Focus and Scope

Interacciones is a scientific journal that is based on the double-blind paper review, whose aim is to promote the dissemination of research in health psychology, clinical psychology and family psychology. This journal is edited by the Instituto Peruano de Orientación Psicológica – IPOPS, always maintaining its editorial independence. This open-access journal publishes papers in English.

Interacciones respects the criteria established by the indexing systems in terms of editorial characteristics. Those interested in sending manuscripts can download our guide of "PUBLICATION NORMS". The journal has a permanent call for articles; that is, authors can submit articles for consideration throughout the year.

The journal is aimed at researchers, professionals and students in behavioural sciences and psychological research, from a broad thematic and theoretical spectrum. Thanks to the sustained increase in the number of manuscripts received, between 2017 and 2020, the journal was published three times a year (January, May, and September). From 2021 onwards, the journal will have a continuous periodicity publishing the articles as soon as they are accepted.

We focus on developing efficient and effective publishing processes, on average the initial editorial decision is issued in less than 30 days.

 

Section Policies

Editorial

They are usually comments or analysis, requested by the editor, about an article published within the same number in which the publisher is made. For this type of publications, it is recommended 900 words and 10 references maximum.

Original paper

Qualifies as an original article, empirical manuscripts written in English. It is based on the review of external peers in the double-blind paper review. The author undertakes not to submit simultaneously in other journals the articles submitted for possible publication in Interacciones.

The author (s) must accompany their proposal with a letter of originality (https://ipops.pe/inicio/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Carta-de-originalidad.docx), where they declare to be the author of the proposed document and that it has not been published totally or partially in another print, electronic, internet or any other means of publication. That all sources are duly cited and referenced (adding doi if any). Declares to be the owner of the copyright or to have the authorization of those who own them, of the content and materials included in the article, so any claim on this subject is the sole responsibility of the author.

The letter must be signed by all the corresponding correspondent author and be addressed in PDF format to the email revistaintecciones@ipops.pe

The editorial committee of Interacciones reserves the right to make the correction of style and editorial changes that it deems necessary to improve the work, in the same way, to advance or postpone the accepted articles with the purpose of giving a better thematic composition to each issue.

The journal "Interacciones" recommend that the minimum guidelines be used for reports on health and behavioural science research provided by the EQUATOR Network when you are making your manuscripts, and FAIRsharing.org to report checklists for research. Authors should adhere to these guidelines when drafting their manuscripts, peer reviewers will be asked to consult these checklists when evaluating such studies.

1. Randomized clinical trials (CONSORT).
2. Systematic reviews or meta-analyses (PRISMA).
3. Observational studies (STROBE).
5. Qualitative research (COREQ).
6. Prognostic/diagnostic studies (STARD and TRIPOD).
7. Economic evaluations (CHEERS).
8. Quasi-experimental studies (TREND).

Review paper

In this type of study, we analyze an existing theory, present a new theory, and contrast the limitations or advantages of one theory with respect to another, analyzing them critically. The structure can be flexible according to the author's criteria, it is suggested: introduction (the approach of the problem and relevant aspects that the author points out), development of the topic (here the sections that allow better visualization of the subject are considered), discussion (contrast of the ideas discussed), conclusions, conflict of interest, financing, and references.

 

Study protocol

The study protocol is used to transparently report the hypotheses, the fundamentals and the methodology of a study so that in the final study the steps are followed as reported or failing to provide reasonable explanations for a change of the protocol. To conduct this type of study are to avoid publication bias and ensure the reproducibility of the results. Interacciones accept different types of study protocols, but it is recommended to follow EQUATOR guidelines to perform systematic review protocols (PRISMA-P) or randomized clinical trial protocols (SPIRIT).

