About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Mission

The Fractal: Journal of Psychology has the objective of disseminating and discussing the academic and scientific production. It is about recognizing the need for coexistence among the different research strands in the field of psychology, feeding the constant debate as a way of encouraging scientific production. At the same time, it aims at stimulating the dialogue with different areas of knowledge, whose themes are crossed by subjectivity studies, in areas that involve the themes worked on in the Postgraduate Program in Psychology at Universidade Federal Fluminense.

Editorial Policy

The Fractal: Journal of Psychology adopts the continuous publication modality and uses the ABNT standardization for articles presentation in scientific periodic publications (6022/2003 and 6021/2003). It is intended for the publication of unpublished works of national and international authors, in Portuguese, Spanish, English and French in the following sections:

a) Research reports: reports of investigations based on empirical data, using scientific methodology. (minimum 15 and maximum 20 pages).

b) Theoretical studies/Literature review: analyses of constructs and theoretical concepts that question existing models and raise questions and hypotheses for future research. (Minimum 15 and maximum 25 pages, including abstract, figures, tables and references).

c) Professional experience reports: case study containing conceptual analysis and description of intervention procedures. (Minimum of 15 and maximum of 25 pages, including abstract, figures, tables and references).

d) Interviews: carried out with people whose life stories or professional achievements are relevant to the knowledge of the history of Psychology and related areas. It is necessary to send the agreement of the interviewee(s) to the publication of the material. (Maximum of 10 pages)

e) Debates: historical or current themes, proposed by the editors or by collaborators, and debated by specialists who expose their points of view in writing or live, through audio recording. In the first case, the collaborators can suggest themes and participants, being responsible for the editorship, for their interaction and for the editing of the final text. The live debate, when not organized by the journal, can be submitted already transcribed and partially edited, being the final edition the responsibility of the editors of Fractal: Journal of Psychology. (Maximum 30 pages).

f) Book reviews: critical review of national (published up to 2 years before the submission of the manuscript) or foreign works (published up to 5 years before the submission of the manuscript), in which the main characteristics of the work, potential uses and contribution to the studies of subjectivity are presented. The reviews should be 6 to 10 pages long and may have a maximum of 2 authors. An abstract is not required.

Maximum number of submissions and publications per year

Submissions: maximum 2 per year, either as author or co-author. In addition, no other manuscript may be submitted while the first one is under evaluation, unless it has a different authorial status (co-authorship).

Publications: maximum of 1 per year (as author), with the possibility of 1 more (as long as in the condition of co-author).

Peer Review Process

Peer Review:

Submitted articles first go through the desk review, a prior evaluation by the advisors and associate editors to verify that they are appropriate to the submission standards and the scope of the journal. In case of errors in the submission process, the authors will be notified and the submission will be archived, leaving it up to the authors to resubmit the file. If the misunderstanding remains, the manuscript will be archived on the platform. The appropriate files will be submitted to ad hoc peer review by the double blind review system. The reviewers are professors with a doctorate degree, of recognized knowledge in the area of psychology, particularly in the thematic area of the article to be evaluated. The reviewers are invited by the Section Editor to give their opinion. Each article is evaluated by two referees, who issue the final opinion according to the following items:

( ) Should be published, with priority. There is no need to review.

( ) Should be published. No need to review.

( ) Should be published, but needs to be reviewed.

( ) Should not be published.

If both evaluators mark one of the first two options, the article is inserted in the list of approved works, ready for publication, and the author receives an e-mail informing that his article was approved for publication in the Journal. When one of the referees marks the third option, the author receives an e-mail from the Journal with the referee's opinion attached, in which the necessary revisions for the article's publication are included. The reviews are sent to the authors without the names of the reviewers. Once the author complies with the requests in the review, the article is again sent to the reviewer to verify if the changes made to the article are sufficient for its approval. If both evaluators indicate that the article should not be published, the author receives an e-mail informing that the article has not been accepted for publication. When the two evaluators emit disagreeing evaluations, one approving the article and the other contraindicating its publication, a third doctoral professor is invited to give his opinion. In this case, the article will be considered suitable for publication when two of the three evaluators consider that the article should be published. In the same way, the article will be considered contraindicated for publication when two of the three evaluators consider that the article should not be published in the Journal.

