Revista Latinoamericana de Opinión Pública

Author Guidelines

The Revista Latinoamericana de Opinión Pública receives manuscripts for articles and research notes.

All manuscripts will go through an anonymous evaluation process carried out by two reviewers. Articles in Spanish, English, or Portuguese are accepted and published.

Manuscripts in a language in which the authors are not native should be proofread by a professional editor in that language. In any case, the journal reserves the right to review or publish manuscripts whose written language usage is not of quality and/or does not meet the standards of the publication.

Submission implies a declaration that this manuscript is an original research paper that has not been previously published in any format. Therefore, authors cannot submit manuscripts under review in another comparable journal or publication.

The author must register with the online Open Journal System (OJS) of the Revista Latinoamericana de Opinión Pública. To do this, you must go to: http://revistas.usal.es/cuatro/index.php/1852-90003/login in the option «Not registered yet? Do it now» and complete the registration form, indicating that your registration is as Author. All fields indicated on the form must be completed.

The author must save the username and password to access the system as many times as desired. All communication between the author and the Journal will be done by the OJS system. Once the profile with username and password has been created, the author must upload to the OJS online system a copy of the work, which must be unpublished, respecting the style conditions of the Revista Latinoamericana de Opinión Pública.

Manuscripts sent to RLOP will be reviewed with specialized software to verify that they have not been published in other formats and therefore their unpublished character.

1. PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPTS

-All manuscripts must be deposited in Word or PDF document.

-Since the manuscripts can be in three languages, including English, we prefer to standardize all styles of citations, references, graphs, tables and other elements in a unique format that responds to the most recent edition of the American Psychological Association Manual (7th edition).

-The maximum length of manuscripts is 10,000 words including references, footnotes, tables and graphics. The summary and appendixes are excluded in this total.

-For research notes the limit is set at 5,000 words and may not contain more than 3 tables or graphs. The notes will be submitted to the same evaluation procedure by anonymous reviewers.

-Page 1 should only include the title, a summary of 150 words, and 5 keywords. Under each of these three sections you must include the corresponding translation into Spanish / Portuguese or English, depending on the language of delivery. This version should not include acknowledgments or funding information. In general, any information that helps identify the author or authors should be avoided

-Page 2 should start with the main text.

-The letter should be Times New Roman (size 12), double space, and 1.0 inch on each side throughout the document.

-Left margin justified, but should not be justified to the right.

-Each paragraph should be indented.

-Each page from Page 2 must include a header (with the short title), and the page number in the upper right corner.
-The footnotes should be kept to the minimum possible and contain basic information that cannot be included in the main text. For more details, please refer to section 2.13 of the APA Publication Manual.

-Check all citations and references, especially titles, accents, dates with special care for typographical errors without authors or titles are in other languages.

-Write the numbers between one and ninety-nine with letters unless it refers to percentages (for example, 15 percent).

-Use full names and surnames (Augusto Pinochet; John F. Kennedy) the first time they are named in the text, and only the last name later (Pinochet; Kennedy).

- Italicize the first one that uses terms or names that appear in a language other than the essay. Do not italicize partial or whole sentences or the names of organizations.

-Write in full length the first time any institution or technique with acronyms that requires it appears in the text, but use the official original acronyms: examples, International Monetary Fund, (IMF).

-References should start on a new page and go to double space. Please note that RLOP uses the APA Reference System style (7th edition), which requires the inclusion of the DOI's when available.

-Appendixes are published as supplementary materials (online) and do not count toward the manuscript's word limit. They must be sent in a separate file and titled as 'supplementary material'.

-The manuscripts that do not comply with these instructions will not be considered for evaluation and subsequent publication and will be returned to the authors directly.

2. TABLES AND GRAPHS

Tables and graphs should be placed directly in the text (not in the appendix) and should be numbered as they appear. They must be understandable without having to read the text, and comply with the following instructions:

• Title centered in size 11
• Content in size 10: numbers are centered, and text left-aligned
• Column titles centered
• Row titles left-aligned
• Only the top and bottom lines of the table are visible, and the bottom line after the column title
• Notes and Source are centered after the table or graph

For graphics inserted as images in the text, created with  software such as R or Stata, use Arial or Helvetica.

Tables that are the result of survey analysis should include the following information:

(1) the exact text of the question;

(2) the exact text of the answers before being recoded (if applicable);

(3) the population under study;

(4) the year of the survey;

(5) the sample size, the number of responses in each column;

(6) the total percentages in each column.

