Submissions

Author Guidelines

RULES FOR MANUSCRIPTS PUBLICATION IN ENFOQUE UTE

1. General Information
Enfoque UTE is a scientific journal that publishes research papers in engineering and related areas. It is a non-profit publication, financed and edited by the Universidad UTE. The journal has been published since 2010 continuously, and currently has a fixed quarterly periodicity.
It is an arbitrated publication that uses the double blind review system by international experts, in accordance with the publication standards of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers). Compliance with these requirements facilitates their indexing in the main international databases, which guarantees a greater dissemination of the published works.
Readers, authors and the general public can freely access all the content of scientific articles, as well as to the entire editorial service carried out by the Editorial Group of the Universidad UTE, committed to disseminate open access knowledge.
Enfoque UTE is registered and indexed in several of the main international databases such as Web of Science - Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), Redalyc, Scielo, REDIB, Latindex, OAJI, MIAR, Periódica, BibLat, Google Scholar, and in more than 142 library catalogs worldwide.

It is clearly oriented towards an international audience and from the next issue Vol. 14 No. 3 (2023) will receive contributions written in English only.

The magazine is published in digital version (e-ISSN: 1390-6542). Each manuscript is identified with a DOI (Digital Object Identifier System): 10.29019/enfoqueute.

2. Scope and policy
2.1 Theme
The articles must present original works of scientific and technological research in engineering. The topics to be considered will be found mainly within the field of action of the following engineering areas: Environmental Engineering, Food Engineering, Agricultural Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Computer Science, and Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering.

2.2 Contributions
Research papers must be original, not have been published in any medium, and not in the process of being reviewed in another journal. The author is responsible for compliance with this regulation. Contributions to the journal can be:

• Research: 5,500 / 6,500 words of text, including title, abstracts, descriptors, tables and references. The justified and selective bibliography of around 30 works will be valued.
• Revisions: 6,000 / 8,000 words of text, including tables and references. This is a comprehensive review of the state of the art of a recent and current research topic. Selective and justified bibliography of around 60 works will be valued.

Enfoque UTE is published quarterly with a total of twenty four (24) articles per year. It has two sections:

1. Monographic: section dedicated to a specific theme established previously, with a public call to present articles through call for papers; This section is coordinated by experts on the subject as invited Thematic Editors.
2. Miscellaneous: section made up of articles on a wide range of topics that are within the scope of the magazine.

Manuscripts are received constantly throughout the year; if submissions meet the required parameters are sent to the revision process. The accepted articles will be scheduled for publication in a later edition of the magazine.

3. Editorial process (peer review)

Enfoque UTE acknowledges receipt of the works sent by the authors and informs by email and on the platform about the estimation / dismissal process, and of acceptance / rejection, as well as, in case of acceptance, of the editing process. On the official website (Guidelines section) can be found the complete publication standards, the pre-submission check, the manuscript structure format, the OJS 3.2 submission guide for the manuscript, as well as the evaluation protocol are offered. for external reviewers.
In a period of 30 days tops, from the reception of each work, authors will receive an estimate / dismissal notification, indicating if the work is rejected or preliminary estimated for evaluation by peer reviewers. In the event that the manuscript presents formal deficiencies or is not included in the scope of the journal, the Editorial Board will reject the work. No subsequent correspondence will be maintained with authors of rejected articles. If the manuscript presents superficial formal deficiencies, it will be returned to the author for correction before the start of the evaluation process. It is highly recommended that the authors check the manuscript thoroughly before sending it.
Articles that are considered relevant will undergo the peer review process, in the double blind mode. The Editorial Committee, in consultation with the journal's collaborators, will appoint specialized reviewers on the subject. There is a period of 120 days maximum, after preliminary estimation, for the scientific evaluation of works. The protocol used by the journal's reviewers is public.
The experts will evaluate the work and issue an opinion regarding it. In case modifications are recommended (major or minor) for a given work, these will be sent to the author with the pertinent observations to make the appropriate changes and resend them within a maximum period of 15 days. As soon as the work is definitively accepted or rejected, the author will receive an official communication about it.
The Editorial Committee reserves the right to decide if the proposed article meets the initial criteria, adhering to the editorial guidelines of the magazine, which includes, among others: originality, topicality, interest, style, focus, frequency, relevance, and all those that are appropriate to the interests of the magazine.
Authors will be able to access the final publication online. If at any time during the editorial process the journal considers that a manuscript should not be published, or affects the interests of the journal in any way, it will reject it, regardless of its status, in exercise of its editorial authority.
Furthermore, the authors agree to become members of the International Council of Scientific Reviewers, once their manuscript has been published, for the following editions of the journal.
They also agree to recommend specialized reviewers if requested.

