Submissions to RIED. Priorities for publication

Due to the large number of originals that are arriving at RIED, it is necessary to further adjust the criteria for receiving and selecting them, as RIED only publishes two issues a year, with a limited series of articles and on the official dates of January and July.

Authors who wish to submit articles to RIED may do so without a predetermined date, although for official entry purposes, each article will be considered as received on November 30th (for the July number) and May 30th (for the January number) of each year, dates on which the respective calls will close and the evaluation process of the articles will officially begin (not before) for the following issue. Therefore, it is recommended to submit articles to RIED only during the months of May and November of each year.

Authors are urged not to submit any articles to this journal if there is any violation of any point of the Code or Ethical Declaration for authors.

At RIED we try to carry out a rapid process of initial review of the articles, which aims to reduce the number of those that can go on to scientific evaluation. Thus, in accordance with the RIED guidelines for authors, which is included in this full text and links, those articles that DO NOT FIT one or more (according to relevance) of the following basic criteria will be rejected immediately, or at any time during the process:

* Have as its central object of study the specialized field of RIED: advances in research and innovation within the field of education, open, flexible and distance teaching and learning, e-learning, b-learning, m- learning and digital technologies applied to education, preferably in university contexts (or in situations that can be easily replicated or transferred to higher and virtual education).

* Be scientifically founded and, mainly, following the IMRD framework. The work could be replicable.

* Contribute to deepen the various dimensions and areas of open, distance and digital education or ICTs applied to education. Therefore, those that reiterate objectives, hypotheses and results of other research already published will be rejected.

* Be original and not published, totally or partially, in any medium (plagiarism or self-plagiarism), nor be in the process of being published outside of RIED. If these anomalies are not detected by RIED, the responsibility for non-compliance will be exclusively of the authors of the work. In any case, the Turnitin anti-plagiarism test is passed.

* The Summary (essential section of the article) correctly presents the fundamental elements of the research, for example: introduction, methodology, results, discussion, conclusions...

* Title, Abstract and Keywords appear in English and Spanish (or Portuguese). If the article is in Spanish or Portuguese, the order will be reversed.

* The keywords (pay special attention to this section) are close to those of the European Thesaurus of Education (ERIC). Between 3 and 6 keywords will be proposed.

* The title of the article contains 16 or fewer words.

* The summary contains between 200 and 250 words.

* The TOTAL length of the article (written in Word) is between 5,000 and 7,000 words (excluding bibliographic references). Only exceptionally, in some special articles, a slightly greater extension may be allowed.

* The title of the article, abstract, keywords and text are fully consistent.

* Citations and bibliographical references comply with the format required by RIED (APA-7 Standards).

* Attention, important! The references and citations provide a bibliography that is sufficient (at least 25 references), current (at least 40% of the references are from the latest four years, including the current one), pertinent (necessary and appropriate to the content of the article), relevant (most coming from pepers in recognized journals) and varied (authors both diverse and international).

* Citations and references are fully consistent.

* If there are images, illustrations, graphics... (which must be original or have a license), they have to be high resolution to insert them clearly in the publication. They can be in color, and must always appear inserted within the written text in the Word file and never in separated attached file.

* The links to websites that appear in the article are fully active.

* All the elements that can identify the author/s have been removed from the article: name/s, institution/s, profile/s, self-citations, own references..., as specified in the RIED guidelines.

* All data are introduced in the RIED OJS platform, for all the sections referring to: a) the article (title, abstract and keywords in both languages, in addition to the bibliography), b) each and every one of the authors, in the order in which the one that will appear in the article, with their complete and updated ORCID and between 30 and 50 words of biographical data (performance, position, institution...).

* Completely cover all the items required in the Submission Preparation Checklist.

* If you are responding to a Special Issue call for papers, the article fully complies with the requirements established in the corresponding Call for Papers.

* The translation into the second language, once the article has been accepted, is delivered on time and with high professional and academic quality.

* The complete guideline for authors is expressed in this text and its links.

In the event that any of these requirements are not met, the Editorial Team will reject the work without the option of resubmission. No further correspondence will be maintained with authors of rejected articles.

If all these basic requirements are met, the article can be considered for Preliminary Evaluation and Scientific Assessment.

