Author Guidelines
General aspects of the document
The manuscript will have an editable format (MS Word or similar). It will be written in Spanish or English, in A4 sheet, 12 point size, spaced 1.5 pt and 2.5 cm margins, with the pages numbered in the lower right corner. It will not exceed 7,000 words, including in this count all the information (title, abstract, keywords, figures, tables, annexes, and references). The text must be written in an impersonal style.
Anonymity for peer review
Aula Abierta follows a double-blind peer review, therefore, the manuscript must be completely anonymous, therefore, it will not include authors’ information (name, email, affiliation, financing projects), nor their own references (they will be indicated in the list of references and in the citations as Authors XXX, without indicating the number of authors or year, omitting all the remaining information), or aspects about the collection of the information or the place where the experiment was carried out that may contribute to identifying authorship, or acknowledgments, or information on support agencies, funding entities or grants. In case that the manuscript is accepted, all this information must be incorporated after the review process. Consult the section required Submission Metadata.
Title, abstract, and keywords
The title will be placed at the beginning of the manuscript, followed by an abstract and keywords. Title, abstract, and keywords must be presented in both Spanish and English.
The title should be descriptive of the content of the article and conciseness and brevity are recommended. It must be no longer than 18 words.
The abstract, a maximum of 200 words, must be written in a single paragraph and, although it should not be structured in separate sections, it must contain the essential information to understand the content of the article (adjusted to the IMRaD structure).
A minimum of 3 and a maximum of 5 keywords will be included, alphabetically ordered. It is recommended to use terms from the European Thesaurus of Education (https://vocabularyserver.com/tee/es/). In any case, keywords should be concise and simple (complex expressions should not be used).
Sections
Sections must be consecutively numbered (except acknowledgments and references). In the subsections, a second numbering, also correlative, will be added within each section (for example 2.1, 2.2., etc.). A maximum of three levels of section heading will be used. Authors must avoid having only one subsection within a section, in such a case, the subsection is not needed. For the first level, bold will be used, for the second level, bold italic, and for the third level, italic.
It is recommended to use at least the objective, method, results, and discussion sections (including conclusions and limitations) in the case of experimental studies; and planning, development, and discussion (including conclusions) for theoretical work. A reference section will always be included.
Tables
The tables will be numbered in order of appearance and will be included in the document, in the place that the authors consider it would be more appropriate for them to appear. Its format should allow the editing team to make any formal modifications that are necessary. The tables must be numbered consecutively according to the order of citation in the text and must appear in the document after having been mentioned in the text. Each table must contain its title, located above the table and with the corresponding description, indicating the origin of the table or, where appropriate, if it is own elaborated. For example: “Table 1. Description. Own elaboration. "
The tables will use simple spacing, without spaces before and after paragraphs, and will only include simple horizontal borders (restricting them to those strictly necessary).
Figures
The figures (photographs, graphs, drawings and diagrams) must be attached as separate file files, indicating in the text a mention of the corresponding figure, followed by its caption. This indication must appear in the document after the figure has been mentioned in the text. The caption of the figure must indicate its origin or, where appropriate if it is own elaborated. For instance:
[Insert Figure 1 here]
Figure 1. Description. Own elaboration.
The figures will be numbered consecutively, according to the order of citation in the manuscript. The name of each file will correspond to that of the figure (eg, “Figure1.jpg”). Figures should always be provided with the highest possible resolution and in jpg, png, or tiff format.
Figures will be used to represent or explain ideas that are not easily explained by text or table. For example, to express two percentages as "yes 64%, no 36%", a graph is not needed.
Citations and references
At least 40% of the references must be from the last five years, prioritizing relevant sources in the field of work.
APA 7th edition style will be followed, please consult it to solve any doubts that are not clarified in the following examples.
Only those sources whose ideas have been incorporated into the manuscript will be cited, including only those necessary to explain, support, or discuss it. Primary sources should be used, whenever possible.
A source will be cited whenever it is paraphrased, quoted verbatim, or refers to data, tables or figures, or other parts of the original source. When an argument from another source is used continuously during a paragraph, it is not necessary to include the citation in every sentence of the paragraph.
Citation style
In the citations, only the first surname of each author will be written, unless it is a compound surname and the year of the source. In the text, they will be cited as Authors (year) and within parenthesis as (Authors, year). If a publication has two authors, both are always cited, separating them with “y” if the article is written in Spanish and by “and” in the text and “&” in parentheses, if the article is written in English. If there are three or more authors, only the first one is cited, followed by "et al." (in Spanish "et al." must be in italics, but not in English). When several publications are cited at the same time, they must appear in alphabetical order, not chronologically, and must be separated by "," in the text and by ";" inside parenthesis.
If a textual citation is less than 40 words long, it will be included in the same paragraph of the text and quotation marks will be used to differentiate it. If it is 40 or more words, it will be written as a separate paragraph, indented and without quotation marks. For textual citations, whenever possible, the number of the page or pages of the original source (indicated as “p.” and “pp.”, respectively) will be included. Failing that, the paragraph or section of the quotation will be included.
References
All the references (documents, electronic sources, personal communications, etc.) will appear in the "References" section of the manuscript, in alphabetical order. All references must include the DOI in the format https://doi.org/xxx (it is recommended to locate it in the original source or using the CrossRef metadata search tool). Some examples of APA 7th edition standards (refer to the guide for more formats):
Book: Alonso, C., Gallego, D., & Honey, P. (1994). Los estilos de aprendizaje. Mensajero.
