EDITORIAL PROCESS

The editorial process is a set of practices and procedures that begins once the manuscript is sent to the journal and culminates with its publication. This process consists of different stages that are chained in a correlative manner, so that delays in any of them may cause delays in the successive instances. For this reason, authors must strictly comply with the deadlines requested by the Editorial Committee. Late submission of any type of documentation may be grounds for rejection of a manuscript by the editors. In simplified form, the different stages of the editorial process consist of: 1) submission of manuscripts by authors, 2) formal and editorial review, 3) peer-review or external arbitration of the contents, 4) acceptance or rejection of the manuscript, 5) editorial production, and 6) publication. The general characteristics of each of these stages are described below.

1. SUBMISSION OF MANUSCRIPTS

Manuscripts will be submitted electronically through the ARQUEOLOGÍA journal Portal. For this purpose, authors must register by means of a user name and password. ARQUEOLOGÍA will not accept manuscripts that do not conform to the format and style guidelines stipulated in the current Author Guidelines, are submitted after the deadline established in the specific Call for Papers or are sent by e-mail (see Code of Ethics and Best Practices).

2. FORMAL AND EDITORIAL REVIEW

Once the manuscripts have been received, they will be reviewed by the Editorial Team in order to determine the thematic relevance and adherence to the editorial standards established by the journal. Failure to comply with any of the aforementioned parameters, as well as the lack of any type of documentation or late submission, may be grounds for rejection of a manuscript by the editors.

Manuscripts with referees (see Sections Policies) will be reviewed by the Editorial Team and, subsequently, will be submitted to external evaluation following the guidelines of the Peer Review System. Non-refereed manuscripts will be reviewed in their entirety by the Editorial Team and will not be submitted to external peer review.

3. PEER-REVIEW OR EXTERNAL ARBITRATION OF CONTENTS

In order to guarantee the quality of the contents, refereed manuscripts (see Sections Policies) that have passed the formal review carried out by the editors will be submitted to double arbitration by peers or specialists external to the Editorial Committee, following the guidelines of the Blind Peer Review System for the evaluation of scientific papers. It should be clarified that the development of this stage is necessarily conditioned by the response times of the multiple people involved in it.

The reviewers will be previously selected by the editors, according to their scientific level and thematic affinity with the manuscript to be evaluated. The identity of the evaluators will not be revealed to the authors, guaranteeing the absolute anonymity of the evaluation reports and opinions (see Code of Ethics and Best Practices).

In accordance with the recommendations made by the Committee of Publication Ethics (COPE), peer reviews should be based on the following criteria: scientific relevance, originality, clarity and pertinence. Thus, the evaluators may suggest the modifications they consider significant and pertinent, related to the content, structure, objectives, methodology, results, interpretations and/or bibliographic references. They should: a) be substantiated on the basis of criteria defined in the corresponding evaluation form; b) be objective and respectful of dissent; and c) promote the construction and critical exchange to guide and improve the manuscripts (see Code of Ethics and Best Practices).

The evaluation process will consist of a maximum of up to two (2) rounds of refereeing. During the first round, manuscripts will be reviewed by 2 (two) reviewers. In this instance, the opinion of each of the evaluators may obtain one of the following results: a) Accepted with minor changes, b) Accepted with major changes, or c) Rejected. In case of significant discrepancies between the two opinions, the Editorial Team will review the arguments offered by the specialists and may submit the manuscript for review by a third reviewer.

In case of favorable evaluations, the papers will be sent back to the authors so that they can make all the corrections or modifications requested. Once the pertinent modifications have been made, the authors should send the corrected manuscript together with a Disclaimer Note detailing each and every one of the changes made (both minor and major). This is mandatory, since the Editorial Team will not accept corrected versions without the appropriate Disclaimer Note attached. In addition, in the event that the authors disagree with some of the observations made by the evaluators, they should justify their position in this document. The disclaimer will be delivered to the editors in a separate file and must be signed by each and every one of the authors (see Code of Ethics and Best Practices). The corrected manuscript file should be returned with change control, so that the Editorial Team and reviewers can corroborate the minor and major modifications made.

Finally, if any of the reviewers has requested major changes, the manuscript will be submitted to a second round of arbitration, in order to verify whether the comments made in the first instance were considered or not. In this case, the final opinions may only be of two (2) types: Accepted or Rejected.

