Instructions for authors

Luna Azul is an electronic journal, edited and financed by Universidad de Caldas (Colombia), a university of public and national nature. This journal is an academic and arbitrated dissemination means issued every six months which distributes unpublished articles related to environmental or ecological issues coming from any discipline or area of knowledge if they address, from any perspective, the ecological-environmental issue understood in its broadest sense.

The journal publishes editorials, scientific and technological research articles, reflections derived from research and reviews, whose general characteristics are:

Editorial. Document written by the editor, a member of the editorial committee or a guest researcher on guidelines in the thematic domain of the journal.

Article of scientific and technological research. Document that presents, in a detailed manner, the original results of completed research projects.

Reflection article. Document that presents finished research results from an analytical, interpretative or critical perspective of the author, on a specific topic, using original sources.

Review article. Document resulting from a finished research in which the results of published or unpublished research are analyzed, systematized and integrated, on a field in science or technology, in order to give an account on the development advances and trends. It is characterized by presenting a careful bibliographic review of at least 50 references.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DOCUMENT

The document must be submitted in Word format with the graphs, tables, photographs and other elements included in the text in the place where they must appear in the final version. Times New Roman 12 font must be used with 1.15 line spacing and a maximum length of 20 pages. If the document size exceeds 10 megabytes, it must be sent compressed in zip format.

Luna Azul Journal publishes articles written in Spanish, English and Portuguese.

The different sections of the article must meet the following characteristics:

Title: must be clear and concise.

Authors:  the names and surnames of all authors must be included and, by automatic note at the end of the text, the academic titles, the institutional affiliation, the contact email address, the ORCID code and the Google Scholar profile link for each of them must be included.

Abstract: the abstract must be no longer than 300 words, of structured type, that must contain: introduction, objective, method, most important result and more relevant conclusion. It must be submitted in Spanish and English.

Keywords: between three and five words included in the Environmental Thesaurus for Colombia (http://www.invemar.org.co/redcostera1/invemar/docs/tesauro_ambiental/naveg.htm) must be added. Keywords must be submitted in Spanish and English.

Introduction: the introduction includes the justification and the objectives of the research, as well as a summary of the theoretical reference.

Materials and method: describe the type of study and its design, as well as the population, the sampling technique and the sample selection process. The instruments and procedures used to obtain and analyze the data must be made explicit.

Results: results must be presented in an orderly, clear and concise manner.

Discussion: the discussion can be presented independently or in the same chapter of the results. It must include the analysis of the relationship between the results obtained and those generated by other authors. It also must point out the coincidences and differences found, emphasize the new aspects, and examine the implications of the findings, their limitations and their projections in future research.

Conclusions and recommendations: the most relevant findings of the research from the point of view of the object of study must be presented in this section. Conclusions and recommendations must be written based on the objectives proposed in the research.

Bibliographical references and notes: the bibliographical references will be submitted based on APA standards, which can be consulted at http: //normasapa.net/normas-apa-2016/. The notes should be reviewed at the end of the text in a consecutive manner and will be used to make clarifications, comments, discussions or suggestions by the author but, under no circumstances, to include bibliographic sources.

Acknowledgments: this section is for the authors to present their gratitude to collaborators or funding institutions that supported in some way the execution of the research.

Potential conflict of interest: this section includes the authors' statement regarding the possible existence of conflicts of interest in the execution of the research.

Sources of financing: the source of financing used for the execution of the investigation must be presented in this section.

Annexes: only if they are indispensable.

DELIVERY OF DOCUMENTS

The contributions should be sent to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

It is important that the subject specifies "Submission of article" and that the electronic address used is available to receive the answers and messages that may arise.

The message should mention the type of article that is being sent: scientific and technological research, reflection derived from research or review.

The submission of the article must be accompanied by the CV resume of each of the authors in a separate file (see format), the declaration of commitment of the authors signed (see format), and the completed checklist (see format).

EVALUATION OF CONTRIBUTIONS

Initially the article will be evaluated by the Director of the Journal to determine if the requirements stated in "Characteristics of documents" and in "Submission of documents" are met. The result of this evaluation will be informed to the sender via email.

If the article complies with the aforementioned requirements, the abstract thereof will be sent for evaluation by the Editorial Committee, in order to determine if the subject matter applies to the journal and if it meets the minimum requirements essential for peer evaluation: originality, novelty, relevance, and methodological quality. The result of this evaluation will be informed to the author who sends the article via email. In this procedure, the Editorial Committee will not know the name(s) of the author(s).

After this approval, the article will be sent to two peer reviewers, of equal or higher educational level than the author or authors. This third evaluation will include the following aspects: originality, conceptual and methodological rigor, structure of the text, treatment of the topic, relevance, formal aspects, and classification of the article according to the perception of the evaluator. In the same way, this evaluation will be informed to the author of the article via email, with the purpose of making the necessary adjustments that the evaluators have requested. This evaluation will be double blind.

Upon receipt of the article with the corrections made, the Director of the Journal will verify compliance with the suggestions of the evaluators and analyze the justifications of those that have not been considered. If the final concept of any of the evaluators was "Approval subject to major changes", the adjusted article will be sent again to the same evaluators, with the purpose of determining if its publication is approved.

Once this phase has been approved, the article will be sent to the editor and, once again, it will be sent to the author to make the necessary adjustments.

Finally, the document already adjusted and designed will be sent to the author to give his approval before proceeding with the publication.

FINAL DECLARATIONS

Luna Azul Journal reserves the rights of printing, total or partial reproduction of the material, as well as the right to accept or reject it and to make any editorial changes it deems appropriate.

The articles of this journal can be reproduced in whole or in part, citing the source and the author. The articles published by Luna Azul Journal do not necessarily reflect the thinking of the journal and are published under the responsibility of the authors.

Taken from the Guide Document of the Permanent Service of Indexing of Colombian Science, Technology and Innovation Journals. National Bibliographic Base - BBN. National Bibliographic Index Publindex - IBN, February 2010, p. 7

GUIDE FOR PEER REVIEW

The evaluation of the articles published by the Luna Azul Journal follows the principle of double blindness and uses the criteria of originality, relevance, methodological rigor, quality of text structure, rigor in the treatment of the topic and formal quality of the writing. The peer reviewers (two per article) must have an educational level equal to or higher than that of the authors and must work in institutions different from those of the authors.

The evaluation carried out by the peers is recorded in an instrument (see format) that has a quantitative evaluation for each aspect and its respective qualitative support. It also includes a final general concept in which the publication of the article is recommended or rejected.

In the first column of the instrument, the item to be evaluated is specified. The maximum score for each item is presented in the second column. The third column is the space to write the assigned rating and, the space in the fourth column, is the one corresponding to the support of the qualification given.

The peer evaluator must make explicit his declaration of conflict of interests for the evaluation, as well as the declaration corresponding to confidentiality and plagiarism.

In order to improve the quality of the journal, its visibility and its academic recognition, peer reviewers must attach their resume (see format), which must include the ORCID code and the Google Scholar profile link.

The Director of the journal will issue an evaluation certificate at the time of receiving the concept and will send it to the corresponding evaluating peer via email.