About the Journal

Focus and Scope

index.comunicación is a scientific journal on Applied Communication. Strictly speaking, this field includes the ways by which certain pre-established objectives –achievements– are accomplished using both old and new channels of communication. We understand Applied Communication as oriented towards a goal and as part of the communicative praxis those exercises and techniques able to achieve such specific goals. The journal will give priority to papers devoted to this field of study.

In the same way, the journal will accept papers of reflection that, within the context of the established peer review, involve a contribution of quality in the field of Social Sciences and, more specifically, the Communication field; as well as accepting empirical value works and research articles.

It is intended for the whole of the international academic community, especially in Spanish language, specialized in applied communication with the purpose of showcasing their research. It is addressed both to researchers in pre-doctoral training as as post-doctoral and consolidated researchers.

Peer Review Process

The journal is committed to establishing rapid review flows to the extent permitted by the collaborators facilitating its development.

The papers received will be submitted to a first review process within the Drafting Committee to check:

Originality.
Relevance to the academic line of the journal.
Noteworthiness.
Compliance with the style rules.

After this first review, stripped of their authorship identity, they will be submitted to the Reviewers Committee made up of professors from Ibero-American, Portuguese and Spanish universities, of recognized prestige in their areas of knowledge and outside the publishing entity. The review criteria are originality, novelty, topicality, interest, quality and methodological rigor and relevance.

These committees will be assisted by the Scientific Committee. The review will be done by peers who will do a blind review: the article sent to them will be unsigned. The article review process is carried out with the Open Journal System (OJS) software that guarantees automated and auditable electronic recording of all interactions. It is a transparent process, which enables the improvement of texts when their publication is relevant.

The same article can be sent to up to three reviewers. Editing will begin when two favourable reports are available.

The editorial board meets every 15 days and reviews the articles received. Therefore, if the article is rejected, the author will be informed within a maximum period of 15 days.

The report with objections from the reviewer will be sent to the author of the article, for their consideration. The new article that incorporates the suggestions or notes indicated by the reviewer of the text will be sent again to arbitrate, pending its new report, until it is accepted, if that is the case. There will only be two rounds of review, apart from the aforementioned first pre-review done in the Drafting Committee.

The diagram of the review process is shared with all the journals that are members of the Latin Platform of Communication and can be consulted at the following link: http://plataformarevistascomunicacion.org/proceso-de-revision-de-articulos/. All controversial cases are settled following the following review flow.

Non-observance of the standards set forth in this editorial style manual will be grounds for non-publication.

Publication Frequency

Every calendar year, index.comunicación publishes a single volume with two half-yearly issues. Since 2021, the publication date of issue 1 is on January 15th and the publication date of issue 2 is on July 15th.

The issues are divided into two sections: 6 monographic articles, plus an invited introduction, and 6 articles in the miscellaneous category. This makes a total of 13 articles per issue.

Open access policy

The content of this journal is available in free access without time restrictions.

No fee is required from authors for submitting or processing articles.

The journal does not have an exemption policy (for developing countries, authors, etc.). Authors from all over the world are welcome.

All the content of the journal is under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NoComercial 4.0 International License.

index.comunicación shows a broad definition of open access: users have the right to "read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link the full texts of these articles".

Download statistics

Upon request from authors concerned, index.comunicación will provide article download statistics.

Ethical standards of publication

index.comunicación subscribes to the ethical and good practice principles established as international standards by CSE (Council of Science Editors) and COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics). Among them the standards set out in the 2nd World Conference on Research Integrity, Singapore (2010):

Editors are accountable and must take responsibility for everything they publish.
Editors must make fair and impartial decisions regardless of business considerations and ensure a fair and appropriate peer review process.
Editors should promote editorial policies of transparency and complete and honest presentation.
Editors must maintain the integrity of the published record by issuing corrections and retractions when necessary, pursuing suspected or alleged misconduct in research and publication.
Editors must prosecute editorial and reviewer misconduct.
Editors must critically evaluate ethical conduct in human and animal studies.
Reviewers and authors should be informed of what is expected of them.
Editors should have ethical policies posted in an appropriate place to handle conflicts of interest.
In the event of a conflict of interest, the authors may send their claims by email to the editor-in-chief of the journal.

It also uses the protocols of good editorial practices of Elsevier (PERK Publishing Ethics Resource Kit) and Wiley (Ethics Guidelines). These protocols guide decision making on the following conflicts:

Conflict of authorship.
Plagiarism.
Duplication, concurrent publications or simultaneous shipments to various publications.
Appropriation of research results.
Fraud or investigation errors.
Violation of investigation standards.
Undisclosed conflicts of interest.
Bias in reviewers.

