About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Objective and scope of the journal.

Katharsis is an international online and arbitrated journal, included in DIANLET, EBSCO, REDIB and Latindex.

Katharsis Journal is edited by the Faculty of Social Sciences (Psychology program) from Institución Universitaria de Envigado (University of Envigado), Colombia, since 2006 with biannual periodicity (published on June and December).

Katharsis is dedicated to Social Sciences and Humanities areas, two important knowledge areas according to OCDE classification. The latter allows for the possibility of publishing specific topics or interdisciplinary investigations, covering areas and subareas of knowledge of psychology, education sciences, politics sciences, anthropology, sociology and more social sciences, language and literature, philosophy, ethics, aesthetics, and more human sciences. Thus, the public of this journal would be those interested in these topics.

The journal accepts original pieces in these areas with the condition of being the product of investigations or bibliographical revision, with a relevant impact in the development and improvement of university level education. In this aspect, the journal’s main objective is to contribute to a continuous improvement of the professional development of psychologists. For this reason, Katharsis journal considers itself as an academic resource to spread and debate extensively the progress and innovation in the disciplinary knowledge, derived from investigative processes in a regional, national and international level.

Peer Review Process

Article revision.

Receiving an article does not mean approving it. The received pieces are put into an editorial process, which is developed in several phases. In first place, the articles go through preliminary evaluation by the members of the Editorial Committee, they determinate the relevance of your publication. Once it is stablished that the article fulfils the thematic and formal requirements demanded by the journal, it will be sent to two academic pairs, internal and external to the Institución Universitaria de Envigado. In case of getting a positive review, the editorial process will be started in order of arrival. Material sent to the journal and not published will not be returned to the authors. Katharsis journal uses the double blind peer review, which guarantees anonymity for reviewers. Disagreement cases between two evaluators will be taken by the Editorial Committee, which decides the possibility of publishing. The results of the evaluation process by academic pairs will be unappealable in every case.

The evaluation pair will take the following aspects into account:

Coherence in the title, objectives, hypothesis, method, results and discussion in the submitted study.
Relevance of the methodological process of the base study of the article.
Correct presentation of results (qualitative and quantitative) following the APA rules.
Redacting quality.
Currency and relevancy of the bibliography.
Follow-up of citation rules.
Originality of the study and importance of the contributions to the respective field of knowledge.

The result of the evaluation may be: 1) Publishing without changes; 2) Publishing with minor corrections; 3) Publishing after a meticulous review and 4) Rejecting the article.

In case that adjustments are required, the corrected version will be sent to the journal in less than 15 days.

The judges are experts chosen by the journal, or suggested by the authors, they give their opinion about the relevance and validity of the content to be published, giving their written impression in order to improve the piece. The reviewers must keep secrecy respecting the non-published manuscript, it is forbidden to copy or use important data of the non-published pieces, unless you count with the authors’ permission. The receptors must give clear and coherent reports about the checked piece. In case that the reviewer suspects about any inappropriate conduct from the authors, he or she must write to the editor confidentially. The judge must be conscious of any sort of conflict of interest that might emerge during the revision of the article and alert the editor about it, in case it is necessary, he or she can quit the process.

One the piece has been accepted by the pairs for it publishing, the edition process is started, including style revision, redaction and formal aspects.

During the editing process, the editor keeps communication with the author in order to request required adjustments and notify about the editorial process.

Once the piece is published, the involved authors are notified.

Publication Frequency

The Katharsis journal is biannual and maintains permanent call for papers and according to the time of year when you receive the item will inform the author that number was accepted publication.

The magazine has Katharsis physical and electronic distribution and copy the respective author will be sent.

To receive your concerns you can contact us via email katharsis@iue.edu.co

Katharsis is an international online and arbitrated journal included in DIANLET, EBSCO, Latindex.

Open Access Policy

The Katharsis magazine follows the policy of open access, free of cost and immediate access to its contents under the principle of making research available to the public. The magazine allows readers to download, print, share and use the content of texts published in any of its numbers, under the condition of an adequate reference of the original source. The magazine does not make any economic charge to submit, review, correct, edit, diagram and publish articles in any of its numbers.

Ethical Norms of Publication

PUBLISHING ETHIC RULES.

Declaration and submission

The articles sent for publishing must be original texts. There must be an appended letter indicating that the authors grant Katharsis journal the rights for your article and materials to be reproduced, published, edited, communicated and transmitted publicly in any form or mean, as well as its distribution in the required amount of copies and their public spreading, including its disposition to national and international public by online media, for exclusively scientifical, cultural, and non-profit dispersion purposes. The originality of the piece and the rights submission must be written in a letter and signed by every author indicating that the presented manuscript is original, that it has not been published before or even been simultaneously sent to a different journal or media and stating that every author has read and agreed to its content.
It is necessary to take into account that any research applied in the manuscript must have the written permissions for every participant and the approval of the ethics committee of the institution. The latter has to be specified in the methodology section, as well as the respective references in case of counting on data or results given or designed by other authors.

