Editorial Statutes

Editorial Statutes

 

CHAPTER I

Identification and Presentation of the journal.

1. The Millenium journal is a publication of a technical-scientific nature published by the Polytechnic Institute of Viseu (IPV).

2. Millenium-Journal of Education, Technologies and Health is published every four months, with three issues per year (January-April; May-August; September-December). Exceptionally, it may publish special issues.

3.The languages in which the journal is published are Portuguese, English and Spanish, and the English version is compulsory.

4. The Millenium journal is a vehicle that aims to disseminate the products of the research projects and the knowledge gathered from different technical areas and will be used to facilitate the sharing and the transfer of this knowledge. 

 

CHAPTER II

Objectives

5. Disseminate technical and scientific knowledge produced in life and health sciences, agriculture, food and veterinary sciences, education and social development, and engineering, technology, management, and tourism.

6. To provide opportunities for development and technical and scientific updating, constituting communication between academics, specialists, and professionals accessible to all interested parties.

CHAPTER III

Structure and Editorial Plan.

7. Millenium, Journal of Education, Technologies and Health consists of a main body of technical-scientific articles, the organization of which may include, among others, the following sections:

  • Agricultural, Food, and Veterinary Sciences;
  • Life and Health Sciences;
  • Education and Social Development;
  • Engineering, Technologies, Management, and Tourism;

Each issue of Millenium, Journal of Education, Technologies and Health will have an Editorial written by one or more of the Editors of the Journal or by specially invited individuals of recognized merit.

8. The journal publishes scientific papers of different types: Research Papers (RP), Systematic Review Papers (SRP), Historical Research Papers (HRP), Theoretical Papers, and Essays (TPE).

9. The Editorial Board of Millenium, Journal of Education, Technologies, and Health reserves the right to invite authors of recognized merit and reputation to publish in the Journal without reviewing. In such cases, this will be mentioned in the article.

CHAPTER IV

Editorial Team

10. The journal has an Editorial Team formed by an Editor-in-Chief and six Assistant Editors appointed by the IPV President.

11. The Editorial Team is the deliberative forum of the Millenium, Journal of Education, Technologies and Health, and is responsible for the scientific/technical management of the journal, namely:

  1. To define and approve the editorial policy of the journal and to present possible changes;
  2. To define the quality standards of the journal and the evaluation criteria for the papers that are submitted;
  3. To approve the format, content, editorial guidance, and periodicity of the journal;
  4. To comment on the special issues and their content/themes;
  5. To suggest and approve the Journal’s reviewers;
  6. To take care of the Journal’s promotion;
  7. To encourage the authors’ participation;
  8. To coordinate the editorial consulting concerning the editorial policy of the journal;
  9. To comment on any other subject not contemplated in this regulation.                   

12. The members of the Editorial Team are part of the Board of Reviewers, assuming the management of the review process. They are also responsible for assessing the merit of the texts submitted for publication and preparing the respective scientific and technical opinions within the established deadline.

13. The Editorial Team will meet:

  1. Every two weeks, and extraordinary meetings will be held whenever it seems fit;
  2. Regular or/and Extraordinary meetings will be called with a two (2) day minimum notice so that the members who cannot be present may participate, having previously sent their comments, suggestions, and opinions.
  3. A minute will be prepared for each meeting, and it will be read and approved by each member of the Editorial Board.

CHAPTER V

Editor-in-Chief

14. The journal is run by an Editor-in-chief, appointed by the IPV President, whose competencies are:

  1. To represent the journal;
  2. To coordinate the publishing process;
  3. To observe and ensure that the editorial policy of the journal and the editorial plan of each issue are followed.
  4. To coordinate the timing and the information during the publishing process and all the other activities that are related to this process.
  5. To examine the papers which had been submitted, verify their conformity with the journal editorial policy, and redirect them to the Section Editors or the journal reviewers;
  6. To authorize the publishing of the texts/papers which had been submitted;
  7. To coordinate the tasks related to the compilation of the different issues and include the process of evaluation of the papers submitted to the Section Editors and the reviewing of the approved texts;
  8. To arrange for the dissemination of the journal;
  9. To administer the assets of the journal;
  10. To convene and be chairman of the regular and extraordinary Editorial Team and Board meetings. 