 

Case study

These are reports obtained when working with an individual, group, community or organization. They illustrate a problem; they indicate the means to solve a problem and / or give evidence about new required research, clinical applications or theoretical issues. The following structure is suggested: introduction (the approach of the problem and relevant aspects that the author points out), method (background, evaluation, intervention, etc.), results, discussion, conclusions, conflict of interest, financing, and references.

The journal strongly recommend that authors adhere as closely as possible to the EQUATOR Case Reports (CARE) document.

Letters to the editor

Letters to the editor are often written in response to a particular article. These letters can be used to highlight some specific points, to correct any misunderstandings or errors that the article contains and to reinforce key messages.

 

Peer Review Process 

1. Conformity of the documents sent

First, all submitted manuscripts are passed through a compliance check by one of the editors. The editor verifies that the editorial policies in force are being followed and that the documents sent are in the requested formats (manuscript without contact details, title and author page, etc.).  If these requirements are not achieved, the document will not continue the evaluation process and will be sent to the author for corrections.

2. Initial review

Secondly, a responsible editor is assigned to the manuscript. The editor has the function of performing an initial review of the document. At this stage, it is decided if the manuscript goes to a peer review or if it receives an editorial rejection (no peer review). The initial review aims to select studies with sound methodologies and publication potential. That is, if the manuscript passes the initial review satisfactorily and meets the minimum criteria of scientific quality, it is sent for peer review. 

On the other hand, the reasons for editorial rejection could be due to the fact that the manuscript does not conform to the lines of the journal (health psychology, clinical psychology, family psychology), presents serious methodological problems, or has a high index of similarity in Turnitin (plagiarism).  In this stage, the responsible editor is guided by the evaluation of plagiarism through Turnitin.

3. Peer review

Thirdly, studies that move to the peer review stage receive an evaluation by external national and international peers (to the institution) in the double-blind paper review modality. That is, the identity of the author and reviewers will not be revealed during the evaluation. However, if the article is published, reviewers will be given the option of receiving credit in the final section of the article by being designated as reviewers of the manuscript. 

When the evaluation of the manuscript is concluded, the author will receive notification of comments, observations, suggestions, and the opinion (publishable, publishable with modifications, or non-publishable) of the reviewers. If necessary, suggestions and changes will be sent to be resolved before publishing the article. 

Peer reviewers are selected by the responsible editor, the editorial council, and/or the scientific committee. They must be researchers who have previously published on the topic under review. In addition, the editorial board and the editor will jointly evaluate the case if there are problems related to unreported conflicts of interest or ethical misconduct in research during the review process.

Standards from the American Psychological Association's (APA) seventh-edition publication manual will be used throughout the review process. Finally, all peers will use the following rubric to evaluate the manuscripts received: http://ipops.pe/inicio/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Actas-de-evaluación-de-articulos-científicos-v4.docx

4. Response to peer review

Fourth, when the authors receive the comments of the peer reviewers, they will have to send a new document with change control and a letter indicating the solution of the corrections. The letter should contain a detailed response to each review or editorial point. The details should include an exact description of the changes made and where they are found (e.g., Methods section, page 3, paragraph 5).

If the authors disagree with a comment raised by the reviewers, they will have to provide a detailed rebuttal that will help to explain and justify their decision in a convincing and substantive way. On the other hand, if the peer reviewers consider that the manuscript does not yet meet the standards of scientific quality requested by the journal, a re-evaluation will be required. Re-evaluation consists of resubmitting comments in order to improve the quality of the manuscript. This stage should be repeated as many times as the editors consider necessary in order to improve the quality of the manuscript.

5. Acceptance of the manuscript

Fifth, when the new version of the manuscript (with changes) is received, the responsible editor and the other editors decide whether the manuscript should be accepted or not. This decision is notified to the authors.

After the acceptance of the manuscript, it goes to the style editor. When the corresponding edition is made, the article is returned to the author to indicate his agreement within the deadline. The author must precisely indicate if there are any changes that he or she does not accept, in order to make the necessary modifications. In addition, the author and the editors are responsible for all statements made in the published version of their article.

