About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Nova Scientia is a multidisciplinary, peer reviewed electronic scientific journal published by the Universidad La Salle Bajío twice a year in the months of May and November. It publishes original high quality peer-reviewed papers, both fundamental and applications, from different scientific disciplines including, natural science, engineering, life science, biotechnology, material science, education, social science, human behavior and economy, written by national and international researchers and academics. It is well received to be considered for publications letters and full-length articles in a regular process and reviews by invitation, in 2020 the rejection rate was 80 %.

Since 2012 it has been the best evaluated journal in its category in the CONACYT Index.

Peer Review Process

All submitted manuscript must be reviewed by external referees to be accepted for publication. Here in this section we describe such process.

Evaluation of pertinence

In order to assess the quality and feasibility of the submitted manuscript, the Editorial Board of Nova Scientia reviews its pertinence before submitting them to the peer review process carried out by reviewers experts in the field of your manuscript.

Editors may reject a manuscript without external review if they judge is unsuitable for the journal (e.g. out of scope, duplicate information, too wordy, incremental or not clear contribution).

Arbitration process

Peer-review comprises at least two external reviewers that read and analyze the manuscript in order to recommend about both the validity of the ideas and the results, as well as their potential scientific impact. Following the practices of the different specialties for the area of Natural Sciences and Engineering, the single-blind variant will be used, in which the arbitrators know the name of the author they evaluate. For the area of Human and Social sciences, the double-blind study variant will be used, in which the anonymity of the arbitrator and the author is preserved.

Reviewers provide comments in order to help author create better manuscript. Reviewers will recommend that:

  • The manuscript is acceptable for publication as is.
  • The manuscript requires minor correction.
  • The manuscript requires major correction and further revision.
  • The manuscript is not acceptable for publication.

Editor makes a publication decision of submitted manuscript based on the reviews recommendation and send decision letter. In case of controversy editorial board can select a third reviewer to take the final decision. It is the intention of Nova Scientia that referees be selected among the most competent scientist expert in the field of your manuscript. The number of referees exceeds 4,000 and all nationals belong to the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores. Average review time for acepted papers is 87 days.

Submission after corrections

If your manuscript needs corrections you may resubmit after revisions have been made. In this case, you need to provide a respond letter to explain in detail each change, point by point, the corrected manuscript with highlighted changes and a clean version of corrected manuscript.

Once manuscript has been resubmitted, Editor decides whether or not accept revised manuscript or send it back to reviewers for further comments. Editor has the final decision based on the reviewers recommendations.

Acepted manuscript

Once manuscript has been accepted for publication, it is immediately turned to the production process. Authors will receive the gallery proof of the manuscript that should be returned maximum 48 hours. As soon as received, it is processed the final production process and then publishes the paper on line allocated on the corresponding issue. Authors will receive a confirmation email of posting.

Type of Publication

Letters to the Editor

They will be submitted to the same evaluation requirements and processes as the standard paper, but peer-review process should be accelerated taking final decision maximum four weeks. The section of Letters to the Editor is designed for original contributions in the form of comments, replies of already published articles, and preliminary results highlighting single result that deserve a faster publication because of relevance. It is limited to 4 pages including figures and tables.

Full-length paper

This is the standard paper and it is considered the space to publish original research in details providing more information and findings. It is expected more than 4 pages.

Review paper

Review paper is published only by invitation. In this case, it is expected a detailed review of recent progress on a particular topic. It must summarize the current knowledge on the selected topic and provide and understanding of the topic for readers by discussing relevant results reported in recent research papers.

Journal History

It was created in March 2008, and published its first issue in November of the same year. Since then, it is regularly issued in the months of May and November. Subsequently, it has been included in different indexes such as Redalyc, Latindex, Dialnet, DOAJ, etc; since 2012 it belongs to the Índice de Revistas Mexicanas de Investigación (Index of Mexican Research Journals) of the CONACYT. It is currently included in the collection SciELO Citation Index of Web of Science.