Persons interested in publishing in Esfera Pública. Revista en Gobernanza y Sociedad must register on the journal’s platform and submit their manuscript through Open Journal Systems (OJS), available on the journal’s official website.

Once a username and password have been created, each author may access their personal area and begin a new submission. The platform allows authors to follow the editorial process and maintain communication with the journal’s team during the different stages of review, peer evaluation, copyediting, and publication.

Only manuscripts submitted through this system and complying with the journal’s editorial standards, author guidelines, originality criteria, formal requirements, and policies will be accepted for evaluation.

Submission and originality

By submitting a manuscript, authors declare that the text is original, unpublished, and not simultaneously under consideration by another journal, book, peer-reviewed editorial repository, or any other academic publication venue.

Authors undertake not to submit the same work to another publication while it is under editorial process in Esfera Pública. Revista en Gobernanza y Sociedad.

The journal accepts only works that correspond to its focus and scope, and reserves the right to reject, at the preliminary review stage, manuscripts that do not meet the established thematic, formal, ethical, or academic criteria.

Preliminary review

Before academic peer review, the editorial team will conduct a preliminary review to verify:

1. The relevance of the manuscript to the journal’s focus and scope.
2. Compliance with the author guidelines.
3. Originality and academic integrity of the text.
4. Clarity of the argumentative structure.
5. Adequacy of the critical apparatus, citations, and references.
6. Compliance with anonymization requirements for double-blind review.
7. Inclusion of required statements, when applicable: funding, conflict of interest, use of artificial intelligence, data availability, authorship contributions, and ethical considerations.

This preliminary review does not imply acceptance of the manuscript. Its purpose is to determine whether the text may be sent for academic review.

Anti-plagiarism policy and similarity review

Prior to peer review, all manuscripts may be reviewed using Turnitin, similarity review software used by the journal to identify textual matches, undeclared similarities, self-plagiarism, redundant publication, possible misuse of sources, and possible indications of content assisted by artificial intelligence.

The similarity report will not be considered, by itself, automatic proof of plagiarism. The editorial team will analyze the detected matches taking into account the appropriate use of citations, references, paraphrases, common fragments, bibliography, institutional names, methodological formulas, and other elements that may generate legitimate similarities.

When indications of plagiarism, self-plagiarism, redundant publication, misuse of sources, manipulation of citations, fabrication or falsification of data, or any other practice contrary to academic integrity are identified, the editorial team may request clarifications, suspend the editorial process, reject the manuscript, or take the corresponding editorial measures.

Peer review

Research articles and academic essays will be evaluated through peer review under a double-blind model. This means that the identity of authors will not be revealed to reviewers, and the identity of reviewers will not be revealed to authors during the review process.

Each manuscript approved in the preliminary review will be sent to at least two reviewers who are specialists in the subject. Reviewers will be selected on the basis of their academic trajectory, area of specialization, relevance to the manuscript, and absence of conflict of interest. In all cases, reviewers may not belong to the same institutional affiliation as any of the manuscript’s authors.

Reviewers may recommend one of the following decisions:

1. Accept the manuscript without modifications.
2. Accept the manuscript with modifications.
3. Reject the manuscript.

In the event of two reports with opposing recommendations or substantial discrepancies, the manuscript will mandatorily be sent for a third review. Likewise, when the nature of the manuscript, its thematic specialization, or the need for greater academic contrast requires it, the editorial team may request additional evaluations.

The final publication decision rests with the journal’s editorial team, based on the reports received, the academic quality of the text, its thematic relevance, and compliance with editorial policies.

For greater transparency in the peer-review process, the journal makes publicly available the form used for the academic evaluation of manuscripts:

• Scientific peer-review form | double blind

Communication of results

The result of the peer-review process will be communicated to authors through the OJS platform or by institutional email. The communication will include, when applicable, the reviewers’ comments and the editorial instructions necessary to continue the process.

The journal will conduct a preliminary review of the manuscript within an estimated period of up to four weeks from its receipt in the OJS platform. Texts approved at this stage will be sent for academic review under the double-blind model. The journal will seek to communicate the result of peer review within a maximum period of twelve weeks from the start of the peer-review process. This period may be exceptionally extended when it is necessary to request a third review, when there are difficulties in locating specialized reviewers, or when the complexity of the manuscript justifies it.

Corrections and final acceptance

When the result of the review is favorable with modifications, authors must submit the corrected version of the manuscript within the period indicated by the editorial team. Unless another deadline is established, the corrected version must be submitted within no more than fourteen calendar days from the editorial communication.

Together with the corrected version, authors must submit a response document clearly indicating the changes made and how they addressed the observations of the reviewers and the editorial team.

The editorial team will review the corrected version and may request additional adjustments before issuing final acceptance. Once the text has been accepted for publication, no substantive modifications may be made without editorial authorization.

Editing, copyediting, and publication

The journal reserves the right to make style corrections, formatting adjustments, bibliographic normalization, metadata review, and editorial modifications necessary to ensure the quality, clarity, consistency, and formal adequacy of published texts.

Acceptance of a manuscript does not imply immediate publication. The editorial team may organize the publication of accepted articles according to the planning of each issue, the availability of materials, editing times, and the journal’s editorial needs.

Copyright and license

Authors retain the economic rights over their works and grant Esfera Pública. Revista en Gobernanza y Sociedad the right of first publication.

Published contents are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0), unless otherwise expressly indicated. This license allows users to copy, redistribute, remix, transform, and build upon the material in any medium or format, including for commercial purposes, provided that appropriate credit is given to the authors, the original source of publication is cited, and any changes made are indicated.

Editorial costs

Esfera Pública. Revista en Gobernanza y Sociedad does not charge fees for submission, editorial processing, peer review, copyediting, layout, publication, download, or reading.

The journal does not apply article processing charges (APCs), submission charges, page charges, color charges, manuscript withdrawal fees, or publication fees.

Author responsibility

The content of published contributions is the sole responsibility of their authors. The opinions, arguments, data, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in the texts do not necessarily reflect the institutional position of El Colegio de Jalisco, A. C., nor that of the journal’s editorial team.

For further information on the editorial process, author guidelines, or the status of a submission, please write to: esferapublica@elcolegiodejalisco.edu.mx.