For more information, see the “Code of Professional Ethics and Practices” of the American Association of Public Opinion. The response rates must be reported according to the standard definitions this association.

RLOP publishes graphics in color at no additional cost to the authors.

3. RESEARCH NOTES

The Research Notes are an important part of the Journal as they can contribute to the dialogue between academics, experts and journalists.

Although RLOP editors can approach researchers with ideas on research notes, potential authors can address editors with concrete proposals or even submit their already prepared manuscripts. In any case, the instructions for their authors are the following:

· They can contribute to the dissemination of methods, or good practices among experts, academics and journalists.

· They may present preliminary results of studies of original and unknown data on political, social, economic or public policy issues of interest to RLOP readers.

· Discussions on issues related to the implementation, interpretation, and / or use of public opinion data in the public, political and even academic fields may be encouraged.

· Its extension must be between 3,000-5,000 words including references. The use of tables and graphs is very advisable.

· We refer the authors to the section "1. PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPTS" for the rest of details on style of references and format.

4. BOOK REVIEWS

· Provide a descriptive title of the general theme of the essay. Place the name and institutional affiliation in the header.

· An extension of around 2,000 words is suggested excluding references, although this may extend or vary depending on whether several books are written.

· Offer bibliographic information of the books subject to review at the beginning of the essay, including page numbers, price and the ISBN. If it is an essay of several books, these must be ordered in alphabetical order of the first author or publisher of that book.

· Use parentheses to refer to the pages of the book or books object of the essay. For example: "Dudley examines this trend in detail (223)"; or “This matter is well documented (see Dudley, 223–246).” When a fragment of a book or collective volume is cited, the parentheses should refer to the name of the publisher and the page. For example: Johnson calls this "an unforgettable tragedy" (Restall, 43).

· The title of an individual essay within an edited volume may appear, if necessary, in parentheses directly after the author's name: For example: Ellen T. Baird ("Sahagun and the Representation of History") also examines that subject.

· Maintain the automatic Microsoft Word Footnotes System (do not use a specific reference program). Use footnotes (not references in parentheses) when referring to works that are not the books subject to the essay.

· We refer the authors to the section "1. PREPARATION OF MANUSCRIPTS" for the rest of details on style of references and format.

5. FUNDING

Details on the sources of funding for the work should be added in an additional final section that must appear before "acknowledgments" and always before references.

The rules for this section are:

· The sentence must begin with: ‘This work has been funded ...’

· The official name of the funding agency should appear, such as ‘National Institute of Health’, not the initials, ‘INS’. The Project number or code must be in square brackets as follows: ‘[Project number xxxx]’

· Several projects must be separated by commas as follows: ‘[Projects numbers xxxx, yyyy]’

· If they are different financing agencies, they must be separated by semicolons, except for the last one where the conjunction “and” should also appear.

· If it is necessary to mention an author or authors for certain sources of funding, the author's initials in square brackets' beneficiary [author's initials] must be added after the project number.

Example:

‘This work has been funded by the National Institute of Health [AA123456 beneficiary C.S., BB765432 beneficiary M.H.]; and the Ministry of education and Technology [Project number hfygr667789]. ’

6. SPECIAL ISSUES

The Editorial Board of the Revista Latinoamericana de Opinión Pública (RLOP) might invite to submit proposals of special issues for consideration and evaluation for publication in the journal. Special issues include an introduction and no more than six articles. Introductions should present the main theoretical and empirical contributions of the special issue. Each article should make a general contribution to the literature as well as a specific contribution to the special issue.

Special issue proposals should include an abstract and an outline which lays out the research question, theoretical innovation, and practical and/or political relevance (no longer than 600 words); abstracts of the proposed articles; and a time-line for submission. Proposals are submitted to the RLOP editors who will, in consultation with the Editorial Board, decide whether special issues and sections will be accepted, rejected or are subject to revisions.

Acceptance of a proposal does not guarantee the special issue’s publication. If too few manuscripts survive the review process, the RLOP may offer to publish accepted manuscripts as individual articles. Each manuscript is subject to the normal double-blind refereeing process. The journal editors, who may consult with the guest editors, select reviewers and take editorial decisions.

If you are interested, please contact RLOP’s co-editors, Ryan Carlin and Mariano Torcal, at the following email address: rlop@usal.es.