Advisory Board

The Advisory Board is a body composed of researchers of recognized standing responsible for helping to define the journal's scientific and editorial policies. Its main functions include:

• Overseeing the quality and academic integrity of the publications.
• Supporting the evaluation and indexing processes and issuing recommendations to strengthen the journal's national and international standing.
• Supporting the Editor-in-Chief in decision-making.
• Establishing and updating the journal's mission and vision, scope of topics, and priority areas for publication.
• Ensuring that the journal maintains standards of scientific, ethical, and editorial quality in line with international criteria for scientific indexing and publication. To this end, the Board may periodically review editorial metrics, analyze the quality of published articles, evaluate the overall performance of the editorial process, and issue recommendations for continuous improvement.
• May participate in the development, review, and approval of policies on issues such as editorial ethics, conflicts of interest, plagiarism and similarity, and the use of artificial intelligence, among others.
• May propose strategies to strengthen internationalization, increase the geographic diversity of authors and reviewers, and strengthen academic networks.
• May issue recommendations on scientific integrity, editorial practices, and conflict resolution.

Editor-in-Chief

The Editor-in-Chief chairs the Advisory Board and is responsible for overseeing the entire editorial process, making final decisions on manuscripts, ensuring the scientific and ethical quality of publications, coordinating the Editorial Board, and representing the journal at an institutional level before academic bodies and national and international indexing systems. Specifically, the Editor-in-Chief has the following responsibilities and functions:

• Ensures compliance with the journal's editorial policies, ethical guidelines, and scientific quality standards.
• Coordinates and oversees the journal's entire editorial process in an integral manner, from manuscript receipt through final publication.
• Is responsible for making the final decision on manuscripts submitted to the journal, based on peer reviews, the recommendations of the Editorial Board, scientific relevance, and the journal's editorial and ethical policies. Editorial decisions must be based on academic, scientific, and ethical criteria.
• Ensures that published articles meet adequate standards of originality, methodological rigor, scientific quality, academic integrity, clarity of writing, and thematic relevance. Also oversees the quality of the peer review, editing, and publication processes.
• Handles situations related to plagiarism, self-plagiarism, data or image manipulation, conflicts of interest, authorship issues, inadequate use of artificial intelligence, redundant publication, and other scientific or editorial misconduct. To this end, the Editor-in-Chief may request support from the Editorial Board or the Advisory Board when the complexity of the case warrants it.
• Organizes and supervises the activities of the Editorial Board and the Section Editors. Additionally, may assign specific responsibilities and monitor editorial performance.
• Manages interactions with the Institutional Journals Coordination Office (CORI, by its Spanish acronym), the body responsible for the processes of style editing, translation, layout, and final publication of manuscripts.
• Promotes strategies aimed at increasing scientific quality, strengthening international visibility, expanding the geographic diversity of authors and reviewers, improving editorial metrics, boosting indexing, and consolidating the journal's academic prestige.
• Ensures that the journal adheres to its publication schedule, maintains reasonable review deadlines, publishes articles in a timely manner, and maintains a consistent editorial workflow. It also implements strategies to improve editorial efficiency.
• May propose the implementation of policies related to editorial ethics, peer review, artificial intelligence, open access, digital preservation, retractions and corrections, open science, and the use of research data.
• Promotes ongoing evaluation and improvement processes related to editorial quality, peer review performance, editorial professionalization, technological tools, training for reviewers and editors, and the updating of international standards.

Editorial Board

The Editorial Board is the body responsible for coordinating and overseeing the journal's editorial process. It is composed of academics from the UACh and other national and international universities who specialize in and have professional experience in the journal's subject areas. Its responsibilities include:

• Assisting in the definition and strengthening of the journal's editorial policies.
• Participating in the review and academic evaluation of manuscripts in accordance with their area of expertise. Conducting a preliminary evaluation of manuscripts to verify thematic relevance, initial scientific quality, originality, compliance with editorial standards, methodological consistency, and suitability for the journal's scope.
• Proposing specialized reviewers and contributing to ensuring the scientific and ethical quality of publications. This includes the preliminary review, selection, and assignment of reviewers, ensuring thematic expertise, institutional and geographic diversity, the absence of conflicts of interest, and the academic quality of the peer review process; monitoring the peer review process; communicating with authors; and verifying compliance with editorial policies.
• Ensuring that the peer review process is confidential, impartial, and technically sound, and that it is conducted in accordance with the journal's editorial and ethical policies. The Editorial Board may also request additional reviews when there are conflicting or insufficient reviews.
• Recommending or issuing decisions regarding the manuscript based on the peer review reports. Decisions must be based on academic, scientific, and ethical criteria.
• Addressing cases of plagiarism, self-plagiarism, image or data manipulation, authorship disputes, conflicts of interest, misuse of artificial intelligence, redundant publication, and other scientific or editorial malpractices, reporting them in a timely manner to the Editor-in-Chief so that appropriate measures can be taken regarding the case in question.
• Supporting updates related to author guidelines, review formats, editorial policies, technological tools, editorial management, scientific integrity, and the use of artificial intelligence.
• Analyzing metrics such as review time, publication time, acceptance rate, authors' country of origin, reviewer performance, review quality, and publication frequency. Based on this, improvement measures can be implemented.
• Promoting the journal's visibility within academic and scientific networks.
• Making recommendations aimed at strengthening the publication's prestige and impact.
• Collaborating in identifying emerging topics and proposals for special issues.

