Editorial Process and Peer Review System

Kalpana subjects all manuscripts to a double-blind peer review process: neither the author nor the reviewers know the author's identity. This confidentiality is maintained throughout the entire editorial process.

All peer reviewers convened by Kalpana are external to the University of Tourism Specialties (UDET) and are not part of the journal's editorial team. The final editorial decision rests with the Editor-in-Chief, who makes it considering the peer reviewers' opinions and the Editorial Committee's criteria.

Process Phases

The process comprises four phases. The total estimated time, without delays, is approximately three months.

Phase 1 – Receipt and Preliminary Editorial Review

Upon receipt of the manuscript in OJS, the author is notified. The editor verifies that the manuscript aligns with the journal's focus and scope and with the editorial guidelines before sending it for external review. Manuscripts that do not pass this stage are returned with an explanation of the reasons.

Phase 2 – External Peer Review

The manuscript is sent to two external peer reviewers, who have two weeks to submit their report. If a reviewer does not submit their report within the established timeframe (fifteen days from submission, with a reminder three days after the deadline), the manuscript is reassigned to another reviewer in the reviewer pool. Repeated failure to meet deadlines may result in a reviewer's removal from the reviewer pool. When the reports are divergent or contradictory, a third reviewer is consulted to resolve the matter.

Phase 3 – Validation of Changes and Style Editing

The Editorial Committee (General Editor or Section Co-editor) verifies that the reviewers' comments have been satisfactorily addressed. The editor then reviews the text for linguistic and scientific style.

Phase 4 – Production and Publication

If necessary, the edited proofs are sent to the author for review and approval. Otherwise, the assigned editor approves the manuscript. Once approved, the corresponding author signs and sends the Copyright Transfer Agreement for all authors to kalpana@udet.edu.ec. Finally, the article is formatted and published on the OJS platform.

Possible Reviewer Decisions

Reviewers may issue one of the following decisions:

1. Accept without changes;

2. Accept with comments;

3. Reject.

Rejected manuscripts do not allow for resubmission.

Instructions for Peer Reviewers

By accepting the invitation, the reviewer agrees to issue their decision within a maximum of two weeks. The review report should include general comments on the manuscript as a whole and specific comments for each section. Suggestions should be constructive and aimed at improving the work; criticisms should be directed at the content, not the author.

Reviewers must declare any conflicts of interest before accepting the review and must recuse themselves if they have a personal, institutional, or financial relationship with any of the authors. Manuscript information is strictly confidential. If, during the review, evidence of plagiarism, fabricated data, or any ethical irregularity is detected, the reviewer must immediately notify the Editor-in-Chief.

Open Access Policy

Kalpana – Journal of Research is a fully open access journal. No embargoes, subscriptions, memberships, or payment barriers apply to accessing its content from the moment of publication.

Open access is understood as the condition in which the copyright holder of an academic work grants usage rights to third parties through an open license (Creative Commons or equivalent), which allows free and immediate access to the work and authorizes any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link the full texts of the articles, as well as crawl them for indexing purposes, process them as data using software, or use them for any other lawful purpose.

 

License

All articles published in Kalpana are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license, which permits sharing and adapting the material under the following terms:

Attribution: Appropriate credit must be given to the original author, indicating the source and a link to the license.

NonCommercial: The material may not be used for commercial purposes without the author's express permission.
ShareAlike: If the material is remixed or transformed, derivative works must be distributed under the same CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

For inquiries regarding special uses or exceptions to the license, please write to: kalpana@udet.edu.ec

Editorial Code of Ethics

Kalpana's ethical policies are based on the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

For the editorial team: The editor-in-chief and the Editorial Committee are responsible for the final decision regarding the publication of all received manuscripts. Evaluation will be based solely on the academic merit of the work, regardless of the authors' identity, nationality, or institutional affiliation. The editorial team will maintain absolute confidentiality regarding received manuscripts and will act promptly on any allegations of scientific or editorial misconduct, following COPE protocols.

For authors: Contributions submitted to Kalpana must be original and unpublished and cannot be submitted for evaluation by another publication simultaneously. Authors are responsible for the accuracy of the data and references in the manuscript and must explicitly declare the absence of conflicts of interest. Scientific articles and case studies may have a maximum of four (4) authors. When the manuscript is the result of work with students, the corresponding author must be a faculty member with a master's or doctoral degree.