Self-archiving policy and digital preservation

The journal index.comunicación allows and encourages its authors to expand the visibility, scope and impact of their articles published in the journal by re-disseminating (self-archiving) them in:

Personal web spaces (web, blog, social networks, scientific forums, etc.)
Institutional open archives and university repositories.
Social networks of academic and scientific nature (ResearchGate, Academia.edu, Mendeley...)

This will not be done in any case before the review, layout or even in the proofreading phase (see The Effect of Open Access).

Furthermore, the journal is kept in the repository of the King Juan Carlos University:

BURJC Digital

This journal uses the LOCKSS system to create an archive distributed among participating libraries, allowing those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for preservation and restoration purposes.

Privacy and cookies policies

Identification data

The data collected from registered and unregistered users of the journal index.comunicación falls within the scope of the standard operation of peer-reviewed journals.

The editorial team of this journal uses this information to guide their work in publishing and improving this journal. The authors whose works are published in this journal are responsible for the data on people that may contain or appear in published research.

Publishers comply with industry data privacy standards, specifically the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provision for "data subject rights", which includes (a) notification of breach; (b) right of access; (c) the right to be forgotten; (d) data portability; and (e) privacy by design. The GDPR also allows the recognition of the "public interest in the availability of data", which is of particular relevance to those involved in maintaining the public record of academic publications, with the highest possible integrity.

Who is responsible for the data?

Corporate name: Belén Puebla Martínez - Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
Trade name: index.comunicación
Registered office: Camino del Molino, nº 5 - 28942 Fuenlabrada - Madrid - España
Telephone number: +34 914887305
Contact: belen.puebla@urjc.es
Domain name: https://indexcomunicacion.es/

What information do we collect and for what purpose do we process your data?

To send communications about the editorial process.
To guide the authors on the work of publication and improvement of this journal.
To inform readers about authorship and editing of content.
To improve the retrieval of information and articles of interest by readers through the collection of aggregate data on the behaviour of readers and the tracking of elements of academic communication.
To manage editorial correspondence.
To send information and informative communications related to scientific research, areas of interest and focus of the journal, through the emails of the Open Journal System platform.
To carry out statistical studies related to the areas of interest and the focus of the journal.
We do not make automated decisions based on profiles.

For how long do we keep your data?

The personal data provided will be kept blocked at the end of the relationship and the deletion is carried out in accordance with the provisions of:

Regulation EU 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the European Council of Abril 27 of 2016, (Art 17, 1a)
Act 16/1985, of June 25, of the Spanish Historical Heritage
Act 4/1993, of April 21, on Archives and Documentary Heritage of the Community of Madrid

Nevertheless, given that in scholarly publishing, the data relating to the authors, editors, reviewers and others involved in the editorial process is still necessary for the purposes of the journal, and, as such, is part of a record that the article 85 of the GDPR allows "for archiving for purposes of public interest, scientific or historical research or for statistical purposes whose maintenance is in the public interest", the publication will adjust, for this case, to the exceptions described in said article.

What is the legitimacy for the processing of your data??

The legal basis for the processing of your data is the provision of the service and / or consent of the concerned party.

To send news through the email you have provided us to contact you in a personalized way or recognize you on your next visit, we rely on informed consent.

The treatment of the information that our cookies collect is based on the informed consent that you give us, in accordance with current legislation.

To which recipients will your data be communicated?

The data that helps the development of the Open Journal System publishing platform used by the journal index.comunicación may be shared with its developer Public Knowledge Project in an anonymous and aggregated form, with the appropriate exceptions, such as article metrics.

The personal metadata related to the publication of an article (Name and surnames of the authors, professional affiliation, country) are deposited and distributed, associated with those of the article. Also, for the future assignment of the DOI through Crossreff. Likewise, and with the same purposes of preservation, dissemination and improvement of scientific recovery, it is distributed through the LOCKSS system to the distributed archive of libraries, as well as to other open science systems.

The data will not be transferred or sold by this magazine or PKP nor will it be used for purposes other than those established here.

Is there an obligation to provide data and consequences of not doing so?

Failure to provide the data expressly requested will prevent registration in the journal, the sending of originals and the editorial monitoring of said originals.

How do we protect your data?