Section Editors

Section Editors are members of the Editorial Board who, in performing this role, assume responsibility for coordinating the evaluation and scientific review of manuscripts assigned to their areas of expertise. Among their specific duties are:

• Overseeing the editorial process for manuscripts assigned to their areas of expertise. This includes a preliminary review of the manuscript, an assessment of its thematic relevance, an initial evaluation of its scientific quality, and a recommendation regarding whether to send it for peer review.
• Identifying and proposing expert reviewers, ensuring scientific expertise in the subject area, institutional and geographic diversity, the absence of conflicts of interest, and the academic quality of the peer review. They may also follow up on the acceptance of invitations and adherence to review deadlines.
• Verifying that the peer review process is technically sound, that confidentiality is maintained, that it is conducted according to the double-blind model, and that ethical and scientific standards are met. They may also request clarifications or additional reviews when the reviews are insufficient, contradictory, or poorly substantiated.
• Assessing the consistency among the reviews, the technical quality of the evaluations, the relevance of the comments, and the scientific feasibility of the requested modifications. Based on this, they may issue an editorial recommendation to the Editor-in-Chief.
• Reviewing revised versions of manuscripts to verify that authors have adequately addressed the reviewers' comments. When necessary, they may return the manuscript for further review.
• Attending meetings convened by the Editorial Board.
• Other activities related to the Journal.

Coordination of Institutional Journals (CORI)

The Coordination of Institutional Journals (CORI, by its Spanish acronym) is the unit attached to the General Directorate of Research, Graduate Studies, and Services (DGIPS) at Chapingo Autonomous University (UACh), responsible for coordinating, supporting, and supervising the editorial, technical, and scientific production processes of Textual. Analysis of the rural environment, as well as other institutional journals. Its functions include:

• Coordinates the technical and editorial activities necessary to transform an accepted manuscript into a publishable scientific article. This role includes organizing and overseeing the processes following editorial acceptance, ensuring that articles meet scientific, linguistic, editorial, and technical standards prior to publication.
• Responsible for providing and maintaining the technological infrastructure used for the editorial management of the institutional journals. Assists in the administration of electronic manuscript submission systems; provides technical support to authors, reviewers, and editors; maintains the operation of editorial platforms; and safeguards the integrity of editorial information.
• Participates in the implementation of mechanisms that ensure the scientific and editorial quality of publications. These include similarity checks using specialized software; verification of compliance with editorial standards; monitoring of peer-review procedures; and application of international standards for scientific publication.
• Performs stylistic editing of manuscripts accepted for publication through specialized staff. This process aims to improve the clarity of the language, correct grammatical and spelling errors, standardize scientific writing, and ensure editorial consistency across articles.
• Is responsible for providing the necessary translations so that articles can be published in Spanish and English. All contributions are published in both languages, and the translations are carried out by specialized staff at no cost to the authors. This process involves specialized scientific translation, terminology review, alignment of bilingual versions, and linguistic quality control.
• Handles typesetting through specialized staff, the creation of galley proofs, the final typesetting review, the integration of metadata, and the preparation of files for electronic publication. These activities are a natural part of the editorial production process following the acceptance of the manuscript.
• Participates in the assignment and management of permanent digital identifiers (DOIs) for published articles. This function helps ensure that articles remain permanently accessible, facilitates the retrieval of citations, improves interoperability among scientific platforms, and enhances the international visibility of publications.
• CORI is responsible for publishing and making the journal's approved articles available to the scientific community. This includes open-access electronic publication, maintaining the journal's website, updating content, disseminating issues and articles, and digitally preserving published materials.
• Coordinates the journal under an open-access model with a Creative Commons license. As such, its responsibilities include ensuring free access to content, monitoring compliance with publishing licenses, and promoting the free flow of scientific knowledge.
• Participates in activities related to publishing standards, compliance with database criteria, metadata enhancement, digital interoperability, and the improvement of publishing metrics.
• Actively addresses disputes and inappropriate conduct at every stage of the editorial process. This includes issues related to plagiarism, self-plagiarism, duplicate publication, conflicts of interest, false authorship, fabrication or manipulation of data, manipulation of images, and other breaches of scientific integrity.