For peer reviewers: By accepting the invitation to review, peer reviewers commit to conducting a rigorous, objective, and constructive review within the established timeframe, directing their critiques toward the work itself and not the individuals involved. They will declare any conflicts of interest before accepting the review.

Policy on the Use of Artificial Intelligence

In accordance with the Heredia Declaration and Kalpana's guidelines for good editorial practice, the following policy is established:

*Authors who have used generative AI tools in the writing, translation, analysis, or revision of the manuscript must explicitly declare this in the Methodology section or in the Acknowledgments, indicating the tool used and its specific purpose. AI tools may not be listed as authors or co-authors of the manuscript, nor may they be cited as a bibliographic source. Authors are fully responsible for the validity, originality, and accuracy of any content produced with the support of these tools.

*Peer reviewers and the editorial team may use artificial intelligence tools only to support minor, non-substantive tasks (e.g., proofreading their own report), under two conditions:

1. Under no circumstances will the manuscript, its data, or its content be entered into third-party artificial intelligence tools, given its confidential and unpublished nature;

2. The evaluative judgment regarding the quality, originality, and relevance of the manuscript must always be made directly by the reviewer, without delegating it to these tools.

Failure to comply with this provision will be considered a breach of the confidentiality of the peer review process.

Anti-Plagiarism Policy

Kalpana applies a systematic protocol for detecting similarities in all received manuscripts, using Plagiarisma or other systems contracted by the publishing entity, in Phase 1 of the editorial process, before submission for peer review. No manuscript will proceed to external evaluation without having passed this filter. The final decision on whether a similarity constitutes plagiarism rests with the editor-in-chief, who will consider the context and proper attribution of sources.

Copyright and Self-Archiving

Authors retain intellectual property and moral rights to their work. By signing the Copyright Transfer Agreement, authors grant Kalpana and the University of Tourism Specialties a non-exclusive license to publish the article, distribute it under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license, maintain it in digital repositories, and include its metadata in indexing services.

These copyright terms apply exclusively to the published scientific content and are independent of the copyrights pertaining to the design, branding, and structure of the journal's website, which belong to the University of Tourism Specialties (UDET).

Kalpana allows and encourages authors to self-archive their work in institutional or thematic repositories—including SciELO Preprints, with prior authorization from the Editor-in-Chief for the version under review—for both the preprint and published versions, always citing the original source.

Digital Preservation Policy

Long-term preservation of content published in Kalpana utilizes the PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN), which distributes copies of the content across multiple archiving nodes using the LOCKSS program, ensuring decentralized preservation and permanent access. Articles are preserved in multiple formats: PDF, HTML, and EPUB.

Editorial Openness

At least two-thirds of the members of Kalpana's editorial boards belong to institutions other than the University of Tourism Specialties (UDET). The Scientific Committee and the Co-editing group are international, with representatives from universities in Peru, Spain, Colombia, and Mexico outside of UDET, thus guaranteeing the journal's scientific independence from the publishing institution. The updated list of the editorial team, with their complete institutional affiliations, is available in the Editorial Team section of the website.

Indexing and Information Services

Kalpana is included in the following indexing services, directories, and selective databases: Latindex (Catalog 2.0), Dialnet, REDIB, ERIH PLUS, Latinrev, and Latinoamericana. The journal only declares verified and active indexings.

Publication Frequency

Kalpana is a biannual journal. It publishes two issues per year, on July 10 and December 10.

Interoperability and Access Formats

The journal implements the OAI-PMH protocol for metadata exchange, encoded in the Dublin Core standard. Each article is published simultaneously in PDF, HTML, and EPUB formats, and includes complete metadata: title, authors with affiliations, abstract, keywords, submission and acceptance dates, and bibliographic references.

Publication Fees

Kalpana does not charge authors any fees at any stage of the editorial process: there are no fees for manuscript submission, editorial processing, article processing (APC), per page, per color or graphic material, or for voluntary withdrawal of the manuscript. Since there are no fees, there is no fee waiver policy. The journal does not currently plan to establish fees in the future.

Publisher and Contact

University of Tourism Specialties (UDET), Quito, Ecuador.

Av. Machala Oe6-160 and José Miguel Carrión (Cotocollao Sector)

Journal contact email: kalpana@udet.edu.ec