The website of the journal index.comunicación uses information security techniques generally accepted in the industry, such as firewalls, access control procedures and cryptographic mechanisms, all in order to prevent unauthorized access to data. In order to achieve these purposes, the user accepts that the provider obtains data for the purposes of the corresponding authentication of access controls. All information is always transmitted through a secure communication protocol (https, SSL), so that no third party has access to the information transmitted electronically.

All personal data is stored securely in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation of the EU (Regulation (UE) 2016/679) (GDPR).

What are your rights when you provide us with your data?

Anyone has the right to obtain confirmation on whether, or not, the journal index.comunicación is treating personal data that concerns them.
Concerned persons have the right to access their personal data, as well as to request the rectification of inaccurate data or, where appropriate, request its deletion when, among other reasons, the data is no longer necessary for the purposes for which it was collected.
In certain circumstances, the interested parties may request the limitation of the processing of their data, in which case we will only keep them for the exercise or defence of claims.
In certain circumstances and for reasons related to their particular situation, the concerned parties may object to the processing of their data. The journal index.comunicación will stop processing the data, except for legitimate reasons or the exercise or defence of possible claims.
To file a claim with the Control Authority - Spanish Agency for Data Protection.

How to exercise your rights of ownership?

In the electronic address: https://indexcomunicacion.es/index.php/indexcomunicacion/about/contact
Email: belen.puebla@urjc.es
Registries (Art. 16 Act 39/2015 of the Common Administrative Procedure of the Public Administrations.)
Postal Address: Universidad Rey Juan Carlos
Camino del Molino, s/n - 28943 Fuenlabrada - Madrid - España
Right to withdraw consent: you have the right to withdraw the consent given.
Right to complain to the Control Authority: Spanish Agency for Data Protection (AEPD), agpd.es

Cookies Policy

The journal index.comunicación uses cookies to manage user sessions, for which they are necessary if you are the author, reviewer or editor of the magazine. Cookies are not used if the journal is only accessed as a reader, without registration.

On some pages we use cookies to remember issues such as: a) your presentation preferences; b) the process status of a shipped item; c) the reading of the notifications related to the evaluation and editorial process of an article; d) whether or not you have given your consent for us to use cookies on our website; or e) the reading accesses made to the published articles.

Although cookies are not essential for the website to work, if you enable them you will enjoy a better browsing experience. You can delete or block cookies, but if you do, some of the features of this website may not work properly. For access to the article submission system and monitoring of the editorial process, these cookies are essential, so if they are not enabled, you will not be able to use said system.

The information associated with cookies is not used to personally identify the user. In addition, we keep the data about your browsing patterns fully under our control. These cookies are used exclusively for the purposes indicated here.

Web metrics analysis

The website servers will be able to automatically detect the IP address and domain name used by the user. An IP address is a number automatically assigned to a computer when it connects to the Internet. All this information is recorded in a server activity file that allows the subsequent processing of the data in order to obtain only statistical measurements that allow to know the number of page impressions, the number of visits made to web services, the order of visits, the access point, etc.

For this purpose, the internal OJS analytics system is used.

Reviewers committee

The review committee is comprised of collaborators of recognized competence in the thematic area of each article. The selection of the reviewers is carried out by criteria of affinity, recognition and research trajectory in the theme of the text to be reviewed.

The functions of the reviewers are to ensure the quality of the texts published in the journal and to adequately motivate the decisions to evaluate the article.

The editorial team follows up on each evaluator establishing a quality process in the review of manuscripts to guarantee compliance with deadlines, preservation of anonymity, motivation of decisions and information to the author.

The collaborations are certified every year, at the end of the review process. Some have collaborated by reviewing more than one text.

We sincerely thank all the reviewers for their disinterested and rigorous work that greatly contributes to improving the quality of the published texts.

See reviewers 2023

See reviewers 2022

See reviewers 2021

See reviewers 2020

See reviewers 2019

See reviewers 2018

See reviewers 2017

See reviewers 2016

See reviewers 2015

See reviewers 2014

See reviewers 2013

See reviewers 2012

See reviewers 2011

Sources of support

Faculty of Communication Sciences. King Juan Carlos University. Camino del Molino, nº 5. 28942, Fuenlabrada. Madrid. España

Communication School. King Juan Carlos University

History of the Journal

index.comunicación was born in 2011 with an annual periodicity and with the aim of becoming a support medium in the field of scientific journals of Applied Communication.

The publication is part of the Latin Platform of Communication Journals (pLatCom), an initiative of the Revista Latina de Comunicación Social. It is a matured project integrated by Latin American and Spanish journals, all digital, oriented, in principle, to provide a service to new academics of Communication in Spanish.