CHAPTER VI

Section Editors 

15. Section Editors are part of the Editorial Council. Those are the Section Editors' responsibilities:

  1. To assist the Editor-in-Chief in the management of the journal publishing process;
  2. To coordinate the reviewing process in his section;
  3. To select the paper’s reviewers according to their scientific area, to analyze all their opinions and every version of the papers;
  4. Assess the merit of the texts submitted for publication and prepare the respective scientific and technical opinions within the established deadline;
  5. To represent the journal following the Editor-in-chief’s delegation.
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CHAPTER VII

International Editorial Board

16. The International Editorial Board is the advisory forum of the Millenium - Journal of Education, Technologies and Health and is responsible for assisting the journal's editorial team. They meet at the call of the Editor-in-Chief. The Board’s responsibilities are: 

  1. To assist the Publishing Team in the definition of the journal’s policy;
  2. To give an opinion on issues concerning the format, the contents, the editorial path, and the journal periodicity presented by the Publishing Team;
  3. To suggest reviewers;
  4. To publicize the journal;
  5. To encourage the authors’ participation;
  6. To give an opinion about any other issue not part of this regulation and suggested by the Editor–in–chief.

CHAPTER VIII

Technical Units

17. A Technical Unit assists the Editorial Team for Redaction, Editing, and Documentation.

18. The Technical Redaction, Edition documentation, and editorial consultancy Unit’s attributions are associated with the following:

  1. support and assistance were given to all editorial activities: Text Treatment and Revision, Treatment of references, Internet Edition, Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) conversion, composition, Graphic Conception, and Design.;
  2. Keeping the author and proofreader/reviewer’s property registration updated in the Serviço de Alojamento de Revistas Científicas (SARC) do Repositório Científico de Acesso aberto de Portugal (RCAAP) - (the scientific publications hosting service belonging to the Portugal open access scientific repository)
  3. Keeping the journal’s archives and collections. 
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CHAPTER IX

Submission of articles.

19. An article that is submitted to be published has to be original, it mustn’t have been published elsewhere before, and the main author/correspondent has to inform the journal of any previous publication of the said article in any other medium and to inform if its publication somewhere else had been accepted.

20. When submitting the text to be published, the authors must confirm and explicitly declare that the articles are original and totally or partially unpublished and authorize their publication in the journal. They should also declare that those articles won’t be published afterward under the same form or in any other language without the journal’s consent.

21. Authors, up to a maximum of six (6), when submitting an article for publication in the Journal, are legally responsible for ensuring that the work does not constitute an infringement of copyright, as well as taking responsibility for compliance with the ethical standards applicable to scientific work and publication, exempting the Journal from any responsibility.

22. The responsibility for obtaining the competent authority to publish texts, images, or any other material subject to copyright laws rests solely with the authors.

23. Authors, in the submission process, agree to comply with the Declaration of Ethical and Legal Responsibility and agree to the terms of the Copyright Assignment.

24. The contents of the texts and the opinions, ideas, and concepts expressed in the published articles are their authors’ sole responsibility, and they do not necessarily reflect the Journal Editorial Team’s points of view.

25. Articles can be submitted in Portuguese, English or Spanish, but the title, abstract and keywords/descriptors must always be presented in all three languages. Once they have been accepted for publication in Millenium - Journal of Education, Tecnologies and Health, articles written in Portuguese and Spanish will be translated into English. It is the author's responsibility to submit the translated version by the deadline set by the journal.

26. The articles must be submitted through the Millenium - Journal of Education, Tecnologies and Health website. The submission of the articles is subject to the author’s prior registration. In this registration, all the form fields have to be filled in. The article file is available on the Millenium - Journal of Education, Technologies and Health website and describes the article, the author’s ID (full name/s, e-mail address for correspondence), an institutional affiliation which will include the institution’s name, its department, street, number, city, and country, the author’s indication that he is a correspondent of the Journal, the study funding sources (if any) as well as the ORCID registration number, contribution of the authors and indication of the existence of a conflict of interest.

27. When the author sends a text for submission, he has to write, in the body of the message, a referral letter to the Journal Editor-in-chief, in which he will ensure that the article is original and unpublished and that all the ethical procedures regarding scientific work had been taken into account and in which he will express his reasons and motivations that led to the article and why he wishes it to be published. The author must also declare that he authorizes the journal to index the articles in the international database to which the Millenium - Journal of Education, Technologies, and Health is or may be indexed.