6. Open science options

Sixth, if the article is accepted, the journal Interacciones offers the possibility for authors to jointly publish their database, code (e.g., script or do), instruments and any material they consider relevant to replicate the study. In addition, the authors decide whether or not the communication between the authors, the reviewer, and the editor can be public and presented in the manuscript as supplementary material. 

On the other hand, the journal Interacciones gives reviewers the option to decide whether they wish their name to be noted once the article is published. This is done in order to make the review process transparent and to give credit to the reviewers. Likewise, the name of the editors responsible for the article will be published at the end of the article.

7. Editorial times

Finally, the editorial processes have an average time to provide conformity of the documents sent which is 7 days, the initial review time is 30 calendar days, the peer review has a time of 2 to 4 months and the style and layout review has an average time of 30 calendar days.

It should be noted that for the process of the initial review and peer review, the author will have 30 calendar days to raise the observations (if more time is required it should be noted in writing). Within the published article, the key dates in which each of these editorial processes were carried out (date of submission, review, acceptance, and online publication) will be indicated.

 

The policy of transparency in the review

Through this policy, we seek a more transparent review process. Therefore, we encourage authors to allow communications between reviewers and editors about their manuscripts to be added as supplementary material. In addition, we invite authors to share their databases, codes, and any other tools that allow for replication of their study as supplementary material. This should be specified in the Open Science Form.

Also, the editors responsible for the articles will place their names on the articles they review. Also, reviewers will be given the opportunity to place their name as a reviewer of the manuscript (only those who decide to do so).

 

Publication Frequency

Interacciones between 2015 to 2016, published two issues a year (June and December). Thanks to the sustained increase in manuscripts received, between 2017 and 2020, the journal was published three times a year (January-April, May-August, and September-December). From 2021 onwards, the journal will have a continuous periodicity publishing the articles as soon as they are accepted. It is estimated to publish an average of one to three papers per month.

 

Open Access Policy

We are a publication subsidized by the Instituto Peruano de Orientación Psicológica - IPOPS, an institution committed to the social distribution of knowledge. The Interacciones journal, from its origins, has offered all its contents through the Internet without any type of restriction. For this reason, there is no charge for the sending of items (submission charges) or charges for processing (APC).

Interacciones adheres to the Budapest Open Access Initiative (2002), which "allows any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or add a link to the full text of (his) articles, trace them to their indexing, incorporating them as data in software, or using them for any other purpose that is legal, without financial, legal, technical or embargo time barriers on the published content, apart from those that are inseparable from access to the Internet itself ".

To strengthen our open access policy, Interacciones is published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license, which allows sharing (copying and redistributing the material in any medium or format) and adapting (remixing, transforming and creating from the material), under the condition that the corresponding credits are given the articles, PDF, HTML and other formats.

 

Archiving

This journal uses the LOCKSS system to create a file system distributed among collaborating libraries, which allows creating permanent archives of the journal for conservation and restoration purposes.

 

Copyright

In case the article is approved for publication, the authors retain the copyright and give the journal the right of the first publication and that they can edit it, reproduce it, distribute it, exhibit it and communicate it in the country and abroad through printed and digital media.

The digital version of the journal is registered under a Creative Commons license (Under Creative Commons License): Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Therefore, this work can be reproduced, distributed and publicly communicated in digital format, provided that the names of the authors and Interacciones are recognized: Journal of Advances in Psychology.

Therefore, it is established that authors can make other independent and additional behavioural agreements for the non-exclusive distribution of the version of the article published in this journal (eg, include it in institutional repositories or publish it in a book) as long as it is clearly indicated that the work was published for the first time in this journal.