The respective authors of the article will take responsibility for the content of the text and their effective participation in their role of authors.
Providing in the letter by the author some information about at least two possible reviewers for your article (name, institution and e-mail) will be very useful for easing the revision process.

Authorship

Katharsis Journal, agreeing with the four criteria presented by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), assumes the following definition of scientifical article author 1) Develops substantial contributions to the concept or design of the article or the acquisition, analysis and interpretation of the data for the piece; 2) The redaction of the article or the content review; 3) The final approval of the to-publish version; 4)Responsibility on every aspect of the piece, guaranteeing that every aspect concerning exactitude or integrity in the text have been researched and confirmed.

Only those who fulfil these four criteria can be shown as the scientific article authors. The latter implies that the co-authors share responsibility of the entire piece, counting on the integrity on their collaborators’ contributions.
Contributors who do not fulfil these four criteria will not be able to be shown as authors; instead, their contribution must be recognized with their names on the footer. With the article, you must send a format explaining every authors’ contribution (in case it is more than one) in the order stablished of which each is responsible.
In case the authors request for a member to be removed or added after having sent the article to the journal, a signed statement clarifying that every member agrees to the decision, included the one to remove or to add will be requested.

Plagiarism.

Plagiarism is a very wide phenomenon and it can vary from the absence of bibliographical references, the usage of other people’s ideas (published and unpublished) to the presentation of a complete document with a different authorship in another language. To avoid plagiarism, every source has to be cited in an appropriate way according to APA rules, and whenever a great amount of material is needed, an authorization must be requested. Any used procedure or results shown in the investigation and created by other people, must be explicitly cited in the article. If any form of plagiarism is detected in the article, it will be taken away from the evaluation, editing or publishing process and the authors will receive a letter with the evidences exposed.
The journal verifies plagiarism by using iThenticate (https://app.ithenticate.com) in every manuscript as a previous step, which makes part of the initial checking of the texts.

Retraction.

Retractions are done because of voluntary or involuntary mistakes from the authors; although, no matter the reason, the corrective action will be the same for both. The authors have the right to claim retraction spontaneously for partial or total content of their manuscripts in any moment. The manifestation of retraction must be specific enough. It does not exclude the authors from the disciplinary or legal actions derived from these mistakes.

Conflict of interest.

Conflict of interest refers to a situation where the authors have an interest that is personal, political, commercial, academic or economical, that may cloud their judgement about the article and its publishing.

Authors, reviewers and editors should be transparent about their interests, make them known, and not participate in the processes of authorship, judgement and editing in the case that these interests can influence their judgement.

Judgement

The judges are experts chosen by the journal, or suggested by the authors, who give their opinion about the relevance and validity of the content that´s going to be put out, giving their written assessment in order to improve the piece. The reviewers have to keep the unpublished manuscript confidential and copying or using data or aspects essential to the unpublished pieces is forbidden, unless the author gives permission to do so. The reviewers must produce clear and legitimate reports about the piece reviewed. In the case that the reviewer detects some suspicious behaviour in the author or authors, he or she must report it to the editor in a confidential manner. The judge must know that any type of conflict of interest that may become apparent during the revision process of an article must be reported to the editor, who, if it´s the case can quit the process.

Editor responsibility

Making the decision of publishing a piece must be based solely on the validity and importance of the academic content, taking into account no other interest. The editors of the journal do their job in a clear, transparent and objective manner, with no type of discrimination applied to the author and his pieces because of his genre, race, sexual preferences, ethnic group, religious beliefs or other aspects. All articles must be judged before their release, avoiding biases related to conflict of interest. The editors should maintain strict confidentiality concerning all received manuscripts. If a mistake is identified in a piece that has been released already, editors must assume responsibility and correct the situation, making it know by means of an erratas. In the case of ethical objections or alleged conflict of interest, the editors should take proper measures and give the authors the possibility to respond to any type of complaints.

Other important ethical considerations

Articles must provide anonymity to the institutions and people that participated in the studies, unless the people give their permission to be named.

The journal will not publish texts that evidence any type of racial, social, sexual or religious discrimination.

The journal does not take responsibility for the opinions, images or any other aspect concerning the pieces; the authors are fully legally responsible for their content. It is understood that all authors that sign give their consent of the article´s content.

It´s important that authors communicate the results of the studies published to the people and institutions involved with the repetitive investigations.

In the case of mild ethical transgressions, it will be notified to the author so they can respond to the complaints. In case of evident ethical transgression, institutions that employ the authors can be contacted, the pieces removed and future pieces destined to be published, punished.

Indexation

Journal History

Katharsis is an international online and arbitrated journal included in DIANLET, EBSCO, REDIB and Latindex.