28. The submission of the article requires the attachment of two separate files: an Article File and another File that will include the article alone, with its title, tables, graphics, and figures (in jpg format) in their right position within the article. The submitted archives must respect the Microsoft Word, Open Office, or RTF formats. The proponent/ correspondent author of the article also has to indicate the nature of the article and the section in which it belongs.

29. All the submitted articles must respect the current publication policy, available on the Millenium - Journal of Education, Tecnologies and Health website. The articles that do not comply with the journal’s publication policy will be immediately turned down and won’t even go through the proofreading/reviewing process.

30. The implementation of the submission process requires the authors to follow all the online submission steps and to upload their integral and anonymous texts. Support documents are available on the Millenium - Journal of Education, Tecnologies and Health website.

31. The journal operates on a continuous publication. The articles will be made available as soon as they are approved and edited in their final version, without waiting for the finalization of the entire issue in which they are included.

CHAPTER X

Reviewers Board and Review Process

32. The journal’s Reviewers Board comprises nationally and internationally renowned scientific and academic personalities.

33. The selection of the members of the Review Board is the responsibility of the Journal's Editorial Team, and participation may be permanent or occasional. Each reviewer registers online on the Millenium - Journal of Education, Tecnologies and Health website, where they identify between 2 and 5 areas of knowledge in which they are available to evaluate the articles.

34. The reviewers must assess the quality of the submitted texts and prepare the scientific and technical reports within the deadline set for this matter.

35. The articles submitted for publication have to go through a double-blind peer review, according to the following criteria, once the specific nature of the articles’ typology is assured:

  1. Relevance for the diffusion and development of the respective scientific area;
  2. Originality (significant and innovative contribution);
  3. Objectives (formulation and suitability);
  4. Accuracy (concepts’ suitability and accuracy);
  5. Methods (suitability and depth regarding the topic’s approach; the observance of scientific research and publications’ ethical standards);
  6. Results (accurate presentation, analysis, and discussion);
  7. Conclusions (contribution for innovative or confirmatory knowledge); the study’s technical and scientific implications; its limitations and further research possibilities);
  8. Up-to-date and accurate References (exactness of the citations used; precise and accurate reference technique);
  9. General quality of the text (the objective that is to be achieved; logical and balanced structure; clear and coherent presentation; objective and factual writing style; grammar correctness and precision in language;
  10. Adjustment to the Millenium - Journal of Education, Technologies, and Health editorial policy and standards found on the journal’s website.

36. One or more reviewers carry out The article’s assessment anonymously according to the evaluation instrument suitable for each type of article.

37. Reviewers may use an evaluation grid to assess the quality of the article. 

38. The reviewers are given a maximum of 4 consecutive weeks from the date the article was received to evaluate it and give their opinion. In individual cases, the Editorial Team reserves the right to change this deadline. The information system generates reminders to warn the reviewer about the review process timings.

39. Whenever a reviewer cannot review the texts he is responsible for, he will have to inform the Section Editor within a maximum of eight (8) days from the date he received the texts so that the latter can send the documents to another reviewer. A reviewer will be excluded from the review process whenever he misses a deadline, and a third reviewer must be assigned.

40. The classification of the articles’ quality will be carried out according to four different levels: Level A (the article should be published without any changes); Level B (the article may be published with a few changes); Level C (the article may be published as soon as the changes suggested by the reviewer are made; the new version will have to be reviewed); Level D (the article doesn’t meet the essential conditions to be published).

41. The authors get the Editor’s appreciation and an anonymous copy of the Reviewers’ opinion, including the evaluation and comments sent to the authors.

42. The authors have a maximum of 30 days from receiving the notice to make the necessary changes and submit the new version of their article. Exceptionally, this new article might be reviewed by the editor's decision.

43. The reviewers have the right to present a favorable opinion that will depend on the reformulation of the article.

CHAPTER XI

From Arbitration Procedure to Evaluation Mechanisms

44. Peer evaluation is a constructive process, so besides evaluating the article's scientific contents, reviewers should contribute with their constructive criticisms and recommendations for its improvement. The reviewers’ opinions/comments will be sent to the authors whenever they are deemed relevant. However, the authors of the articles will not be informed of the reviewers’ identity. 

45. All the articles submitted to Millenium - Journal of Education, Tecnologies and Health will be subject to technical and scientific quality and merit appreciation through arbitration by peers process, with double-blind peer review.