 

No costs for reception or publication

The journal Interacciones published by the "Instituto Peruano de Orientación Psicológica" does not have charges or fees for the processing of articles (reception, initial review, peer review, acceptance or publication of articles) in any of the accepted formats (empirical studies, methodological articles, theoretical articles, and case studies). The Instituto Peruano de Orientación Psicológica covers all the costs of the publication process. Therefore, at no point in the editorial process will authors be asked to pay a fee for submitting, revising, editing, typesetting, translating, or publishing articles in the journal. Interaciones has no article processing charges (APC).

 

Ethical principles and good publication practices

Manuscripts submitted for evaluation by Interacciones is subject to compliance with the ethical principles contained in the different declarations and laws on intellectual property and specific copyrights of the country where the research was conducted. Therefore, the authors of the texts that are sent must sign the letter of originality (https://ipops.pe/inicio/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Carta-de-originalidad.docx), assignment of rights and full compliance with the ethical principles and laws that correspond to their country of origin.

Interacciones is guided by international standards on intellectual property and copyright under Creative Commons license (Under Creative Commons License): Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

The authors, the editor, the members of the Editorial Team and the Scientific Committee, and the peer reviewers of the manuscripts follow the international ethical standards (http://publicationethics.org) in order to seek respect for the identity of the manuscript. author and avoid the fabrication of results, falsification or omission of data and, above all, plagiarism.

Interacciones use the Turnitin system to detect textual copy in the resources coming from the internet. Plagiarism will be understood as the identical copy of a part of a text where the source from which that information has been taken is not clearly identified. In the case of using paraphrasing, similarly, it should be cited as appropriate as indicated by the regulations of the publication manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) in its seventh edition.

 

Plagiarism detection policy

Interacciones ensure compliance with all national and international ethical standards in the publication process. To do this, it relies on the international standards of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and uses the services of Turnitin for plagiarism detection.

In case of detection of plagiarism, the procedures followed are based on the following information provided by COPE at the following link: http://publicationethics.org/files/All_Flowcharts_English_0.pdf

Some of the responsibilities of the participants are:

Editors (as): will supervise the publication processes, following the highest ethical standards. They will ensure that the articles are reviewed by peer specialists in the field. Clearly inform about the Publication Norms.

Authors (as): will present results of rigorous, transparent and ethical research processes, assuming responsibility for published research. They should describe their research methods in such a way that the scientific community can corroborate or replicate the data. They will refrain from sending the manuscript simultaneously to two or more journals. They will disclose the sources of financing and the relevant conflicts of interest, when they exist, and will declare if there is a conflict of interest.

Reviewers (as): undertake to report possible fraud or plagiarism of the evaluated research. Being able to refrain from using the information present in the manuscripts that they review until they are not published in the journal. They will evaluate the articles rigorously, objectively and in the established time. They will base their observations and make when appropriate, contributions to improving the quality of the manuscript.

 

Declaration of conflicts of interest

Authors who post articles to Interacciones must ensure that their procedures and methods are in accordance with international ethical standards (http://publicationethics.org), this guarantee will be written in the originality letter (https://ipops.pe/inicio/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Carta-de-originalidad.docx) where the authors must indicate if there are any conflicts of interest, making fully responsible the authors of the ethical violations in which they may have incurred within the research from which the article derives. In the same way, the author is obliged to report any conflicts of interest that his work may have if there is one.

Both the members of the editorial committee and the editor of this journal can submit articles, however, for these cases, only one application can be submitted every two years. In order to guarantee impartiality in the review of the articles by the editorial committee, the editor will be the person in charge of carrying out the normal course of the editorial process declared in the instructions for authors. When the article is submitted by the editor, the editorial process will be carried out by a member of the editorial committee.

Interacciones will reject all those articles that implicitly or explicitly contain experiences, methods, procedures or any other activity that follow practices that are unethical, discriminatory, offensive, aggressive, et cetera; or those that, if present, do not clearly express any type of conflict of interests, and the publication committee will then decide on the opinion of the Editorial Committee.

