General aspects of the document
The manuscript will have an editable format (MS Word or similar). It will be written in Spanish or English, using Times New Roman 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 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 or funding entities. In case the manuscript is accepted, all this information must be incorporated after the review process. Consult the section Required 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.
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. 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 headings 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 (you can check a brief guide on https://guides.library.uq.edu.au/referencing/apa7)
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." . When several publications are cited consecutively (especially in parenthetic citations), 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).