another Index: The Evaluation Committee may suggest to the SciELO Venezuela Consultative Committee the Automatic inclusion (Upon prior Request and verification) of Journals found in other Indexes or Catalogs. For this purpose, Journals in SCOPUS or WOS—being scientific content Indexes, and since Journals in such Indexes meet a large part of the inclusion requirements for the SciELO Venezuela Catalog—may be included only with the Application Letter from the Editor or Journal Manager.
4. Markup Commitment: Journals that, after passing the admission process, are included in the SciELO Venezuela collection, commit to assuming continuous markup in the SciELO Venezuela Catalog, as established in the section on "Periodicity or publication frequency and number of articles per year" of this document.

1. Evaluation criteria to determine permanence: All indicators adopted in the evaluation of Journals for their admission into SciELO Venezuela will be applied for their permanence. Compliance with the improvement recommendations presented in the Journal's admission report must be treated as an indicator for its permanence in the SciELO Venezuela collection. A Journal's permanence in the SciELO Venezuela collection will be based on compliance with the following indicators:
   1. Punctuality of publication: Delivery punctuality is measured by compliance with the section "About Periodicity or publication frequency and number of articles per year". Strict compliance is required. Journals that are not punctual may be excluded from the collection.
   2. Journal usage indicator: Journal usage will be measured by the monthly evolution of the number of accesses or visits to the Journal's content. If Journal usage is systematically low and/or decreasing, the Journal's permanence in the collection may be reviewed by the Evaluation Committee, which will study the causes and possible solutions, or propose the Journal's exclusion from the Collection.
   3. Impact indicator inside: The impact indicator is measured based on the citations the Journal receives and must be evaluated in conjunction with Journal titles in the same area. The increase in the impact factor or its stabilization at the average value of Journals in the same area will be considered positive results; therefore, it is a guarantee of the Journal's permanence in the SciELO Venezuela collection. It is important to point out that the maximum limits established in the section about "Periodicity or publication frequency and number of articles per year" must be strictly respected, this will guarantee the quality of each Scientific Production.
   4. Annual Journal Self-Evaluation: All Journals in the SciELO Venezuela collection must present an Evaluation Scale (Baremo) of their annual management; this will be provided by the SciELO Venezuela Consultative Committee and presented in the first quarter of the following year for verification and validation by the Evaluation Committee. The evaluative and approval criteria will be indicated in this Evaluation Scale, and the Journal's passing of the Evaluation is a mandatory condition for its permanence. If there are non-conforming aspects but the final evaluation is passing, these aspects must be overcome in the next Evaluation.
2. Title exclusion process: The exclusion of a Journal from the SciELO Venezuela collection will require the Evaluation Committee's report presented to the SciELO Venezuela Consultative Committee. Journals that do not publish for a year will be automatically excluded from the Collection. If unfavorable results are verified in a Journal's evaluation, a notification will be sent regarding the aspects that must be improved, which must be addressed within the timeframe established by the Evaluation Committee.
3. Appeal: The person responsible for editing the Journal may appeal the SciELO Consultative Committee's decision at any time, both in cases of non-admission and exclusion from the SciELO Venezuela collection. The appeals will be examined by the Evaluation Committee and the Journal may be re-evaluated. The Evaluation Committee's report will be sent to the person responsible for editing the Journal through the SciELO Consultative Committee.
4. Readmission: Journals excluded from the SciELO Venezuela collection may be readmitted provided they once again meet the inclusion and permanence criteria of the SciELO collection. Readmission will be evaluated by the SciELO Venezuela Evaluation Committee. Readmission will not be effective immediately after a title's exclusion from the SciELO Venezuela collection. To be re-evaluated, the Journal must demonstrate that it meets the criteria again in at least four consecutive issues or for a period of one year.

What is not present in these guidelines will be left to the discretion of the Evaluation Committee and the SciELO Venezuela Consultative Committee.

In a meeting convened for this purpose, the guidelines of the SciELO Venezuela collection are approved today, on the 16th day of the month of March in the year 2026.