Guidelines for Evaluators

FRACTAL: JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGY

Fluminense Federal University

Institute of Human Sciences and Philosophy

Campus do Gragoatá - Rua Professor Marcos Waldemar de Freitas Reis, Bloco O, sala 334. São Domingos - Niterói. CEP 24210-201 - RJ - Brazil

E-mail: fractal.revista.psi@gmail.com

 

I) Roadmap for the elaboration of an opinion:

Title of the work:

Please mark your choice in the questions below, in addition to the written comments.

 

1. Regarding style: is the language clear and unambiguous?

( ) Yes ( ) No

 

If no, please suggest rewordings in your comments.

 

2. Are the theoretical and conceptual articulations presented clearly and coherently?

( ) Yes ( ) No

If not, please comment on how this could be done.

 

3. Regarding the literature review: does the author mention the necessary references?

( ) Yes ( ) No

 

If not, please indicate the omissions in your comments.

 

4. Regarding the methodology: did the author use the appropriate method?

( ) Yes ( ) No ( ) Not applicable

 

If not, please comment on it.

 

5. Are the data adequately analyzed and interpreted?

( ) Yes ( ) No ( ) Not applicable

 

If not, please comment about it.

 

6. Is the work relevant to the field of study?

( ) Yes ( ) No

 

If no, please justify your opinion.

 

7. Final opinion

( ) Should be published, with priority. No need to review.

( ) Should be published. No need to review.

( ) Should be published, but needs to be reviewed.

( ) Should not be published.

 

II) Comments:

 

Title of the paper:

 

Do you agree that a de-identified copy of this opinion be sent to the author?

( ) Yes ( ) No

If you think the paper should not be published as is, please point out the changes that could be made to make it publishable.

Obs: Whatever the opinion issued, it is essential that the referee make some comment about the evaluated work, in order to justify his decision. 

Periodicity

Fractal: Revista de Psicologia has adopted, since 2022, the continuous publication modality, that is, the approved and edited articles are immediately published in an annual volume, not being necessary to close an issue or obey a determined frequency. Previously, the journal was published every four months, in January, May and September. In the new modality, the articles no longer have a successive and sequential pagination, but have an elocation-id, a unique electronic identifier for each article in the volume.

Open Access Policy

This journal offers immediate open access to its contents, following the principle that making scientific knowledge freely available to the public provides greater worldwide democratization of knowledge.

Indexation Sources

Data Bases 

Directories

Indexing Portals

Disclosers

 

Technical Cooperation Agreement

Maria Salvadora Perrone (Programmer) Luiz Guilherme Figueiredo (Programmer) Intermediary-administrative technicians of the Stricto Sensu Post-Graduation Program in Psychology at UFF.

Guest Editors

Luis Antonio dos Santos Baptista acted as Guest Editor for volume 21.2 (May/Aug. 2009).

Paulo Eduardo Viana Vidal served as Guest Editor for volume 22.2 (May/Aug. 2010).

Eduardo Passos, Virginia Kastrup and Silvia Tedesco served as Guest Editors for volume 25.2 (May/Aug. 2013).

Policy regarding the APC (Article Processing Charge)

Fractal: Journal of Psychology does not charge authors any submission or evaluation fees.

Code of Ethics

Ethical principles and good practices

Fractal: Journal of Psychology has a commitment to ethics and quality of publications. Guided by the principles recommended by the Committee on Publication Ethics - COPE (http://publicationethics.org/), we advocate ethical behavior from all parties involved in the publication process. Below, we list some of the policies we have adopted in this regard.

