Editorial policy

Aims and scope

The objective of the Revista Chapingo Serie Ciencias Forestales y del Ambiente (RCHSCFA) is to generate an international space for the dissemination and discussion of research results related to the forest field through the publication of unpublished scientific and technological articles.

Proposals submitted for evaluation must not have been previously published, nor be in a similar process in another journal. Neither will preliminary, incomplete or inconsequential research papers be accepted.

The RCHSCFA has been published by the Universidad Autónoma Chapingo since 1995, under an open access dissemination policy (available online). It is currently published on a bilingual (English and Spanish) and continuous (one annual volume) basis, with e-ISSN: 2007-4018. Contributions are received only through the Editorial Manager®. They are examined by a scientific committee and evaluated anonymously (double-blind modality) by peer experts. The average receipt-acceptance time for contributions in the last year was 7 months.
Accepted articles will be published as “In process” once the editing and style correction process has been approved. This document will then be replaced by the final version.

Topics

The RCHSCFA considers those manuscripts that contribute to research on forest environments (arid, temperate and tropical) and that are related to any of the following topics:

• Silviculture and management: forest nurseries, fire ecology, forest ecology, endangered plant and animal species, forest management, commercial plantations, forest health, non-timber forest products, and technology of timber forest products.
• Forestry economics and sociology: natural resource economics, markets and marketing of forest products, environmental economics, project formulation and evaluation, and forestry sociology.
• Statistics, informatics and mathematics: quantitative models for forest management, stand production and yield, and social measurements.
• Environment: environmental impact, carbon sequestration and pollution from industrial processes.

Section policies

All contributions considered for peer review must be unpublished (written in Spanish or English) and the product of original research. They must also be in line with the topics considered by the RCHSCFA. The types of contributions received are:

• Scientific articles
• Scientific or technological notes
• Review articles
• Methodologies

For more details on the characteristics of each type of contribution, please see the Guide for authors.

Submission

The process of submission and review of manuscripts is done through the Editorial Manager®. The person responsible for the submission is the “corresponding author,” and is the only one with whom communication will be maintained throughout the process. The documents and information required for the submission are:

• Cover letter
• Front page
• Manuscript
• Figures
• ORCID identifier of each author
• Full name, e-mail and place of assignment of at least three potential reviewers with extensive experience in the subject of the contribution.

For more information regarding documents, see the Guide for authors.

If the paper is in line with the journal's topics and research areas, and meets the requirements described in the Guide for authors, an e-mail will be sent to acknowledge receipt of the contribution, in which a reference key will be assigned, which must be specified in any procedure or query. Failure to comply with the criteria described in the Guide for authors will lead to the rejection (topic outside the scope of the journal or duplication of content) or return of the manuscript for correction before starting the evaluation process.
Each submitted paper to the RCHSCFA will be checked for possible plagiarism using iThenticate®. If the tool detects a similarity greater than 10 % with respect to other published works —in the introduction, results and discussion, and conclusions sections— the submitted paper will be definitively rejected.

Peer review

The scientific review of contributions is carried out under the double-blind modality through the Editorial Manager®. This system allows detailed monitoring of this process and offers special formats for the assignment of Assistant Editors and Referees, as well as the required formats for the issuance of decisions and communication with the corresponding author.

Once the contribution has been accepted in the initial review and the reference key has been assigned, the Editor-in-Chief together with the Assistant Editor will invite at least two Referees to evaluate the manuscript. The Referees must be peer experts on the manuscript's subject and not be affiliated with the authors' institution. In the event that a Referee declines the invitation, does not complete his or her assignment within the indicated period (30 days) or the opinion is not well-founded, the Assistant Editor will invite another Referee or ask the same Referee to explain his or her decision until at least two reviews have been completed.

At the end of the review of the contribution, the Referees' decision can be:

• Accepted. This implies that the manuscript will be published as submitted
• Minor revision. This type of decision is founded on grammatical, technical and formatting deficiencies. 

• Major revision. This criterion includes suggestions for changes in the methodological design, the presentation of results, clarification of techniques or experiments, or inclusion of data that give scientific validity to the results and conclusions of the contribution.
• Rejected. This opinion indicates that the contribution cannot be considered for publication in the manner in which it was presented.

The Assistant Editor will review the comments of the Referees and issue a single opinion that will be sent to the corresponding author by email, as a result of the following actions:

1. Reviewing the manuscript submitted, applying the same evaluation criteria as the Referees.
2. Reviewing and resolving any possible contradictory aspects between the referees' opinions.
3. Issuing an opinion on both the Referees' evaluation and the submitted manuscript, which will be reviewed by the Editor-in-Chief, who will verify that an adequate evaluation has been carried out in accordance with the Editorial Policy.

At the end of the review of the contribution, the Referees' and Assistant Editor’s decision can be accepted, minor revision, major revision and rejected.

If the contribution is accepted, an e-mail will be sent to the authors with the decision and the bank account details for depositing the recovery fee for the publication process.