4. Presentation and structure of originals
Manuscripts must be submitted through the OJS 3.2 system (https://bit.ly/3aDfXol).Despite the fact that only one of the authors executes the submission, all co-authors must register on the OJS platform providing complete information (it is essential to provide an official institutional email and the personal ORCID code).
No author may send or have two or more manuscripts in the process of revision, since no more than one article per volume (year) will be published per author.
Manuscripts submitted to Enfoque UTE must be submitted using Word or LaTeX templates.
References to articles or books should use the IEEE format: (IEEE-Reference-Guide.pdf).
The authors, when submitting their manuscripts to the journal, undertake to:

• Ensure that the material is original, the result of their work and of the co-authors.
• The article has not been accepted for publication, nor is it being reviewed in another journal.
• The author and his co-authors own the rights to all the material used in the article.

As soon as the article is accepted for publication in the journal, the main author will send a signed document confirming the aforementioned and assigning the publication rights to the journal. This document is an essential requirement to publish an article in Enfoque UTE.

4.1 Structure of the manuscript
In this link you can download the template that should be used to prepare the manuscript: Word/Latex. Every article must have:

• Title. This must be brief and explicit. Presented in English.
• Abstract. It is a very important element of the document that is submitted for evaluation, so it must meet the following requirements:
  * Presented in English.
  * Describe in 200/230 words the work done. The author must use his synthesis capacity to discriminate in the abstract the important from the accessory.
  * Highlight the most relevant points of the work and include a brief synthesis of the main conclusions reached.
  * Create interest in the reader. The author should present those points of view or angles of the approaches to the topic in broader contexts, so that they motivate the viewer of the abstract to read the entire document.
• Keywords. Six words that serve as job descriptors. Presented in English and Spanish (Palabras clave).
• Introduction. Presents what the complete work consists of, its goal, background, current status of the problem, hypotheses and the proposed objectives. The introduction informs about the purpose, importance and current state-of-the-art of the subject; introducing related work is of special relevance.
• Materials and methods. Explain how the research was done. The procedure carried out to check the hypothesis and the resources used, must be accurately described. An investigation must be repeatable, and this section provides the information necessary for the experiment to be replicated.
• Results. Explain the products clearly. Measurement or quantification data may be presented. In this section, the integration of figures and tables that help to understand the content of the manuscript can be considered. All figures, tables, diagrams and graphics must be presented integrated in the text.
• Discussion. Interpret the results according to similar studies, that is, correlate the results of the study with others, state the advantages of the study and its contributions, avoiding adjectives that praise the results.
• Conclusions and recommendations. Specify what results were obtained and whether they allowed the objectives to be met, propose study perspectives, apply the results.
• Funding: The Council Science Editors encourages authors to specify the source of research funding. At the review stage they can be placed as XXX in order to maintain anonymity.
• References. References can be listed either alphabetically or by appearing order according to the IEEE format style. A style manual with the way to refe to reference this standard, has been produced by the IEEE and can be found at IEEE-Reference-Guide.pdf.

4.2 Other considerations

The scientific communication that the journal considers must be current and timely, to guarantee its validity. The studies and experiments presented should not be more than two years old.

The sources consulted must be current, relevant and significant. It is recommended to reference works that appear in databases such as: Journal Citation Reports (JCR), Scopus, REDIB.

The number of references, will depend on the nature of the work. However, an average number of references in engineering publications is 25 to 35 works cited for a scientific research article, as well as an average of 50 to 70 works for a state-of-the-art review article. In addition, it is recommended to review the base of articles published by Enfoque UTE in previous editions, always considering not to fall into the self-citation or excess of citations of any journal.