4. ACCEPTANCE OR REJECTION OF THE MANUSCRIPT

The final result of acceptance or rejection of a manuscript will be the final decision of the Editorial Team, being this decision unappealable. The decision will be communicated to the authors as appropriate. Acceptance will be subject to the following criteria: a) obtaining a favorable evaluation; b) consideration of all corrections and/or suggestions made by evaluators and/or editors; c) compliance with editorial standards; and d) compliance with the deadlines established by the journal (see Code of Ethics and Best Practices). Once the Editorial Team decides to accept a manuscript, it will pass to the editing or editorial production stage, it cannot be withdrawn by the authors and no further changes can be made to the authorial composition (see Code of Ethics and Best Practices).

5. EDITORIAL PRODUCTION

During the editing stage, the Editorial Committee will undertake the following tasks: 1) proofreading; 2) language revision; 3) layout; 4) proofreading of galley proofs; 5) receipt of the "First Publication Rights Assignment Form" and 6) correction of metadata of the final version. The following is a description of each of the above-mentioned processes:

5.1. Proofreading: Involves the linguistic intervention of the texts with the objective of improving the quality of the writing and making them more comprehensible to the reading public. Thus, the Editorial Team will review the existence of spelling, grammatical, syntactic and semantic errors, as well as the presence of jargon and the adequate use of the specific vocabulary of the disciplinary field.

5.2. Language review: This includes the review of the quality of the English texts present in the manuscripts. This includes the review of the English versions of the title, abstract and keywords, as well as the entire text in the case of manuscripts written entirely in a foreign language. If there are substantial observations about the grammatical and stylistic suitability of manuscripts written in English, the corrections and translations should be made by a professional, and the authors will be responsible for the payment of the corresponding fees (see Code of Ethics and Best Practices). The Editorial Team will request the delivery of a certified translation certificate.

5.3. Layout: It contemplates the formal layout of all the contents that will make up the current issue. For an editorial publication to be attractive, it is important to maintain a balance between content and presentation, thus providing aesthetic and informational homogeneity. Consequently, this instance involves the organization, distribution and presentation of each of the textual and graphic elements that make up each work.

5.4. Correction of galley proofs: After layout, the Editorial Team will generate galley proofs for each of the manuscripts. These are preliminary versions of the papers to be published, prepared with the purpose of detecting typographical and/or layout errors before their definitive publication. These will be made available to the authors so that they can review the manuscripts and send their comments within the deadlines stipulated by the editors. In this instance it will only be possible to correct formal and typographical errors, but rewriting of the text or any other change in the content of the manuscripts (including tables and figures) will not be admitted.

5.5. Receipt of the "First Publication Rights Assignment Form": The Editorial Team will request authors to send the "First Publication Rights Assignment Form" by e-mail. This document must be signed by each and every one of the authors, otherwise the manuscript cannot be published. The assignment of first publication rights, under the Creative Commons 4.0 International (CC-BY-NC-SA) license, implies that the journal does not retain the reproduction rights (copyright) on the work. For this reason, authors retain the right to republish or deposit their work in a secondary way (e.g. on personal websites, academic social networks, institutional repositories), as long as they mention full authorship and the original source of publication in the journal ARQUEOLOGÍA (see Open Access Policy).

5.6. Final version metadata correction: Metadata comprises data that describe other data. It refers to the description of the properties of each manuscript, facilitates interoperability through the application of standards and protocols shared with other systems, and offers broader contexts of meaning in search engines, facilitating the efficient retrieval of information. Thus, once the proofreading of the galley proofs is completed, the Editorial Team will proceed to correct and unify all the metadata associated with the final version of each paper.

6. PUBLICATION

Since 2022 the journal ARQUEOLOGÍA has adopted the continuous publication system, maintaining its usual four-monthly frequency. This technological implementation is based on the need to streamline the processes of scientific communication, with the aim of improving the circulation, availability and scope of the published contents. This modality avoids unnecessary delays and releases the contents one by one, individually, as they favorably pass all the stages of the editorial process detailed above. The contents that meet these conditions will be published in their final version (postprint) through the ARQUEOLOGÍA journal Portal, without waiting for the complete issue to be available. These contents will be immediately citable and will be available in open access, free of charge and without temporary embargoes of any kind (see Open Access Policy).
It should be clarified that the implementation of continuous publication means the disappearance of the classic concept of sequential pagination of the contents, a situation that also transforms the way of referencing them. Instead of using page numbers to cite an article within a published issue, a unique electronic identification number or code is used for each content. By way of example, we cite an illustrative case: