Submissions

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Submission Preparation Checklist

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.
  • The submission has not been previously published, nor has it been submitted for consideration to any other journal (or an explanation has been provided in the Editor's Comments).
  • The text adheres to the stylistic, formatting and bibliographic requirements given in the style guidelines below, and the file extension is in Microsoft Word
  • URLs or DOIs are provided for references, when possible
  • If submitted to a peer-reviewed section of the journal, the instructions for ensuring anonymous review below are followed
  • In addition to the document with the text body, another document with personal data is sent

Author Guidelines

I. Manuscript submission information

1. Information to provide

Authors should send two documents to the journal's editorial office through the digital platform:

One, the paper's text. The text must be anonymous and must contain the following information in its original language and in English: the title, an abstract of 200 words maximum and 6 keywords separated by semicolons. A list of bibliographical references should also be provided at the end of the paper. The paper may be sent in any style format for evaluation, but if it is accepted, it will be sent back to the author to be reworked according to the journal's style guidelines (see below). If it does not conform to these rules, the text will not be published.

Two, a document with personal data. The author, in a file different from that of the body text, should provide a brief curriculum vitae, which should also include the institution of affiliation (or, failing that, indicate that he/she is an independent researcher) and his/her ORCID number. This file should also indicate the e-mail address that the author wishes to appear in the article or the book review, if it is finally published.

2. Originality

All the writings that are sent for publication in Naturaleza y Libertad must be completely unpublished. While they are in the evaluation or editing process they should not be referred to any other publication. Once they have been published, the authors will be able to use their texts with total freedom, always citing their original publication in Naturaleza y Libertad. Very exceptionally, and if the reviewers consider it appropriate, articles already published in other journals of little circulation may be published, specifying it in each case.

3. No identification of own citations

To facilitate anonymous review, the author must eliminate all references in the article to other works and articles written by himself —both in the body and in the notes—, or do so in a way that does not reveal his own authorship. He should also omit the mention of acknowledgments of his participation in funded projects and other acknowledgments (if any, this information must be included in the personal data document).

II. Style standards

1. Bibliographic standards
 
The journal uses Harvard style.
 
The author-year system (author, year: page) will be used for in-text citations. For example: (Arana, 2015: 30)
 
For bibliographic references:
 
        Books: Arana, J. (2015): La conciencia inexplicada. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva.
 
        Journal article: Rodríguez Valls, F. (2019): "The separability of the mind", Naturaleza y Libertad. Revista de estudios interdisciplinares, (12). DOI: 10.24310/NATyLIB.2019.v0i12.6275.
 
        Book chapters: Kuhn, T.S. (1970): "Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research?", in I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave (eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1-24.
 
        Electronic documents: Morin, E. [online]: "La epistemología de la complejidad", in Gazeta de Antropología 20 (2004) (trans. José L. Solana), http://www.ugr.es/~pwlac/G20_02Edgar_Morin.html [Accessed: 26/12/2006].
 
Whenever possible, the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) numbers or the URLs of the texts cited in the bibliography (whether papers, book chapters or books) should be provided.
 
2. Formatting standards
 

     1. Papers should be submitted in a Word file. It is preferable not to use CAPITALS, VERSALITES or bold type anywhere: only italics to highlight book titles, expressions to be emphasized and expressions in foreign languages. The title (in Spanish and English) should appear first. In case of a book review, the title of the review is the book reference followed by the number of pages and the ISBN (e.g. Arana, J. (2015): La conciencia inexplicada. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 231 pp., ISBN 978-84-16345-94-6) and its English translation need not be added.

     2. Next, the resumen, palabras clave, abstract and keywords of the paper, which will not be necessary in the case of book reviews or in the case of notes and comments.

     3. Then the body text, which may be divided into headings, numbered and titled on a separate line (1., 2., 3,... for headings; 1.1., 1.2., if there are subheadings; other subdivisions are not recommended).

     4. The body text should be followed by a last heading, “Bibliography”, which should be prepared according to the rules already mentioned. In the “Bibliography” section, no hyphens should be used to avoid repeating the surname and first name of the authors, but it should be repeated in each new entry.

     5. Quoted texts should be in quotation marks within the text of the article when they are short (up to one or two lines) and in separate paragraphs indented and without quotation marks when they are longer.

