ISSN (online): 2027-5846

About the Journal

Focus and scope

USBMed Engineering is a scientific publication edited by the Faculty of Engineering, University of San Buenaventura, Medellín, since 2010. Its main objective is to disseminate original-and-relevant research on scientific and technological knowledge that contributes to the development and generation of new knowledge in the field of engineering. This journal publishes scientific articles every six months in compliance with high-quality editorial policies. It is rated in category C of Publindex (Colombia) and has been rated as having index of 15, acoording to Google Scholar.

Editorial Policy

Ingenierías USBMed journal is aligned with the good editorial practices and dissemination of scientific books and articles of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) for all its processes of knowledge management, which can be consulted in Principles of transparency and best practices of COPE .

In addition, the authors must declare and affirm that the manuscript is original, remains unpublished and has not been submitted to evaluation or editorial processes in other journals.

Ingenierías USBMed Rights on the published article

The authors must release the economic rights of their articles indefinitely. In this sense, they must sign a transfer of rights in which they acknowledge that the article is original, and it is not in review process in other journals and that the Ingenierías USBMed journal may reproduce, edit, distribute, exhibit and communicate the article in the country and abroad by printed, electronic, mail or any other means known or to be known, as long as it remains open-access without commercial purpose.

Publication frequency

Ingenierías USBMed journal is a semi-annual online publication. According to its editorial policy, articles can be submitted throughout the year, having two deadlines for the articles to be considered in the next published issue.

The process of publishing articles in the journal is performed twice a year following the stages described below:

1. Reception of articles: The reception of submitted articles remains constantly open, with two deadline dates; February for the articles to be published in the 2nd-volume issue of the current year and August for the 1st-volume issue of the next year.
2. Pair assignment: The pair selection-and-assignment process takes place from February to April for 2nd-volume issue of the current year and from August to October for 1st-volume issue of the next year.
3. Peer review: The reviewers (double-blind peer review) have two deadlines; June and December, to fulfill the evaluation of the articles considered to be published.
4. Correction by authors: The authors will correct/modify the article according to peer reviewers' suggestions during the month subsequent to the reception of evaluation text.
5. Style correction and layout: It tooks one month approximately, after that, the authors have two weeks to accept such corrections.
6. Publication: For the publication of the articles, the authors must send a copyright transfer agreement and their updated CvLAC profile and Google Scholar information. 1st-Volume issue will is published in February and 2nd-Volume issue in August.

Authorship of scientific works, institutional affiliation and some clarities

Ingenierías USBMed journal requires full truthfulness regarding the authorship of the articles submitted. The author is recognized as an individual who actively participated in the research process playing a main role in its construction.

Without exception, authors’ institutional affiliations must be fully reported, as well as their contact information and all the required forms must be signed by them. Each author must present: Google scholar profile, ORCID, and CvLAc if they are Colombian. Foreign authors must provide additional information if required. To avoid confusions, it is suggested that authors always sign their articles in the same way and provide their ORCID codes, it is recommended not to use abbreviations in their names or last names and keep written accents.

Institutional affiliation must always mention the institutions funding, supporting or conducting the research the article comes from; Authors’ academic background should not include names from other institutions to avoid confusion with the current affiliation of the author.

Evaluation process

The editorial team will contact potential reviewers —according to the topic of the articles—, these reviewers will constitute the scientific committee of the volume to be published. A minimum of two external reviewers will be assigned for each article to be evaluated.

The evaluation process follows double-blind reviewing method, therefore the authors will not be aware of the peer reviewer their article was assigned to (their anonymity is essential) and peer-reviewers will not know the authors of the article they are evaluating, this to avoid conflict of interests.

Once the evaluators have accepted to conduct the evaluation, the article will be sent to them in Word format. All information regarding the authors will be excluded. The evaluation form, the Editorial Policies and directions to conduct the evaluation, in a maximum period of 20 days, are also sent to the reviewers.

The evaluation forms received from the reviewers will be considered in the session of the editorial team to decide if the article continues the editing process.

Possible results

1. Accepted without changes: the evaluated article has been accepted without changes by the scientific committee and continues to the final review-phase.
2. Accepted with changes: the evaluated article will continue the editing process provided the the corresponding author conduct the changes indicated by the scientific committee. In the case of form modifications, the article will be reviewed by the editorial team, who will verify that the changes have been properly performed; for slight content modifications, the manuscript will be submitted again for evaluation of the Scientific Committee.
3. Rejected: the article cannot be published within the call of the journal it participated.

Controversy cases

For cases in which two reviewers provide different recommendations regarding the publication of a submitted article, the recommendations will be analyzed and a careful assessment of the evaluations will be made from a qualitative point of view. In case the controversy persists, the manuscript will be sent to an academic peer who has not been involved in the process. The new evaluation will be discussed in a session of the editorial team and the accepted-with-changes or the rejected concept for the submitted article. The rejection implies that, provided the instances to guarantee an ethical procedure have been consulted, this decision cannot be appealed.

Types of articles

USBMed Engineering considers for its publication articles related to engineering, science, technology, research and innovation from undergraduate, postgraduate or continuing education level. The journal mainly considers articles of the following types:

• Scientific and technological research: Documents presenting in detail original results of research projects. Works in this section will serve to exchange applied research conducted in academic and professional field.
• Review article: Documents resulting from the analysis, systematization and integration of results from research papers published on specific knowledge fields in science or technology in order to present their advances and development trends. For this type of articles commonly is conducted a careful bibliographic review of at least 50 references.
• Analytic article: Document that addresses research results from an analytical, interpretative or critical perspective from the authors on a specific topic by using original sources.

Detection of plagiarism and imprecise citation

The editorial team verifies the originality of the article to avoid cases of imprecise citation or plagiarism with the Turnitin service (www.turnitin.com). This software program compares the evaluated articles with current and stored web pages, student works, and publications from leading scientific publishing houses. When an article presents citation problems, it will be returned to the authors to conduct pertinent changes. In cases of high similarity match rate, the article will be automatically rejected, even without being peer-reviewed.

Sponsors

• Universidad San Buenaventura - USB (Colombia)

Help resources

• Universidad de San Buenaventura, Medellín