If the manuscript is designated for a minor or major review, the authors must address the observations made by the Referees. If the authors do not agree with any suggested change, they must fully justify the lack of attention to said comment. Once the author has made the proposed changes, he or she must upload the new version of the manuscript into the system along with a response sheet, which must include a detailed response to each observation and the part of the article (section or line) where the change was made. Authors must make sure not to include their name on the response sheet in order to continue with the double-blind review.

If there is no response from the author within the period established for addressing the observations (15 days for minor revision and 30 days for major revision), the article will be rejected; if the authors wish, they could start the submission process again. If the authors require more time to make corrections, the corresponding author must send an e-mail through the Editorial Manager® system specifying the requested time.

Upon receipt of the corrected contribution, the Editor-in-Chief will forward it to an Assistant Editor to verify that the changes have been made. The authors must justify -in theoretical, methodological and empirical terms- the reasons for not making some of the suggested modifications. Some manuscripts with significant modifications may be sent back to the Referees for approval or rejection of the second version based on their initial observations. If the evaluation is positive, the manuscript will be "accepted" for publication. If the evaluation is negative, the new opinion of the manuscript will be "Rejected".

Once the contribution has been accepted, it is essential that the authors send, by e-mail, the copyright transfer letter to initiate the publication process, which consists of editing and style correction, translation, design and online publication of the contribution. At each stage, the corresponding author will receive an e-mail for approval.

The Editor-in-Chief has the authority to determine the date on which the contribution will be published.

Frequency of publication

The RCHSCFA is an annual journal of continuous publication in electronic version (e-ISSN: 2007-4018). Publishing is handled by the Coordinación de Revistas Institucionales (Coordination of Institutional Journals) of the Universidad Autónoma Chapingo.

Article publishing charge

Manuscripts accepted for publication will be subject to a 300.00 USD recovery fee, which will cover part of the costs of the publication process. The account information for depositing the fee from anywhere in Mexico is as follows:
Bank: Santander S. A.
Account number: 65501084813
Interbank CLABE: 014180655010848131
In the name of the Universidad Autónoma Chapingo

For international deposits, the account information is:
Bank: Santander S.A.
Account number: 82-50020139-5
Interbank CLABE: 014180825002013953
SWIFT code: BMSXMXMMXXX
In the name of the Universidad Autónoma Chapingo

Once your deposit has been made, you must send the corresponding receipt to the e-mail account facturascori@chapingo.mx. If you require an invoice, you must attach the updated tax status certificate and indicate the use of the CFDI.

Publication fee exemption policy
In certain cases, upon request and justification, the Editor-in-Chief may decide to waive the publication fee for some papers, provided that all the authors of the contribution are affiliated with institutions in developing countries.

Open acess policy

The RCHSCFA, together with the Universidad Autónoma Chapingo, recognizes that in order to improve the process of dissemination of scientific knowledge, it must be accessible to any user without any legal or economic barrier. Therefore, authors who publish in the RCHSCFA accept the following terms and conditions:

• Based on copyright legislation, the RCHSCFA recognizes and respects the moral rights of the authors, as well as the ownership of the property rights of their work, which will be ceded to the Universidad Autónoma Chapingo through the signing of a copyright transfer letter, in which they explicitly recognize that their work will be disseminated under the open access principles established by the journal.
• Authors may make other independent and additional contractual agreements for the non-exclusive distribution of the final version of the published article (such as including it in an institutional or thematic repository, hosting it on academic social networks, or disseminating it on electronic or printed platforms). This is provided that the document is clearly and explicitly stated as having been first published in the RCHSCFA, that the reference is placed as proposed on the first page of the article, and that the respective digital object identifier (DOI) is included.

All content published in the RCHSCFA is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0). This means that readers/users may freely access all content published in the journal, as well as cite, share (in print and electronic format), print and distribute the documents, as long as it is clearly and explicitly mentioned that the document was first published in the RCHSCFA and the respective DOI is included. Likewise, the material cannot be used for commercial purposes.

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Code of Ethics

The RCHSCFA abides by the international standards published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) to ensure transparency in both the publication of contributions and the associated dispute resolution procedures. Likewise, the journal uses iThenticate® software to detect potential plagiarism.

The editorial team of this journal ensures that all parties (editors, referees and authors) follow ethical standards throughout the editorial process.

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Authors should state whether they used AI when writing their manuscript. If so, a description of the technologies used and what was generated with them should be included in the manuscript. If AI was used, authors should consider that:

• Generative AI and AI-assisted technologies should only be used to improve the readability and language of the manuscript.
• Authors are responsible for supervising, reviewing and editing information obtained using AI, as these technologies may generate incorrect information.
• Under no circumstances may authors include AI as a co-author in the manuscript, as this implies performing activities that can only be attributed to humans.

Currently, the RCHSCFA does not allow the use of generative AI or AI-assisted technologies (such as ChatGPT) by referees and editors in the peer review process, in order to protect the rights of authors and the confidentiality of their research.