46. The arbitration and evaluation process will begin once the article is received and end with its publication or rejection. This process is supported by the 8-step (ABCDEFGH) Decision for Publication Flowchart: A- Code assignment; B- Pre-analysis through Checklist; C- Peer review; D- Review supervision; E-Final Review; F- Translation; G- Composition, Graphic Design; HTML; H- Dissemination in databases.

A – Code Assignment: All the articles submitted to Millenium - Journal of Education, Technologies and Health get an identity numeric code to support the arbitration process in a double-blind review system that will protect the author's and reviewers’ identities.

B – Pre-analysis: Once the article has been received, the Section Editor will assess its suitability and relevance to the editorial policy. If the article meets the conditions and is recommended to enter the review process, the Section Editor submits the article to the Urkund Programme to screen for plagiarism. If it passes the Section Editor's pre-evaluation, the article enters the blind peer review phase. If it does not pass, the Section Editor requests the missing documents or informs the authors of the publication rejection.

C – Peer Review: The Section Editor sends the article to two reviewers whose field of expertise is appropriate to review the article submitted. These reviewers proceed to the evaluation and give their opinions. The final result based on the evaluation-specific instruments for the article will be expressed as follows: Level A (the article should be published without any changes); Level B (the article may be published with a few changes); Level C (the article may be published as soon as the changes suggested by the reviewer are made; the new version will have to be reviewed); Level D (the article doesn’t meet the essential conditions to be published). When the reviewers’ opinions are not unanimous or if any justified doubts remain, the Section Editor will send the article to a third reviewer.

When the acceptance of the article depends on its further review or reformulation, new dates for its reformulation and the new evaluation process will be set.

The opinions will focus, among other things, on the following topics:

  1. Relevance of the article for the diffusion and development of the respective scientific area;
  2. Originality (significant and innovative contribution);
  3. Objectives (formulation and adequacy);
  4. Precision (correctness and accuracy of the concepts);
  5. Methods (suitability and depth regarding the topic’s approach; the observance of scientific research and publications’ ethical standards);
  6. Results (accurate presentation, analysis, and discussion);
  7. Conclusions (contribution for innovative or confirmatory knowledge); the study’s technical and scientific implications; its limitations and further research possibilities);
  8. Up-to-date and accurate References (exactness of the citations used; precise and accurate reference technique);
  9. General quality of the text (the objective that is to be achieved; logical and balanced structure; clear and coherent presentation; objective and factual writing style; grammar correctness and precision in language;
  10. Adjustment to the Millenium - Journal of Education, Technologies, and Health editorial policy and standards found on the journal’s website.

D – Review Supervision: After the response of the authors to all the reviewers' recommendations, the article is considered by the Section Editor.

E – Final Supervision: The article’s text is morphologically and syntactically reviewed. The authors will be notified of the final decision about the article’s publication, and the reviewers’ anonymous opinions will be attached whenever the Section Editor deems it necessary. The final decision about the publication is the Editor-in-Chief’s responsibility, taking into account the Section Editor opinion.

F - Translation: It is the author's responsibility to translate the article into English if submitted in Portuguese or Spanish.

G- Composition, Graphic Design, and DOI Code Assignment: Articles are packaged and assigned a Digital Object Identifier (DOI).

H - Digital Dissemination in Databases: The documentation technicians create the metadata (HTM, XML, and selective marketing materials). The articles will be freely available on the journal’s webpage in full-text format. They are also sent to all databases, indexes, and dissemination circuits.

CHAPTER XII

Monitoring and Registration

47. For internal control purposes, the following elements will be registered on the Millenium platform:

  1. The article’s code and typology;
  2. The article’s submission/reception date;
  3. The date on which the article was sent to the reviewers to be assessed;
  4. The date on which the reviewers’ opinions were received;
  5. The date of the article’s acceptance or non-acceptance for publication.

The article's reception dates, review, acceptance, and publication, will be stated at the time of publication.

CHAPTER XIII

Financial Resources

48. The Polytechnic Institute of Viseu (IPV) funds the journal. Other financial resources required for the journal’s production will be obtained through specific projects and from the support granted by public and private entities.

CHAPTER XIV

Final Provisions

49. The Journal’s Editor-in-Chief will address the cases not covered herein.

50. This regulation may be revised whenever deemed necessary or appropriate. Once again, this revision will be approved by the Journal’s Editor-in-Chief.

Viseu, July 05th, 2023