     6. The quotation marks used are the low or Spanish ones («...»). If other quotation marks should be used within these, the high or English quotation marks (“...”) should be used. If third quotation marks were needed, single high quotation marks would be used ('...'). When the quotation marks coincide with the end of the sentence, the period goes outside the quotation marks («...».), not inside. And when the quotation marks are accompanied by a footnote, the footnote number is in superscript and between the quotation marks and the period («...»4.).

     7. Bibliographical references may be made in parentheses within the text if they are short, putting the author's last name, year of publication - with a supplementary lowercase letter if there are several titles by the same author and year, and the page or pages after a colon. Example: (Popper, 1978b: 145-6), according to Harvard style.

     8. Notes should always be at the foot of the page (not at the end of the chapter). They should not use periods, and the bibliographical indications should be made as explained in the previous point.

    9. It is recommended to restrict as much as possible the use of tables, text tables, figures and illustrations, logical calculations and mathematical formalizations. Special signs (Greek, Hebrew, logical, mathematical) may cause problems. It is recommended to restrict them as much as possible, and in any case, to send originals in which a certain number of them appear processed in Microsoft Office and not in another type of word processor.

III: Instructions to ensure an anonymous review

To ensure the integrity of anonymous peer reviews of submissions to this journal, every effort will be made to prevent authors from knowing the identity of reviewers and vice versa. To this end, authors, editors and reviewers (who upload documents as part of the review) should check that the following steps have been followed in relation to the text and file properties:

The authors of the paper have deleted their names from the text, as well as any other reference that could identify them.

In Microsoft Office documents, the author identification should also be removed from the file properties (see the File option in Word), by clicking on the options below. Start with File in the main menu of the Microsoft application: File > Save As > Tools (or Options on Mac) > Security > Remove personal information from file properties when saving > Save.

To facilitate anonymous review, the author should eliminate all references in the article to other works and productions written by him or herself -both in the body of the article and in the notes-, or do so in a way that does not reveal his or her own authorship. He/she should also omit mention of acknowledgements of his/her participation in funded projects and other identifiable acknowledgements.

IV. Recommendations for the correct preparation of titles, abstracts, key words, professional affiliation and bibliographic references

Authors should send their articles to the journal's editorial office through the digital platform.

The text must be anonymous and contain the following information, in its original language and in English:

  • title, which should adequately express the subject matter
  • abstract of 200 words maximum, synthesizing well the content of the article
  • 6 key words separated by semicolons, which correctly list the topics covered.

They should also provide a list of bibliographical references at the end of the article, following the Harvard style, mentioned before.

In case of a version of the title in other language different from the english one, as well as the abstract and keywords, they must correspond to the English version and must be correctly written.

The author, in the document with personal data, must provide the name of the institution to which he/she is attached or where he/she works, and, failing that, indicate that he/she is an independent researcher, as well as his/her ORCID number and the e-mail address he/she wishes to appear in the article in case it is published.

V. Information on the editorial process followed by the manuscripts, the system used by the journal for their evaluation-selection and the publication criteria

     1. Start of the editorial process

All sections are evaluated, i.e. the steering committee initially decides whether the article is appropriate for the journal. In the case of a text that has been submitted to a section requiring peer review, if it is accepted after this preliminary assessment, the editorial team selects reviewers who are experts in the subject matter of the article. The article then undergoes a more thorough evaluation process as follows:

     2. Peer review

The review of each article will be carried out by an expert reviewer who will advise on its publication, without knowing in any case the identity of the author.

     3. Blind evaluation

To ensure transparency, the reviewers do not know each other, nor do they know the identity of the evaluated author.

     4. External reviewers

The majority of reviewers are external to the journal, and are PhD professors from international research institutions. A list of reviewers will be published at the end of each year in the journal web.

     5. Acceptance or rejection after evaluation

After the expert review, the steering committee decides whether to accept the article without further review, to ask the author to make the modifications recommended by the reviewers, to request further review, or to reject the article for publication.

VI. Transparency of authorship and co-authorship

Authors have to justify that, in case of shared authorship, there was a full consensus of all authors concerned and that the text has not been previously presented or published elsewhere.

In the signature of the paper, the order of authors should be listed according to the relevance of their contribution to the paper, with the most relevant author listed first and the least relevant author last.

If in the approved version of the text there are changes in authorship with respect to the version sent for evaluation, the consensus of all the authors, including those replaced or eliminated, must be communicated to the journal editors so that the relevant changes can be made.

