Submissions

Author Guidelines

Nature and Scope of Contributions

MENTOR Revista de Investigación Educativa y Deportiva is an Ecuadorian, multidisciplinary, open-access scientific journal published in electronic format. Its focus and scope encompass three main areas: Education and Educational Sciences; Physical Activity, Exercise and Sport; and Health Sciences.

The journal welcomes manuscripts that clearly fall within one or more of these areas, as well as multidisciplinary research integrating two or more of them. Manuscripts whose primary subject falls outside MENTOR’s declared focus and scope will not be sent for peer review.

MENTOR accepts manuscripts on an ongoing basis in accordance with its editorial planning.

Languages

The journal accepts manuscripts in Spanish and English.

Regardless of the main language of the article, the title, abstract, and keywords must be provided in both Spanish and English.

Types of Contributions

MENTOR publishes the following types of contributions:

Original Research Articles

These present unpublished findings from quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-method research using methodological designs consistent with the research problem, objectives, and nature of the study.

The general structure includes: abstract, introduction, methodology, results, discussion, conclusions, and references.

Review Articles

These integrate, analyze, and critically synthesize the available scientific literature on a problem or topic within the journal’s focus and scope.

The general structure includes: abstract, introduction, review methodology, development or review results, discussion where appropriate, conclusions, and references.

Theoretical Essays

These develop analyses, reflections, arguments, or conceptual proposals grounded in scientific literature and specialized scholarly debate.

The general structure includes: abstract, introduction, development, conclusions or final considerations, and references.

Originality and Exclusivity of the Manuscript

Manuscripts submitted to MENTOR must be original, unpublished, and not simultaneously under consideration by another journal, publisher, or publication outlet.

Authors must submit the Declaration of Originality and any other documents required by the journal during the submission process.

Duplicate publication, simultaneous submission, plagiarism, fabrication or falsification of information, or other practices contrary to academic integrity will be handled in accordance with MENTOR’s ethical policies.

Manuscript Submission

Manuscripts must be submitted exclusively through the journal’s electronic platform.

The main manuscript file must be submitted in Microsoft Word format.

Before submission, authors must verify that the manuscript complies with MENTOR’s focus and scope, manuscript preparation requirements, and editorial policies.

Anonymization for Peer Review

MENTOR uses a double-blind peer-review system.

The manuscript file submitted for evaluation must not contain author names, institutional affiliations, email addresses, ORCID identifiers, acknowledgements, or any other information that may directly or indirectly reveal authorship.

Authors must also remove identifying information from the file properties.

Full names, affiliations, email addresses, ORCID identifiers, and other authorship information must be entered as metadata in the submission platform.

Self-citations may be used when academically relevant, but they must be written in a way that does not disclose the authors’ identity during peer review.

Length and Formatting

Manuscripts should be approximately 4,000 to 7,000 words in length, including references.

Documents must be prepared on letter-size pages with 2.54 cm margins, Times New Roman 12-point font, and justified text.

Single line spacing must be used, with 6-point spacing after paragraphs and a first-line indentation of 1.27 cm.

Pages should not be numbered.

Bold and italics should be used only where required by the manuscript structure and APA 7th edition. Underlining should not be used except when automatically generated as part of a hyperlink.

Footnotes, appendices, and supplementary annexes should be avoided unless essential to the understanding of the manuscript and editorially authorized.

Title, Abstract, and Keywords

The title must be provided in Spanish and English and should not exceed approximately 15 words. It should be clear, specific, and representative of the manuscript’s content.

The abstract must be provided in Spanish and English and should not exceed 200 words.

For original research articles, the abstract should summarize the objective, methodology, main results, and conclusions.

For review articles and theoretical essays, it should clearly present the purpose, procedure or approach, and main conclusions.

Three to five keywords must be provided in Spanish together with their corresponding English equivalents.

Tables and Figures

Tables and figures must be relevant to the interpretation of the results and should not duplicate information already presented in the text.

Each table and figure must be numbered, titled, and cited in the manuscript.

Their preparation and presentation must comply with APA 7th edition.

When tables, figures, photographs, or other materials are taken from external sources, authors are responsible for properly identifying the source and obtaining any required permissions.

