About the Journal

Focus and scope

 The Colombian Journal of Nephrology (Revista Colombiana de Nefrología) is a digital scientific publication, of open access, that publishes mainly research articles, reviews and clinical cases of Nephrology in Spanish or English. It has a continuous periodicity, with three issues per year, and a “double blind” evaluation system for the selection of its contents.

As of the particularities of its editorial line and thematic, the Journal seeks to contribute to scientific knowledge, clinical practice and education in nephrology. Its topics are diverse and include research on chronic kidney disease, kidney transplantation, kidney failure, dialysis, and acute kidney injury.

It is also engaged in publishing novel works and possible therapeutic strategies in areas such as nephroprotection, glomerular disease, hemodialysis, peritoneal dialysis, congenital nephropathies, rare diseases with renal involvement, diabetic nephropathy and quality management in nephrology. 

Likewise, due to the nature of its contents, the Journal is expected to be of interest to researchers in the field of nephrology at the international level, specialists, resident physicians and other medical professionals in training. 

The Journal is funded by the Colombian Association of Nephrology and Arterial Hypertension, under the “diamond” open access model, that is, it has no cost for the authors in any of its phases (neither of submission nor of processing of the articles).

 

Essentials of the publishing process

 Authors who are interested in publishing in the Colombian Journal of Nephrology should take into account the following essential aspects at the time of postulating an article:

Originality. The Journal seeks the publication of original works that have not yet been published by other media.

The submission of manuscripts that are derived from the partial or total translation of a paper already published in a language other than the one sent to the Journal or the inclusion of results or substantial information already published in a manuscript, is not adequate and in case of being detected, it will lead to a utterly rejection by the editor.

Copyright. The Journal allows the authors to preserve patrimonial rights on their articles. However, every time a manuscript is accepted for publication, the authors must sign and send a publication license to the Journal (and to the Association) for the entire term of legal protection and in all territories, under the conditions indicated by the Journal, in order to freely allow its use, dissemination and diffusion, and its digital preservation over time.

Likewise, in order to regulate the relationship between the contents of the Journal and its readers, the articles will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution license, without commercialization and without derivative works (CC BY-NC-ND).

Ethics and scientific integrity. The Journal endorses the recommendations of good practices (core practices) of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) for scientific publications. The authors should avoid incurring in improper uses of texts or works that are protected or not authorized for their reproduction or in unethical practices that compromise the quality or the veracity of the results of the manuscripts that they submit to the Journal.

Evaluation system. The Journal accomplishes its evaluation process in two phases. A first one, that involves an editorial evaluation, in which the minimum conditions of quality of the manuscripts are verified and their originality is reviewed with the support of an anti-plagiarism tool. A second one, in which the article is sent to two peers who are subject matter experts under the “double blind” system; that is, in the entire evaluation process the identities of both the authors and the evaluators are reserved. The editor, based on the recommendations of the peers, will decide whether the submitted manuscripts can be accepted or rejected for publication in the Journal.

Co-authorship, conflict of interest and funding. All manuscripts that are submitted to the Journal should consider these three aspects. First, regarding to co-authorship, if the article is written by two or more authors, the specific contribution of each of the authors must be declared, according to the CRediT taxonomy. The following link explains what is CRediT and what does each one of the criteria imply in its taxonomy:

https://casrai.org/credit/

Such contributions should be written in a paragraph, at the end of the manuscript, before the references section, and in the following manner (in this case, an example with three authors is given):

 

Contributions of the authors

Juan Pérez: conceptualization, data curation, research, writing (original manuscript), writing (revising and editing); John Smith: conceptualization, data curation, methodology, software, validation, writing (original manuscript), writing (revising and editing); Jane Jackson:  conceptualization, data curation, methodology, software, validation, visualization, writing (original manuscript), writing (revising and editing).

Second, if the authors have any type of conflict of interest, financial or non-financial, that they consider necessary for the editor and potential readers of the manuscript to know, they must declare it. Likewise, if they consider that there is no conflict, it must also be declared. Whatever the alternative, that is, whether or not there is a conflict of interest, it must be declared and included as a section at the end of the manuscript, within the body of the text, before the list of references. 

Third, it is important that the authors declare if they received economic resources to develop the research that supports their manuscript, with all the information deemed pertinent to corroborate the origin of the funds (organization that provides the funds, city, country, name of the research project, years, code, etc.). Such information on financing must also be included in a final section, before the list of references. 

Submission. The submission of a manuscript to the Journal should be made in an exclusive manner. That is, the author should not postulate simultaneously the same manuscript to another journal, and should not have an active process of evaluation or publication in another journal, since this potentially compromises the originality and the rights of a manuscript.

On the other hand, the Journal offers the alternative of submitting manuscripts without formatting (format-free manuscript submission). This means that an author, following some minimum conditions for the presentation of his/her manuscript, can submit it to the Journal without having to fully adhere to the guidelines for authors. Nevertheless, format adjustments will be requested to the authors, at the time when the manuscript has been approved by the peer review. More detailed information in this regard will be given in the following section.

Use, diffusion and dissemination of the articles. Nowadays, given the explosion of contents that floods the internet and the hundreds or thousands of articles that can be published annually on the same topic, the role of the authors in the use of their own articles is fundamental. For this, of course, it is necessary that the authors have a genuine interest in publishing and that they stay involved in the effective communication of their work for months or even for years after its publication.

The authors, if they are researchers and university professors, must actively participate in the dissemination of their articles among their students, colleagues or peers in the field. Also, many investigations have an impact beyond academy on the solution of problems of concern to individuals or to a community or a sector in particular, so the authors can get involved in dissemination strategies in order that part of the scientific knowledge that is consigned in their articles would be communicated in a more pleasant manner and its understanding and assimilation by a wider public would be facilitated.  

Then, the Journal will ask the authors to join in diffusion and dissemination strategies to make known their articles more and better and that, then, their impact on the disciplinary, specialized community, or on the general community, will be enhanced.