Submissions

Author Guidelines

Submission rules (updated December/2020)

In order to contribute to the improvement of the writing of the papers, we recommend the previous reading of the guidelines for authors and translators of the European Association of Science Editors, available here.

1 - We accept for publication in Sociedade & Natureza Journal unpublished papers, research results of an empirical, experimental or conceptual nature, master's, doctoral or similar studies on a theme specific to Geographic Science (with a minimum of 4000 and a maximum of 6000 words, including titles, abstracts and references).

2 - The journal's editorial team will judge the pertinence of publishing papers from related areas (which must necessarily include a territorial/spatial approach). Texts not related to the journal's focus will be excluded from the evaluation list.

3 -The paper must be submitted through the journal's website. In case authors find difficulties during the submission process, authors should consult the system tutorial here (in Portuguese only). 

4 - Submissions will be accepted in the following languages: Portuguese, Spanish and English. Submissions in Portuguese and Spanish, after evaluation and issue of final acceptance by the Journal, must be translated into English so it can also be published in that language. The paper will only be published after the presentation of the text in English, within the quality standards of the Journal (see more information in Norms for the presentation of articles in English). Submissions originally in English do not require translations, but it must be accompanied by a certificate of translation of the text, according to the "Rules for the presentation of articles in English". Poor quality in writing the text in English will result in its immediate rejection.

5 -Authors must pay attention to the correct and complete filling in of the submission metadata. All authors must be registered, separately, in the electronic submission form (ORCID code, area of training, title and institution of professional activity). The absence of such information will result in the direct exclusion of the submission. Under no circumstances will authors be added or removed after the submission has been accepted.

6 - During submission, authors must upload the following documents (mandatory): 

  6.1. Letter to the editor (template available here):  authors must present all data requested in the template, including: Title of the paper, name(s) of the author(s), ORCiD number (mandatory) for all authors), your affiliation(s) and email(s). Also in this document, authors must provide the Acknowledgments (if any), funding sources (if any) and the Authors' Contributions (following the author roles in CRediT). Then, the authors must present a brief summary of the paper, which justifies why it should be published in Sociedade & Natureza. Authors must also certify that this is an original submission that is not held in any other journal. In the case of research involving human beings, the authors must also present approval by the responsible Ethics Committee. Any further authorizations that are necessary must be included in this document.

  6.2. Main document: Word document with the content of the paper, obligatorily following all the rules available in the Guidelines. The text must not contain footnotes, endnotes or headings. As the review process is Double-Blind, this document should not contain any information that allows the identification of authorship. Remember to remove all information that allows the identification of authors, including document properties. This file must have a maximum size of 12 MB.

P.S.: communications between authors and editors during the editorial process must be made exclusively using the journal's system, in the proper fields. Documents and messages sent directly to the editors' personal emails will not be considered part of the editorial process.

Guidelines for presenting English papers

After acceptance of the submission, the texts in Portuguese and Spanish must also present the complete version in English. The translations must obligatorily present the quality standard consistent with the policies of Sociedade & Natureza and, therefore, the authors must attach in the system, together with the translated version, a document that proves that the translation was performed by a professional qualified for this purpose. The document should contain data attesting to the proofreader's qualifications (for example: invoice with CNPJ from the translation company, class council registration, translator's curriculum or certificate, etc.).

The English text will be analyzed by the editors. If it does not meet the Journal's quality standards, it will be returned to the authors to make the necessary adjustments. If after this stage the translation is still below the required quality, the submission will be rejected. Therefore, we suggest that authors be very careful when presenting texts in English.

Suggestions:

Authors will find important tips for translating texts in the document from the European Association of Science Editors (available here).

- Remember to translate the content of the figures! In many situations, it will be necessary to redo them. Therefore, figures in Portuguese will not be accepted in the translated version.

Native English speakers do not need to upload the translation/language-checking certificate.

Ethics and Good Practices 

The journal Sociedade & Natureza works in accordance with the ethical principles of the Code of Ethics American Educational Research Association  (AERA - available here), the Code of Good Scientific Practice - FAPESP (available here) and the Council of Science Editors (CSE - available here) regarding publication.

To promote the integrity of research, the strengthening and transparency in the process, all the material published in is in accordance with the Guidelines on Best Practices for Strengthening
Ethics in Scientific Publication (available here) and the Open Science Compliance Form (available here).

The SOCIEDADE e NATUREZA journal adopts the definition of misconduct as indicated by the "Office Research Integrity - ORI", which consists of:

- Fabrication: making up data or results and recording or reporting them.
- Falsification: Manipulating materials, equipment or research processes, omitting data or results so that the research is not accurately represented in the research record.
- Plagiarism: consists of appropriating someone else's ideas, processes, results or words without giving proper credit.

The authors are responsible for the information contained in their manuscripts.

Papers submitted for evaluation will undergo a technical review for plagiarism analysis on the CopySpider platform, version 2.1.1. The editorial team will check the data. If plagiarism is detected, just a paragraph without its proper citation is sufficient to return the paper to the authors. Regarding self-plagiarism, a manuscript may have less than 10% overall similarity to another paper from the same author or 50% when it is the result of a master's or doctoral thesis. Above it, the paper will send back to the authors with an indication of the problem, and the authors can make the necessary changes and submit the paper again to the Journal.

