Editorial Policy

Editorial policy

Voces y Silencios: Revista Latinoamericana de Educación is an academic, peer-reviewed, electronic, biannual, and diamond open-access journal* dedicated to the study and dialogue on questions and problems in education, pedagogy, and human development. The journal declares an emphasis on topics that are of particular interest to education in Latin America, although it welcomes contributions in which these areas are presented and discussed in other parts of the world. It is oriented to an audience of researchers, teachers, managers, and other professionals working in education, both in formal educational institutions and in policy-making institutions, non-governmental organizations, and non-formal and informal education spaces. The journal publishes articles in Spanish, English, and Portuguese. It was published every six months from 2010 to 2023 and from 2024 it is published every four months, at the beginning of each period: January-April, May-August, September-December.

To ensure long-term and permanent access to its content and issues, Voces y Silencios: Revista Latinoamericana de Educación utilizes the PKP Preservation Network digital archiving service, which employs the LOCKSS program for this purpose. This system guarantees the preservation and availability of published articles, providing a reliable backup for continuous access to the academic production of the journal.

Voces y Silencios: Revista Latinoamericana de Educación is published by the Faculty of Education of the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia. The journal publishes the following types of articles:

• Empirical research articles and literature reviews: correspond to research results of quantitative, qualitative, or mixed type. These articles present a clear and well-founded research question focused on recent debates in education, pedagogy, and human development. Also included here are literature reviews, which organize, integrate and evaluate previously published material to make a balance or analysis of research progress, conclusions, gaps, and contributions.
• Proposals: this type of theoretical research article constitutes a space for the discussion of ideas and theoretical proposals from a reflective and propositional point of view, supported by a systematic analysis of sources. Its objective is to stimulate discussion on the development of the educational and pedagogical field, particularly in those aspects relevant to the Latin American context.
• Testimonials: correspond to texts written by people directly involved in educational activities, in which they describe in detail experiences, pedagogical and didactic resources, or innovations in educational practice that have been particularly significant, because they are shocking experiences that generate new learning through reflection, or because they generate unexpected reactions in participants, communities or observers.

Voces y Silencios: Revista Latinoamericana de Educación has an Editorial Team and an Editorial Board. The Editorial Team leads the editorial process and decision-making regarding the content published. It proposes thematic issues, guarantees academic quality standards, promotes indexing processes, maintains constant communication with authors and evaluators, promotes the dissemination of published articles, and is responsible for selecting and inviting the Editorial Board to periodic meetings. The Editorial Board is formed according to criteria of thematic expertise, academic trajectory, and diversity in terms of institutional, national, and international affiliation of its members. It is responsible for analyzing the national and international relevance of the proposals for thematic issues received. It also periodically evaluates the state of the journal, proposes strategies for indexing and international recognition, and, occasionally, recommends possible reviewers or supports the opinion on an article received.    

Thematic coverage

Voces y Silencios: Revista Latinoamericana de Educación is a journal dedicated to the study and dialogue on questions and problems in education, pedagogy, and human development.

Open Access and CC License

Voces y Silencios: Revista Latinoamericana de Educación is a diamond open-access journal, meaning it does not charge authors or institutions for publishing, nor readers for accessing its content. All published articles are available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This allows users to share the content: copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, provided they adhere to the conditions outlined in the license terms.

• Attribution: Explicitly and clearly credit the publication (authorship, journal title, copyright notice, license note, legal disclaimer, and link to the material).
• Non-commercial: Users may not use the material for commercial purposes.
• No derivatives: If the material is remixed, transformed, or built upon, the modified material may not be distributed.

For more details on the terms, please refer to the license description on the Creative Commons website: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.en.

Authorship and Copyright

Authors who publish in Voces y Silencios: Revista Latinoamericana de Educación retain the copyright of their works, granting the journal a license for publication, editing, and dissemination. Additionally, authors declare that they understand, acknowledge, and accept that the content will be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Furthermore, in compliance with the normative guidelines of the Universidad de los Andes, the website footer includes the text “© - Derechos Reservados Universidad de los Andes.” This copyright declaration applies exclusively to creations that are not part of the journal's content, such as website design, logos, and other elements. As a journal published in Colombia, it adheres to the copyright provisions established by Andean Decision 351 of 1993 and Law 23 of 1982. For articles with multiple authors, it is mandatory to declare the specific contribution of each one.

Policy of democratization of the production and access to knowledge

Voces y Silencios: Revista Latinoamericana de Educación is committed to the social and democratic function of the production of knowledge, from the perspective of the roles of both those who read and those who write. As for those who read, we want our journal to reach as many interested people as possible, without any kind of obstacle. Therefore, we adhere to a diamond open access policy: published works are easily accessible online without the need to register or enter information of any kind; they are freely available to anyone, and can be shared and used without any restriction, as long as the source of publication is cited, i.e. Voces y Silencios: Revista Latinoamericana de Educación, and of course the respective author. 

As for those who write, Voces y Silencios: Revista Latinoamericana de Educación values the diversity of forms of research and the production of scientific knowledge. Therefore, it does not privilege any general research approach, beyond the criteria of rigor and originality. In addition, it has several different sections - Empirical research articles and literature reviews, Approaches, and Testimonials - to provide access to different forms of knowledge production generated in different contexts, whose publication is useful for the world of education, pedagogy, and human development. The articles in their final version, as published on the journal's website, may be freely distributed as long as such distribution is free of charge.