 

Policies for reporting funding

Within a section of the article entitled "Funding", all authors should reveal any financial relationships with other persons and/or organizations, even if not directly related to the article submitted.

Consultancies, shares, ownership, honoraria, paid expert testimony, patents or patent applications, and travel grants should be reported. This should be done within 3 years of the start of the article submitted. If there are no conflicts of interest, authors should declare that none exist.

In addition, the sources that supported the study should be reported. This should be presented together with the names of the sponsors and communicate the role they played in the different phases of the research and communication of results. In case the sponsor does not play any role in the research, this should be clearly described. If the funder of a study has a proprietary or financial interest in the outcome of the research, the editor will ask the authors to sign a statement indicating that they had full access to all the data. Moreover, the authors assume full responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the analyses performed.

 

Retraction and Errata Policy

This policy is created to safeguard the rigor of published manuscripts and transparency in the process of scientific communication. Journal editors can retract the publication of an article using the COPE retraction guide, the Errata publication registration guide, and the SciELO retraction registration and publication guide.

The publication must be retracted in the following cases:

• The editors have evidence that the findings are unreliable due to substantial error or as a result of manufacturing or falsification.
• This is a case of plagiarism.
• The findings have been previously published elsewhere without proper reference to the previous sources or without notifying the editor, without permission to republish, or without justification.
• Contains information, material, or data without permission to use.   
• Copyright has been violated or presents other legal problems.
• Represents unethical research.
• Was published due to a fraudulent peer review process.
• An author or more failed to properly report conflicts of interest, and this according to the interpretation of the editor may have affected the interpretation of the results or recommendations of editors or reviewers.

Notification of retraction of an article must be as follows:

• Within the article hosted in the OJS of the journal and in the rest of the databases where it is indexed, it will be indicated that the article in question was retracted and the reason for the retraction will be specified.
• Clearly identify the retracted article (for example, the title and authors will be included in the header of the retraction or the retracted article will be cited).
• It will be clearly identified as a retraction.
• It will be published promptly to avoid spreading misinformation.
• It will indicate who retracted the article.
• The reasons for the retraction of the publication must be indicated.

Also, the editors will send to all the bases (where the journal is hosted) a communication of errata or retraction as soon as possible for publication following the guidelines of the Guide for the registration of publication of Errata.

 

Authorship criteria

All authors must have participated as much as necessary in the manuscript to take public responsibility for the contents and possible repercussions of the manuscript.  According to the recommendations given by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, authorship should be based on the following 4 criteria:

1. A substantial contribution to the conception or design of the article; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of the data; and
2. he writing of the article or its critical review of the intellectual content; and
3. The approval of the final product for publication; and
4. Agreeing to be held accountable for all aspects of the work to ensure that issues related to the accuracy or completeness of any part of the article have been properly investigated and resolved.

In addition to being accountable for the parts of the article that you have made, you should be able to identify the specific parts that each co-author has developed. Authors must also be able to rely on the contributions of their co-authors.

All persons named as authors within the article must meet the 4 criteria for authorship, and all persons who meet the 4 criteria must be identified as authors. Those who do not meet the 4 criteria will be acknowledged in the acknowledgments section.

Also, the authors must declare what specifically they contributed to the paper (see the Author Contribution Policy).  Requests from authors to designate equal contributions or shared authorship positions (e.g., first two authors) may be justified. E-mails will be sent to authors with links to the authorship forms when the manuscript has been submitted.

In case original data has been used, specific contributions of the authors will be published in the acknowledgment section. All persons who contributed substantially to this section, but do not meet the criteria for authorship, will be named with their contributions and affiliations in the acknowledgments of the manuscript. Consent must be obtained from these individuals to include the names of the individuals in the acknowledgments section.

Authors should ensure that the manuscript represents valid work and that the study or one with substantially similar content under their authorship has been published or is in the process of being published elsewhere. If requested, authors should be prepared to provide data and should cooperate in obtaining and providing the data on which the manuscript is based for review by the editors.