Due to the volume of articles that are arriving to this journal and that only a few are published in each issue, there could be the case of works that exceed the aforementioned criteria, but that may be rejected at any time during the process because of the limitation to the number of articles that can be published in each issue of RIED.

Thus, in any phase of the review, and in order to meet the number of articles that are published in each issue, those that the Editorial Team consider to be the ones that most and best adapt to the RIED Criteria will be selected. Thus, the Editorial Team will prioritize those articles that have:

* Better fit to RIED objectives.

* Greater general interest related to the field of digital education, primarily with a possible impact on higher education. And with the possibility of impact/application in Latin American countries (Latin America + Spain and Portugal).

* Higher topicality, novelty and originality.

* The most outstanding relevance and valuable information. Those that show the greatest evidence of progress in scientific knowledge and a foreseeable impact that implies academic and scientific interest on the part of other researchers.

* Highest perceived applicability of the results for the resolution of educational problems or for the improvement of learning.

* Greater scientific basis, reliability and proven validity. Better foundation and methodological quality.

* The most correct structure, organization, writing and style of presentation of the material.

* The quality of the (properly cited and referenced) bibliography, and its relevance to the subject

Relevant issues that will be considered to reject papers:

* Does not fit enough the focus and scope of RIED or the interests and topic of this call, if there is one..

* The work is not relevant, timely, or current, or it is anticipated to generate little interest among readers and scholars of RIED.

* The title is of little interest or is confusing, does not correspond to the content of the article, or does not invite reading.

* Authors. When submitting the article (anonymous), not all the authors appear on the platform (journal website), in the correct order in which they will appear in the final work, or any of them is not fully identified: name, surname, institutional email, institution, country, ORCID and a brief biographical note (30-50 words). No subsequent changes will be accepted in terms of adding, removing, or changing the order of the authors.

* The abstract is low quality, not clear, has weak structure, or does not provide an accurate idea of the content of the work. The translation of the abstract is not at a professional/academic level.

* There is a poor compliance with the requirements of the RIED template: formal aspects, length of title (up to 16 words) , abstract (200-250), keywords (from 3 to 6 descriptors)  or complete work (5000-7000 words excluding bibliographic references), as well as the format of citations, references, tables, graphs and images, etc.

* It shows little foundation or is of a poor quality (literature review or state of the art), not supported by sources or citations/references that are: pertinent, relevant, sufficient, varied and current. The same criteria apply for the sections: discussion, contrast, comparison of results with other works, etc.

* It is limited to very specific case studies; refers to a single course, subject or discipline or deals with a single academic period.

* If applicable, it relies on a small, uninteresting population or a poorly representative or incorrect sample.

* There are deficiencies in the data collection instruments, techniques, or procedures, or in their interpretation and analysis. The work has weaknesses in its validity, reliability, contrast, generalization, replicability, etc.

* It applies a less solid or rigurous study methodology.

* It is not current or innovative or reiterates themes, objectives, hypotheses, results, conclusions, etc., that are similar to others already published. It is not original or contributes little to the advancement of scientific knowledge.

* It is basically descriptive or simply shows results from a survey or questionnaire, with pertinent comments and little else, deviating from scientific evidence, contrast, etc.

* There is a lack of coherence or order between the research design, title, abstract, keywords, objectives, methodology, results, discussion, or conclusions.

* The results, discussion, or conclusions are irrelevant.

* The work displays shortcomings in its structure, reasoning, implementation of specialized terminology, arrangement, composition, or grammatical style.

* It veers away from the level of university studies or shows experiences that are challenging to reproduce or implement in the university.

* A phrase or paragraph stemming from plagiarism or self-plagiarism has been detected (unappealable rejection).

* Special attention must be paid to the use of texts generated by artificial intelligence, which must be clearly identified and justified in the work.

* It does not meet APA-7 Standards.

* The translation into the second language presents deficiencies.

* Finally, starting from Vol. 27(2), and given the abundance of articles focused on systematic reviews that are reaching RIED, we are forced to limit the number of those published on that topic. Only those of exceptional quality, well-justified, grounded, and with foreseeable impact would be published.

Unfortunately, the remaining articles that, even having obtained the minimum necessary in the evaluation, will not have the possibility of being published, will be rejected.

Finally, in the case of published articles, their authors agree to be members of the International Council of Scientific Reviewers, at least, for the following three years after their publication.