Roles and Responsibilities in the Editorial Process

Roles and Responsibilities in the Editorial Process

MENTOR Revista de Investigación Educativa y Deportiva conducts its editorial processes according to principles of independence, transparency, academic integrity, and scientific quality. The responsibilities of those involved in the editorial process are clearly differentiated to ensure appropriate manuscript management, peer review, editorial decision-making, and production quality control.

Editorial decisions are based on the scientific and academic merit of manuscripts, their correspondence with the journal’s focus and scope, and compliance with its editorial and ethical policies.

Authors

Authors are responsible for the originality, integrity, and accuracy of the content submitted to MENTOR. Manuscripts must fall within one or more of the journal’s declared areas: Education and Educational Sciences; Physical Activity, Exercise and Sport; and Health Sciences.

Authors must comply with the journal’s publication guidelines, appropriately declare authorship and contributions, disclose funding sources and potential competing interests, comply with applicable research ethics principles, and provide reasoned responses to comments received during the editorial and peer-review process.

National and International Editorial Committee

The Editorial Committee advises on and contributes to the development, review, and updating of MENTOR’s editorial policies and supports the maintenance of the journal’s scientific quality, editorial integrity, and development.

Its responsibilities include supporting the definition of editorial guidelines, advising on scientific and ethical matters, contributing to the development of the journal’s focus and scope, and supporting the periodic assessment of editorial processes.

Committee members must act independently, confidentially, and impartially and must disclose any competing interest related to activities undertaken for the journal.

Director

The Director is responsible for the strategic direction and overall management of MENTOR, in coordination with the Editor-in-Chief and the Editorial Committee.

Responsibilities include promoting compliance with editorial policies; supporting the planning of regular and special issues; overseeing the journal’s general operation; promoting its academic visibility and sustainability; and ensuring that editorial procedures are conducted in accordance with principles of transparency, integrity, and good scholarly publishing practice.

The Director does not replace the scientific assessment conducted by peer reviewers or modify their reports.

Editor-in-Chief

The Editor-in-Chief has editorial responsibility for the content published by MENTOR, including regular and special issues.

Responsibilities include conducting or supervising the initial editorial screening of manuscripts; verifying their correspondence with the journal’s focus and scope; ensuring that manuscripts proceeding to peer review are assessed by at least two independent external reviewers; overseeing the peer-review process; appropriately managing divergent review reports; and making the final editorial decision regarding acceptance, revision, or rejection.

Editorial decisions must be based on scientific merit, reviewer reports, authors’ responses, and compliance with MENTOR’s editorial and ethical policies.

Editorial Coordinator

The Editorial Coordinator supports the management and monitoring of the editorial workflow from manuscript submission through publication.

Responsibilities include verifying compliance with formal requirements; managing communications and stages of the editorial workflow through the journal platform; monitoring deadlines; coordinating post-acceptance processes; and supporting quality control during editorial production.

In coordination with the Editor-in-Chief, the Editorial Coordinator oversees copyediting, language review where applicable, reference standardization, metadata, DOI information, tables, figures, layout, and proof checking before publication in order to minimize errors and ensure consistency in the final published version.

Coordinator of the Reviewers’ Council

The Coordinator of the Reviewers’ Council supports the identification and selection of specialists with appropriate expertise to evaluate manuscripts.

Responsibilities include verifying the academic suitability of potential reviewers; ensuring their independence from the authors and the editorial decision-making process; identifying potential competing interests; facilitating the assignment of at least two independent reviewers to each manuscript; monitoring review deadlines; and maintaining updated information on the journal’s reviewer database.

Reviewer selection must be based on academic, scientific, or methodological expertise relevant to the manuscript.

Coordinator of the Scientific Committee

The Coordinator of the Scientific Committee promotes the participation of the Scientific Committee as an advisory body to MENTOR.

Responsibilities include advising the editorial team on matters related to the journal’s scientific development, subject areas, and quality criteria; contributing to the updating of the journal’s focus and scope; promoting the participation of specialists from different institutions and academic contexts; and supporting the journal’s scientific development and dissemination.

Academic outreach or invitations to contribute do not guarantee publication. Any article subject to peer review must comply with the same editorial policies and evaluation procedures established by MENTOR.

External Peer Reviewer

Peer reviewers are independent specialists with expertise relevant to the subject area or methodology of the manuscript. Their role is to provide an objective, evidence-based, confidential, and constructive academic assessment that contributes to the editorial decision and improvement of the manuscript.

Reviewers assess relevance, originality, methodological or argumentative rigor, presentation of results or development of the work, discussion, conclusions, references, and compliance with applicable ethical principles.

Reviewers must disclose any competing interest before accepting a review assignment, maintain manuscript confidentiality, and report to the editorial team any potential integrity concerns identified during the review process.

Reviewers provide recommendations; the final publication decision is made by the Editor-in-Chief or the responsible editor designated by MENTOR.

MENTOR uses an external double-blind peer-review system; therefore, authors’ identities are not disclosed to reviewers and reviewers’ identities are not disclosed to authors.

Coordinator of the Ethics Committee

The Coordinator of the Ethics Committee advises the editorial team on the application of MENTOR’s ethics and research integrity policies and on situations requiring specific ethical assessment.

Responsibilities include advising on the handling of potential plagiarism, redundant publication, citation manipulation, fabrication or falsification of data, and other potential forms of misconduct; providing guidance regarding ethical approval, informed consent, confidentiality, data protection, and animal welfare where applicable; supporting the identification and management of competing interests; and contributing to the assessment of corrections, retractions, or other post-publication actions.

Where allegations of potential misconduct arise, they are addressed through fair and confidential procedures, taking into account COPE guidance or other relevant standards.

The Ethics Committee may provide recommendations to the editorial team, but the final editorial decision regarding a manuscript remains with the Editor-in-Chief or responsible editor.