Cases of plagiarism reported to the Journal after the publication of the paper will be analyzed by the Editorial Committee and, if the complaint is confirmed, the paper will be removed from the Journal immediately. The authors may also be penalized.

It is understood that "Research misconduct" does not include honest errors or differences of opinion, the authors being subject to the sanctions established by the Editorial Board when actions relevant to the concept presented here are detected.

In the case of Duplicate and Redundant Publication, Correction and Retractions, the Sociedade & Natureza Journal adopts the publication of original material, which has not been previously published or which is being revised in other journals, even if in other languages.

Papers submitted to Sociedade & Natureza Journal cannot be submitted to any other journal while it is under evaluation in Sociedade & Natureza. Duplicate publication is the practice of submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal. Redundant publication is one that implies an inadequate division of the study results in more than one paper, and if detected, it results in the rejection of the paper or its retraction, and the authors are subject to the sanctions established by the Editorial Board.

In the case of corrections and retractions, resulting in errors or failures, regardless of nature or origin, and which do not imply "Publication Misconduct", they may be corrected through errata. In the case of manuscripts already published in which "Publication Misconduct" is identified, they will be subject to retraction through the explanation of the reasons, in which case authors and co-authors must agree with the content.

Research related to humans and animals must be accompanied by a copy of approval from the ethics committee.

Peer Review

Sociedade & Natureza Journal follows judicious ethical procedures in peer-reviewing. These procedures are based on the 'COPE Ethical Guidelines for Peer Reviewers (available here) and the 'FAPESP Code of Good Scientific Practice' (available here).

When a new paper is submitted to Sociedade & Natureza, it is submitted for preliminary analysis by the Editorial Committee before being sent for external evaluation. This analysis considers whether: 1) the paper is correlated with the focus and scope of the Journal; 2) the paper follows the recommendations available in the Guidelines for Authors and 3) the paper is unpublished. This process can take up to 15 days from the time of submission. Papers that do not meet all these criteria will be returned to the authors without further consideration.

After completing the preliminary analysis stage, the papers that meet the Journal's criteria will be forwarded to two or three reviewers, who may be members of the Journal's Scientific Council or ad hoc consultants. All reviewers are renowned professors/researchers in their areas of expertise. By default, the Journal adopts the “Double Blind Peer Review” evaluation process, that is, the anonymity of authors and reviewers is guaranteed. Following Open Science practices, the Journal also allows authors and reviewers to mark themselves during an evaluation, subject to their authorization. To make their names public, the authors must indicate this preference in the Letter to the Editor and the reviewers must sign their names after the comments of their opinion.

Each reviewer has a period of up to 30 days after accepting the Journal's request to prepare their opinion. If a reviewer refuses the request or fails to comply with the stipulated deadlines, a new reviewer will be assigned. Therefore, there is no established deadline for the end of the evaluation process, as it is conditional on compliance with the deadlines of the reviewer.

The reviews will be elaborated considering the following criteria: originality, scientific relevance, clarity and graphic quality of the illustrations. At the end of the evaluation, each reviewer will manifest, in his opinion, through one of the following options: I) Accept; II) Mandatory corrections; III) Submit the new evaluation round or IV) Reject. Reviewers are completely free to propose changes, correct, delete or add excerpts and sections, present ambiguous, redundant, incoherent graphics, or misuse terminologies and concepts, etc. In addition, they will be able to send files that complement the comments registered in the system. Based on the results of the reviews, it is up to the editor-in-chief to make the final decision on the submission.

After sending the reviews, the authors will be informed of the editorial decision. If changes are requested, the authors must pay attention to the deadlines for sending the corrected version of the paper. The paper will only be published after sending corrections and/or justifications for those suggested changes that were not accepted. In case of disagreement with the editorial decision of Revista Sociedade & Natureza, appeals must be submitted to the editor-in-chief or to the Publisher of the Journal (Portal Periódicos UFU) and the guidelines of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) will be used for decision making.

Publication Frequency

The Journal adopts the continuous publication system. Papers are published as soon as they are approved and edited. This model speeds up the publishing process, reducing the time between submission and online publication of full texts.

Conflict of Interest

The conflict of interest can be of a personal, commercial, political, academic or financial nature. Conflicts of interest can occur when authors, reviewers or editors have interests that may influence the preparation or evaluation of manuscripts. When submitting the manuscript, authors are responsible for declaring conflicts that may have influenced the work. If there is a conflict of interest, the authors must inform it in a signed document and attach it to the submission platform.

Open Science, Preprints and Data repository

Sociedade & Natureza Journal supports and practices Open Science principles, providing greater transparency and reliability to published papers. Therefore, the authors are invited to previously deposit the papers submitted for evaluation in reliable preprint servers. In this case, authors should contact the journal's editors before submitting the paper for more information about the process and signature of the Compliance Form (Available here).

Furthermore, we encourage authors, whenever possible, to deposit the data used in the preparation of their papers (raw data, codes, methods, models, algorithms, etc.) in controlled public repositories or make them available for publication as Supplementary Material. Datasets deposited in repositories that assign a DOI number can be listed in the references section. Files available as Supplementary Material will be available on the paper website.