 

Author Contribution Policy

 Interacciones joins the initiative of the CRedIT project (Contributor Roles Taxonomy), which intends to recognize the contributions of individual authors, reduce controversies about authorship and facilitate collaboration. This initiative allows authors to share an accurate and detailed description of their various contributions to published articles. This description should be on the title page within the manuscript sent to the journal, where the role of each author within the work is listed using the relevant categories. Consider that authors may have contributed to multiple roles. CRediT does not change in any way the journal's criteria for qualifying as an author.

Term	Definition
Conceptualization	Ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims.
Methodology	Development or design of methodology; creation of models.
Software	Programming, software development; designing computer programs; implementation of the computer code and supporting algorithms; testing of existing code components.
Validation	Verification, whether as a part of the activity or separate, of the overall replication/ reproducibility of results/experiments and other research outputs.
Formal analysis	Application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data.
Investigation	Conducting a research and investigation process, specifically performing the experiments, or data/evidence collection.
Resources	Provision of study materials, reagents, materials, patients, laboratory samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other analysis tools.
Data Curation	Management activities to annotate (produce metadata), scrub data and maintain research data (including software code, where it is necessary for interpreting the data itself) for initial use and later reuse.
Writing - Original Draft	Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically writing the initial draft (including substantive translation).
Writing - Review & Editing	Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work by those from the original research group, specifically critical review, commentary or revision – including pre-or postpublication stages.
Visualization	Preparation, creation and/or presentation of the published work, specifically visualization/ data presentation.
Supervision	Oversight and leadership responsibility for the research activity planning and execution, including mentorship external to the core team.
Project administration	Management and coordination responsibility for the research activity planning and execution.
Funding acquisition	Acquisition of the financial support for the project leading to this publication.

 

Affiliation policies

The submission of the manuscript should indicate the personal data and affiliations of each corresponding author in a clear and concise format. These data must include the country and city.

Affiliations may contain up to three levels of hierarchy (e.g., research unit, research direction, institution) and should include the city and country (e.g., Lima, Peru). For example:

• ¹ Instituto Peruano de Orientación Psicológica, Lima, Peru.
• ¹ Direction of Research, Development and Innovation, Instituto Peruano de Orientación Psicológica, Lima, Peru.
• ¹ Mental Health Research Unit, Directorate of Research, Development and Innovation, Instituto Peruano de Orientación Psicológica, Lima, Peru.

If an author has more than one affiliation, each should be identified separately with numbers in superscripts, noting each affiliation.  For example:

Fulanito De-Tal ^{1 2 3
1} Instituto Peruano de Orientación Psicológica, Lima, Peru.
² Research Center, University, City, Country.
³ Service, Department, Hospital, City, Country.

 

Policy of responsibility of the published content

The content of the articles is the responsibility of the correspondent authors, co-authors, and responsible editors.

Responsibilities of the correspondent author: 

• About authorship: You should include as co-authors all those who fulfill the criteria for authorship described in the authorship policies.
• On approval of the manuscript: You should provide the co-authors with the draft manuscript for review and they can give their consent to authorship.
• On integrity: The corresponding author is responsible for the integrity of the research as a whole, and for ensuring that efforts have been made to ensure that data are complete, accurate, and properly interpreted.
• The corresponding author is the link between the co-authors and the communications that are given about the manuscript. The corresponding author is responsible for ensuring that questions about the document and supplementary materials are answered.

Responsibilities of the co-author: 

• About authorship: You must give their consent to authorship to the principal author, thus recognizing that they fulfill the criteria of authorship. A co-author must have been sufficiently involved in the research to assume responsibility for parts of the content in which he or she participated.
• About the approval of the manuscript: When you give your consent to authorship you accept that you have reviewed and approved the manuscript.
• On integrity: Each co-author is responsible for all relevant parts of the manuscript, including the integrity of any applicable research.