Editor's Duties:

Editors are responsible for each and every publication of the journal, and it is therefore incumbent upon them to:

- review all articles received, and it is their responsibility to reject or accept articles, based on their opinions;

- guarantee the desired quality standards, obeying the journal's objectives and its respective sections;

- avoid bad practices and unethical behavior, especially plagiarism and fraudulent information;

- select the evaluators/evaluators in an appropriate way, considering the thematic affinity with the articles and the production and respectability of the academic evaluators/evaluators in the academic-scientific environment;

- guarantee that the evaluation of the articles will be done by peers, in order to ensure the quality of the scientific publication, justifying any important deviation in relation to the evaluation process;

- permanently preserve the anonymity of the evaluators/peers, as well as the anonymity of the authors of the articles under analysis;

- evaluate the submitted manuscripts based solely on their importance, originality, clarity, and relevance of the study to the scientific field, without considering the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, nationality, or political and/or ideological philosophy of the authors

- avoid disclosing any information about a submitted manuscript, except to the referees and editorial board members;

- prevent the use of unpublished material disclosed in a submitted manuscript in one's own research without the express written consent of the author;

- prevent commercial interests from compromising intellectual standards;

- take appropriate action when ethical complaints are made about a submitted manuscript or published article, being willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies, when necessary;

- refuse to evaluate manuscripts in which I have conflicts of interest due to competitive, collaborative or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies or institutions linked to the manuscripts

- ensure that published research material conforms to internationally accepted ethical guidelines, reserving the right to seek guidance from the appointed Scientific Committee of this journal should the need arise;

- take all necessary steps in case of suspected unethical conduct. This duty extends to published and unpublished work.

Duties of the Editor in relation to unethical behavior:

- any unethical manifestation identified in scientific papers published in the Fractal Electronic Journal may be brought to the attention of the editor at any time, by anyone, provided that there is sufficient information and evidence for an investigation to be initiated;

- all necessary attempts should be made to obtain a resolution to the problem; in any case, the author should have the opportunity to respond to any allegations;

- inform or notify the author or reviewer where it appears to them that there has been any misunderstanding or misapplication of acceptable standards;

- decide on retraction or formal withdrawal of publication from the journal.

Duties of Reviewers:

- assist the editor in making editorial decisions and, through communications, assist the author in improving the article;

- notify the editor immediately if they do not feel qualified to analyze the article or when they judge that immediate reading of the work will be impossible;

- treat the manuscripts received for analysis by the editor or by the author(s) as confidential documents, being forbidden to expose them to the appreciation of third parties;

- consider the relevance, correctness, originality, timeliness of discussions and references, adequacy to the field of knowledge, methodological rigor, and quality standards of the publication;

- fill in all the items of the evaluation form received together with the article to be evaluated;

- keep confidential privileged information or ideas obtained from reading the manuscripts, not using them for personal gain;

- conduct the reviews in an objective manner, expressing their points of view clearly, supported by arguments;

- identify relevant published works that have not been cited by the authors

- call the editor's attention in case of suspicion of plagiarism or self-plagiarism, pointing out any other published or submitted paper of which he/she is aware that is substantially similar to the work under review;

- decline to evaluate manuscripts in which you have conflicts of interest due to competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the manuscripts.

Authors' Duties:

- must be academic researchers, engaged in serious and systematic work in their specific fields and subfields;

- declare, when submitting the article, that its content is original, that it has not been published or submitted to any other publication, in any language;

- identify institutions and agencies that supported (if applicable) the research financially;

- present an accurate account of the work done, as well as an objective discussion of its significance; the article must contain sufficient detail and references to allow others to replicate the work;

- give due credit to the authors of the works and/or works cited;

- do not publish manuscripts that essentially describe the same research in more than one journal; submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal at the same time and/or publishing the same article in more than one journal constitutes unethical and unacceptable editorial behavior;

- list the names of all co-authors who made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. The lead author should ensure that all appropriate coauthors are included in the article; he/she should also ensure that all coauthors have seen and approved the final version of the manuscript and have agreed to its submission for publication. People who have participated in the research project should be listed as collaborators;

- immediately inform the journal editor or the Editorial Board member about knowledge of a significant error or inaccuracy in their published work and cooperate with the editor to correct the article;

- Commit to work as reviewers (referees) for other articles in their subfield of knowledge.

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