Book chapter: Crespo, I., Lalueza, J. L., Portell, M., & Sánchez, S. (2005). Microculture development and minority learning. In M. Nilsson & H. Nocon (Eds.), School of tomorrow. Developing expansive learning environments (pp. 27-62). Peter Lang.
Journal article: Tafazoli, D. (2021). Language Teachers’ Professional Development and New Literacies: An Integrative Review. Aula Abierta, 50(2), 603-614. https://doi.org/10.17811/rifie.50.2.2021.603-614
Footnotes
The use of footnotes should be avoided. They will never be used to write the reference of a quote, nor to make a clarification that can be integrated into the text.
Italics
The use of italics (except for references) will be restricted to phrases in a language other than that used in the text (for example: “feedback is provided”, “an ad hoc instrument is designed” and) or, if the authors do so, they consider it appropriate, for the first use of a term that is to be emphasized, when it is accompanied by its definition (for example: "evaluation, according to Allen (2004) is the systematic process of documentation and use of empirical data ..."). Italics will also be used for measurement scale anchors (eg: a Likert scale was used from 1 = none to 5 = fully). Italics will not be used for emphasis.
Quotation marks
In addition to verbatim quotations, quotation marks will be used when the word in quotation marks needs to be highlighted linguistically (eg: the occurrence of the word “yes” was determined) or is verbatim reproducing an item or a textual instruction. Quotation marks can also be used to indicate a non-standard use of a term (eg: the students considered this behavior as “normal”). Quotation marks will not be used for numbers.
Numbers
The use of words is recommended to express quantities less than 10, and of numbers for figures greater than or equal to 10 (eg: 16 cases were found, and four were selected). Words will always be used when the sentence begins with a number (eg: Fifteen students affirmed…).
When units of measurement, coefficients, scores, ages, parameters, operators, percentages, fractions or decimals, hours, etc. are expressed, they will be expressed by numbers (eg: 5 mg of serum was administered).
The negative sign is represented by the hyphen, UNICODE 2013 (-), and not the short one, UNICODE 00AD (-).
The decimals of the texts in Spanish will be indicated with a comma and in the texts in English, with a period. In English, the zero will not be written before the point or the comma when the maximum value is 1 (for example, instead of r = –0.50, r = –.50 would be written or instead of α = 0.912, α would be written = .912).
Information on the web platform:
Tab 1: Start
- Submission language: You must select the language (Spanish or English) in which the submitted work is written.
- Section policy: If there is no open monograph, the platform, by default, will include your work in the non-specific section (Articles-miscellany) without you having to do anything. If there is an open monograph, a drop-down will appear where you must choose the corresponding monograph (with its title) or, where appropriate, the general section (Articles-miscellany).
- Comments for the editor: The authors can include some comments to the editor in which they describe their work and send any other indication they consider appropriate. In the event that there is any conflict of interest, it must necessarily be indicated in this section. It can also be used, optionally, to suggest reviewers or oppose them, in this case, justifying the reasons.
Tab 2: Upload Submission. You must upload here all the necessary files (manuscript, figures, additional material, etc.).
Tab 3. Enter Metadata.
- Title/subtitle/prefix: Title must be included in both English and Spanish. To add the two languages, when clicking on the text box, the two languages will be displayed (when one of the two languages is not complete, the globe icon will be red; if the two languages are complete, the icon will appear in green). The subtitle is optional, and if it is included, it is not necessary to include a colon (“:”) at the end of the title. The prefix is also optional and can be incorporated into the title. If added, subtitles and prefixes must be also typed in both languages (Spanish and English).
- Abstract: as in the title, it must be included in English and Spanish.
- List of contributors: the information of the authors must be included (full name, affiliation —the name of the institution and country—, email address, and ORCID identifier), for each one of them. Use the "Add Contributor" button to include new people.
- In the Additional Refinements section:
- In Languages you must identify the language in which the original manuscript is written (English or Spanish).
- Disciplines is an optional field, although it allows the article to be better indexed in certain databases.
- Keywords (3, 4, or 5): entered one by one (type enter or intro after each keyword for the system to incorporate it), both in English and Spanish (pay attention to the globe icon: it must be in green color).
- Supporting Agencies is the optional field to incorporate financing, this information may be added later to the article if it is accepted. It allows better identification of the sources of financing in the databases.
- References section: the references must be included, in alphabetical order, each one on a line. Since the reviewers do not have access to this information, authors' references can be kept without anonymization (this exclusively affects the data entered on the platform: in the manuscript, the own references must be blinded). All references must include the DOI in the format https://doi.org/xxx (it is recommended to locate it in the original source or by using the CrossRef metadata search tool). This information is crucial for bibliometric indicators, so maximum collaboration is requested. It is necessary to take into account that if during the review process, the references are changed, they must be modified both in the manuscript and on the website.
Ethical aspects
The works submitted to the magazine Aula Abierta must be unpublished and not in the process of review or have been sent to other publications simultaneously.
Authors must confirm this fact during the process of sending the manuscript through the platform. Additionally, Open Classroom will use software for plagiarism detection, redundant or duplicate publishing.
The correspondence author is responsible for ensuring that the authorship includes the appropriate co-authors, all have approved the submitted version of the manuscript, and show their agreement with its submission to the magazine.
In the "Method" section of the manuscript (subsection "Procedure"), the permissions or consents obtained to obtain the data must be explicitly indicated, especially in the case where the sample is composed of minors. The procedure followed must in any case be in accordance with current data protection regulations. During the process of sending the manuscript through the platform, the corresponding author must describe any financial or personal relationships that the authors may have with other persons or organizations that could give rise to a conflict of interest in relation to the article that is submitted for publication.