Guidelines for authors

Articles must be submitted through the OJS platform, which can be found on the journal's website (https://revistas.uniandes.edu.co/index.php/vys/index). Texts submitted to the journal cannot be simultaneously under evaluation in another publication. Likewise, articles by the same author may not be published within a period of one year. 

In Voces y Silencios: Revista Latinoamericana de Educación we recognize the critical importance of the recognition of authorship in the production of knowledge. Therefore, we understand an author to be someone who meets every one of the following criteria:

• Made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data; or the construction of the argumentation of the main theses, ideas, or designs formulated.
• Participated in the writing of the text or critically reviewed it in terms of the substantive issues raised therein.
• Approved the version that was or will be published.
• Takes responsibility for all aspects of the work, ensuring that issues arising about the accuracy or completeness of the work as a whole are appropriately investigated and resolved.

 Therefore, only those who meet all the above criteria should be listed as authors. Other persons who have contributed to the development of the work should be acknowledged, which is usually done in an acknowledgments or footnote section. The previous authorship criteria exclude artificial intelligence programs like ChatGPT or other Large Language Models (LLMs). This is because they cannot be held responsible for all aspects related to the work, which is why they cannot be considered authors or co-authors of an article. However, its eventual use to support information gathering, data analysis, imaging, or writing activities should be documented in the Method section. Sufficient detail must be provided so that the reader can understand which tool was used, how it was used, and with what purpose.

When there are two or more authors, they are asked to make explicit on the Title Page the specific contribution of each author (design, data collection, interpretation and analysis, writing and/or critical review of the article), as well as any statements or circumstances related to the Origin of the manuscript: if it is the result of a master's or doctoral thesis, if it had support or funding, if it presents data used in previously published articles, if there is any conflict of interest to be disclosed or if any artificial intelligence tool was used in its elaboration process (in which case its use is documented in the Method section). Additionally, authors who submit the manuscript to Voces y Silencios: Revista Latinoamericana de Educaciónare asked to declare that authorship and other contributions have been appropriately acknowledged.

All articles submitted to the journal must meet the criteria established for the different types of articles available here.

Evaluation and editorial process

When an article is received, the editorial team makes a preliminary review of it, in which it verifies if it meets minimum quality standards, as well as if its subject and orientation are within the journal's profile. The articles received are submitted to the plagiarism detection tool (Turnitin) and when total or partial plagiarism is detected, the text is not sent for evaluation and the authors are notified of the reason for rejection.

The decision as to whether the article continues with the peer review process, whether it is rejected at this preliminary stage, or whether its continuation in the process depends on making some basic adjustments, will be communicated to the author within a maximum period of three months. If approved to continue the process, the article will be sent to at least two expert reviewers in the particular thematic area. This process is double-blind: that is, the authors do not know the identity of the reviewers, and the reviewers do not know the identity of the authors.

Once the evaluations and recommendations of the reviewers have been received, the editorial team will make the final decision. It is important to clarify that the reviewers' recommendations will be highly considered; however, the editorial team fully reserves this responsibility. The decision, which will be notified to the author within a maximum period of six months from the time of receipt of the manuscript, will be made in one of three ways: acceptance, acceptance subject to adjustments, or rejection. Normally, a rejected article may be resubmitted to the journal, if the author so desires, but only after extensive review and not earlier than six months after notification of rejection. In such a case, the resubmitted article will go through all stages of the article review process again.  

In the case of an article whose acceptance is subject to adjustments, if the author decides to continue the process, then he/she must make the corresponding modifications with "change control" and resubmit it to the editorial team, together with a letter explaining the changes made within a maximum period of three weeks. The review of the adjustments will normally be carried out by the editorial team, although in some cases the original reviewers may be consulted again. The result of this review will be communicated to the author. In general, in cases of acceptance subject to adjustments, the policy of Voces y Silencios: Revista Latinoamericana de Educación is to help authors who so wish to comply with the required adjustments in a satisfactory manner.

An article accepted for publication will then go through a style review process, whose recommendations will be sent to the author for approval or comments. Finally, the article goes through a layout process according to the design parameters of the journal.

The entire process described in this section applies to special numbers. 

Privacy Statement

Voces y Silencios: Revista Latinoamericana de Educación guarantees that all information of persons associated with the Journal (such as authors, readers, and reviewers), registered in its database, will be used exclusively for communication with such persons about matters directly related to the Journal, such as the dissemination of information about the publication of its issues and the coordination of actions related to the review and publication of articles. Likewise, such information will never be given to any other natural or legal person.

Presentation of proposals for thematic issues

Voces y Silencios: Revista Latinoamericana de Educación welcomes proposals for thematic issues at any time during the year. Proposals should be sent to the e-mail address vocesysilencios@uniandes.edu.co and should include title, general objective, keywords, origin and justification of the proposal, brief theoretical support, thematic axes, bibliography, and information about the organizers: academic background, institutional affiliation, last two publications, and e-mail address. The editorial team is responsible for checking and approving the credentials of guest editors, ensuring they accomplish the journal's academic and ethical standards.

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* The journal Voces y Silencios: Revista Latinoamericana de Educación is a diamond open-access publication, which means the copyright of scholarly works is granted under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license. This ensures immediate and free access to published works, allowing any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles. Additionally, articles can be crawled for indexing, processed as data by software, or used for any other lawful purpose, promoting the free circulation and reuse of knowledge. No user registration is required to access the content.