VII. Record the source of funding for published papers

Authors are asked to explain the support of any kind they have received for the preparation of their texts, whether financial, translational or stylistic.

If they have received funding, authors are asked to state in the first footnote of their text the agency that provided the funding and the project code of the project in which the research leading to the publication was carried out.

VIII. About IA use

Writing any part of an article using a generative AI/LLM tool, including generation of the abstract or literature review, is not allowed.

Generation or reporting of results using a generative AI/LLM tool is not allowed, and statistical reporting in the text using a generative AI/LLM tool is not allowed.

Editing an article using a generative AI/LLM tool to improve its language and readability would be allowed, as this mirrors the standard tools already employed to improve spelling and grammar, and uses existing material created by the author, rather than generating entirely new content, while the author(s) remain responsible for the original work.

Submission and publication of images created by artificial intelligence tools or large-scale generative models is not allowed.

 

IX. Types of text considered, copyright notice, and privacy statement

Papers

In the papers the author(s) show the original result of the research. They have a length between 6,000 and 8,000 words and are evaluated by double-blind peer review.

Notes and Comments

Texts reporting on books, congresses, symposiums and other activities related to the topics of the journal. They will have a maximum length of 4,000 words. They are not peer-reviewed.

Book reviews

They are up to 1800 words in length. Only in exceptional cases, reviews of books more than five years old will be accepted. The works reviewed must be first editions, or reprints with substantial modifications. To avoid conflicts of interest, it is preferable that they are not written by people close to the author of the reviewed book or who have collaborated in its edition or design. Neither should the author of a reviewed book have professional ascendancy over the author of the review, as is the case of a thesis director. Not peer revewed.

Essays

Following a restructuring of the journal (01/2024) such submissions are no longer accepted.

Debates

Following a restructuring of the journal (01/2024) such submissions are no longer accepted.

Philosophical creation

Following a restructuring of the journal (01/2024) such submissions are no longer accepted.

News and Comments

Following a restructuring of the journal (01/2024) such submissions are no longer accepted.

Copyright Notice

Those authors who have publications with this journal, accept the following terms:

1. All content published in Naturaleza y Libertad is open acces without limit, and are subject to the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. The full text of which can be consulted at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

2. It is the responsibility of the authors to obtain the necessary permissions for the images that are subject to copyright. The authors whose contributions are accepted for publication in this journal will retain the non-exclusive right to use their contributions for academic, research and educational purposes, including self-archiving or deposit in open access repositories of any kind. The electronic edition of this magazine is edited by the Editorial de la University of Malaga (UmaEditorial), being necessary to cite the origin in any partial or total reproduction.

3. This journal allows and encourages authors to publish papers on their personal websites or in institutional repositories, both before and after their publication in this journal, as long as they provide bibliographic information that accredits, if applicable, your posting on it.

4. In no case will anonymous papers be published.

Privacy Statement

In compliance with Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council, regarding the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and the free circulation of these data (RGPD), we inform you that the personal data you provide us through the portal https://revistas.uma.es/, via telephone, or by email will be treated confidentially and will become part of a file owned by the University of Malaga that has been duly registered with the Spanish Agency for Data Protection (www.agpd.es). Your personal data will be used to meet your request for information, the management and provision of the services offered by UMA Editorial, and to send future commercial communications that may be of interest to you.

 Likewise, we inform you that you can exercise your rights of access, rectification, cancellation and opposition in accordance with the provisions of Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council, regarding the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and the free circulation of these data (RGPD), by sending a letter together with a photocopy of your ID, to the following address: Bulevar Louis Pasteur, 30 (Campus de Teatinos ), Apdo. 3149, 29071, Malaga.

The data requested from the User through forms indicated with an asterisk (*) will be those strictly necessary to be able to provide the service or to be able to contact the User. In no case, the fact of not providing more data than what is strictly necessary will imply a reduction in the quality of the service.

The User guarantees that the personal data provided is true and is responsible for communicating any changes in them. The User will be solely responsible for any damage or harm, direct or indirect, that could be caused to UMA Editorial or to any third party, due to filling in the forms with false, inaccurate, incomplete or out-of-date data. In the event that the User includes personal data of third parties, he must, prior to its inclusion, inform them of the provisions of this privacy policy, being solely responsible for its inclusion.