Any reference must be possible to locate and validate quickly, through an identifier, DOI or URL. However, remember that the DOI is the quintessential identifier for scientific communication. If your reference does not have a DOI, you should carefully evaluate whether it should be used in your manuscript.

At least 80% of all the references must comply with the following requirements:
- have a DOI,
- comme from a scientific journal or conference,
- be of less than 5 years old.

All referenced works that have DOI must include it. All references that do not have DOI must include an official URL, which allows locating and validating the document

References must comply 100% with IEEE. It is the authors responsibility to assure it. You can consider using reference managers like RefWorks, Mendeley or EndNote, as long as their results are reviewed by the authors.

Tables and figures must be presented incorporated in the text, after having been explicitly introduced and explained in an appropriate way, referencing them by name: Table 1 / Figure 1 (it is incorrect to refer to them as for example "in the following table", since is ambiguous!). Essentially, they will be oriented vertically and fit on a single page, maintaining their informative and graphic quality: good resolution, adequate spacing between elements and without deformations.

Tables must be professionally composed. It is unacceptable, for example, to simply copy and paste an Excel data chart.

Figures must be of printing quality (minimum 300dpi) and have been elaborated and adapted specifically for the article. In the case of photographs, their explanatory value must be clearly demonstrated. In general, for example, photographs of people presenting or handling a product or equipment are not usually of any relevance.

The article should not contain misspellings and should be written appropriately. Likewise, the elements in Spanish must be correctly translated and written by expert translators.

5. Publication costs
Enfoque UTE firmly believes in the open and free dissemination of scientific knowledge, which is why it guarantees that its content and its services in general are totally free for readers, authors and the general public.

6. Ethical responsibilities
Enfoque UTE adheres to the guidelines for publication ethics, defined by the COPE (http://publicationethics.org/resources/code-conduct). This document has been prepared based on the standards established in Guidelines On Good Publication Practice. All our collaborators, readers, authors, reviewers and editors, tacitly declare to follow these principles.
Regarding the detection of plagiarism, Enfoque UTE makes use of the Urkund system to validate all the manuscripts received.

• About scientific work. All work will follow the highest technical and ethical principles. The research carried out must be properly designed and planned, and the authors agree to keep, and present if requested, the documents that validates it. When necessary by its nature, the researchers will present the approval documents of a duly constituted ethics committee, which certifies the correctness of the study.
• Authorship. Although all authors are responsible for the article in its entirety, each of them must also take particular responsibility for the section or sections where they where directly involved and worked. No author who has not directly participated in the study should be included.
• Conflicts of interest. Any conflict of interest, be it financial, academic or otherwise, must be explicitly declared by all involved: authors, reviewers or editors. This declaration must be made as soon as the article is presented or received for evaluation.
• About bad practice. In general, everybody involved undertake to maintain an honest process, with professional technical practice and in good faith, taking care at all times that the process and results demonstrate ethical work. Those involved in the editorial process undertake, to the extent of their possibilities and responsibilities, to follow up on any complaint or suspicion of scientific malpractice, and reserve the right to take the measures they deem appropriate in cases where it is verified lack of ethics in any work submitted for evaluation.

7. Promotion and dissemination of the article
The authors agree to participate in the maximum possible dissemination of their manuscript once it is published (as well as to promote the journal) through academic social networks, institutional websites, university repositories and other online spaces that promote research globally (Google Scholar , Scopus ID, ResearchGate, Academia.edu, ORCID, among others). They also commit to actively participate in the journal's social networks in the phase following the final edition. Articles should be promoted and their reading, citation and impact should be increased using the link on the official website: https://ingenieria.ute.edu.ec/enfoqueute with their respective DOI.

8. Repository Policy

The Enfoque UTE journal allows authors to deposit a copy of their article in an institutional or other repository of their choice without any embargo. Below is the journal policy regarding the different versions of the article:

• Submitted Version: Authors may deposit the original submitted manuscript in any repository at any time.

• Accepted Version (Author Accepted Manuscript): Once the article has been accepted for publication, authors may deposit this version in any repository without restrictions.

• Published Version (Version of Record): Authors may deposit the final published version (also known as the Version of Record) in any repository immediately after publication, with no restrictions or embargo.