Authorship and Contributions

All individuals listed as authors must have made substantial contributions to the work and must assume responsibility for the published content.

Each author’s contribution must be declared using the CRediT taxonomy (Contributor Roles Taxonomy), applying the relevant roles:

Conceptualization; Data Curation; Formal Analysis; Funding Acquisition; Investigation; Methodology; Project Administration; Resources; Software; Supervision; Validation; Visualization; Writing – Original Draft; and Writing – Review & Editing.

Contribution information must be included in the documentation required by the journal.

Conflicts of Interest

Authors must disclose any personal, professional, academic, institutional, commercial, or financial relationships that could influence or reasonably be perceived as influencing the research or its publication.

When no conflicts of interest exist, this must be explicitly stated.

Funding

Authors must disclose all sources of financial support for the research, including, where applicable, the name of the funding organization and the project or grant number.

When the research received no external funding, this should be explicitly stated.

Research Ethics

Manuscripts involving human participants, personal data, interventions, clinical information, or other situations subject to ethical oversight must indicate approval by the appropriate ethics committee or authority where applicable.

Authors must provide information concerning informed consent, confidentiality, data protection, and any other ethical requirements relevant to the nature of the study.

All submissions must comply with MENTOR’s research ethics and scientific integrity policies.

Use of Artificial Intelligence and Automated Tools

The use of generative artificial intelligence or other automated technologies that have contributed substantially to the preparation of the manuscript must be transparently disclosed.

Artificial intelligence tools cannot be listed as authors and cannot assume responsibility for scientific content.

Authors remain responsible for verifying the accuracy, originality, references, data, and arguments contained in the manuscript, regardless of the tools used during its preparation.

The use of tools solely for basic spelling, grammar, or formatting corrections may be governed by MENTOR’s specific artificial intelligence policy.

Citations and References

Citations and references must follow APA 7th edition.

Every source cited in the manuscript must appear in the reference list, and every work included in the reference list must be cited in the manuscript.

Direct quotations of fewer than 40 words must be incorporated into the text within quotation marks.

Direct quotations of 40 words or more must be presented as block quotations in accordance with APA 7.

References must be arranged alphabetically and formatted with a hanging indent.

Authors should use relevant and sufficient scientific literature to support the research problem, methodology, analysis, and discussion. Sources should be selected according to their scientific relevance and relationship to the subject of the study.

The journal does not require references to come from any specific database.

DOI Identifiers

DOI identifiers must be included for all references for which they are available.

DOIs must be presented as active links in the following format:

https://doi.org/xxxxx

Authors are responsible for verifying that all DOI identifiers, URLs, and other links included in the reference list are correct and correspond to the sources cited.

To identify available DOI identifiers, authors may use Crossref’s tool:

https://apps.crossref.org/simpleTextQuery

Initial Editorial Screening

All manuscripts undergo an initial editorial screening to verify their correspondence with MENTOR’s focus and scope, compliance with the Author Guidelines, structure, anonymization, metadata, and ethical and formal requirements.

A similarity check using Turnitin is also performed at this stage.

Manuscripts that fall outside the journal’s focus and scope or fail to meet the minimum requirements may be returned or rejected before peer review.

Peer Review

Manuscripts that pass the initial editorial screening are submitted to external double-blind peer review.

Each manuscript is evaluated by at least two independent reviewers with expertise related to the manuscript’s subject area and object of study.

Reviewers provide academic and methodological recommendations. The final decision to accept, request revisions, or reject a manuscript is made by the responsible editor.

When revisions require further academic assessment, the manuscript may be sent for an additional review round.

Post-Acceptance Process

Accepted manuscripts undergo editorial revision, linguistic review where appropriate, translation review, layout, author proof, and final production control.

Acceptance of a manuscript does not imply immediate publication in a particular issue. Accepted articles are scheduled for publication according to MENTOR’s editorial planning.

Before final publication, authors receive a proof of the article to verify authorship information, affiliations, tables, figures, and possible production errors.

Author Charges

MENTOR does not charge authors or their institutions any fees for manuscript submission, editorial evaluation, peer review, editorial processing, copyediting, translation review, layout, publication, page charges, color charges, or DOI assignment.

No article processing charges (APCs) are applied at any stage of the editorial or publication process.