Author Guidelines

Articles must be original and must be submitted via the OJS platform, available at: https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/RCED/login. Once registered as an author, please follow the steps indicated on the platform. Any queries regarding manuscript submission may be sent to rce@edu.ucm.es. Authors are advised to review the Checklist for preparing submissions; articles that fail to comply with any of its requirements will be automatically rejected.

Revista Complutense de Educación will prioritise contributions that address relevant and current issues from rigorous perspectives and with an international scope. Manuscripts are invited in the following areas: evidence-based education and the improvement of teaching and learning; artificial intelligence and digital transformation in education; teacher training and professional development; equity, inclusion and diversity in educational contexts; instructional design and the evaluation of educational interventions; and educational policy and reforms of the education system.

Particular consideration will be given to papers that present robust empirical evidence, whether quantitative, qualitative or mixed; employ rigorous and well-justified research designs; provide clear implications for educational practice or policy; and offer systematic reviews or critical syntheses with an explicit methodology. Regardless of the methodological approach used, papers must include a sound and up-to-date theoretical foundation, as well as a detailed description of the methodology employed.

Priority will not be given to papers that are merely descriptive or local in scope and are not connected to international debates; that rely exclusively on perceptions without a sound analytical framework; or that present literature reviews without a systematic or explicit methodology. The journal will not publish papers that do not comply with its editorial policy, that lack a sufficiently robust theoretical basis, that employ weak methodologies or poor data analysis, that do not draw conclusions consistent with the proposed objectives, or that use small, non-generalizable samples, such as participants from a single class or a single school. Opinion pieces and summaries of academic works will not be published.

Revista Complutense de Educación welcomes articles in English. However, all articles must be submitted in Spanish for the peer review process. If accepted, authors will be asked to provide an English version, which will be published alongside the Spanish version.

Articles should be submitted in Word format; additional files may also be included. Authors must ensure that the work is completely anonymised, including the document properties. See “Anonymise”. The submission template must be used.

Authors must complete a brief professional profile in the Metadata section, indicating their academic and professional background as well as their main areas of research. This information will appear on the website if the article is published. It is essential to indicate the authors’ affiliations in the submission metadata, as well as their ORCID. No additional authors who were not listed at the start of the evaluation process may be added after the paper has been accepted.

Submitting an article to this journal implies acceptance of the Declaration of Originality and Authorship. The declaration, signed by all authors, must be uploaded to the platform at the time of submission. Download document.

Papers should be between 6,000 and 7,500 words in length, including the abstract, keywords, notes and references. Abstracts of between 150 and 300 words must be included in both Spanish and English. The abstract must follow the IMRaD format, with the words INTRODUCTION, METHOD, RESULTS and DISCUSSION highlighted in the abstract. The article should follow the same structure in its main sections. The use of inclusive language in submitted articles is recommended.

Four or five internationally accepted keywords or terms in the field of education, taken from the European Thesaurus on Education (http://www.redined.mec.es/tesauro.php) or the ERIC Thesaurus (http://vocabularyserver.com/tee/es/?tema=1288), must be included in both Spanish and English.

The sections and subsections of the text should be numbered, starting with 1. Introduction, in accordance with the template. Notes should be numbered consecutively and their text should appear as footnotes on the relevant page. At the end of the text, references should be included in accordance with the APA Publication Manual, 7th edition. All bibliographic citations included in the text must appear in this section.

Tables and figures must be numbered consecutively by type and inserted in the appropriate place within the body of the article. All tables and figures must be referenced in the text. Text within tables must be in 9-point font. Tables must not contain vertical lines and must be submitted in an editable format.

If there are acknowledgements, they should appear at the end of the article, before the references.

If there are appendices, they should appear at the end of the paper and must not exceed 10% of the paper’s total page count. They may include documents serving as sources of information for the work, charts, tables, statistics, graphs, chronological tables, maps, plans or other illustrations. They must be titled and numbered using Arabic numerals, in 11-point font, and referenced in the text.

Funding and institutional support

Authors must declare all sources of funding that supported the research, including funding agencies, academic institutions or specific projects, together with their respective reference numbers. The role of the funders in the study design, data collection and analysis, interpretation of results and decision to publish the work must also be clarified. If no funding was received, this must be explicitly stated. In the initial version, this information should be anonymised, with a footnote in the title stating: “Research funded by *****”.

• Example: Research funded by ****. The funding body had no involvement in the study design, data collection, analysis or drafting of the manuscript.
• Example (no funding): The authors declare that they received no specific funding for the conduct of this study.

Declaration of conflicts of interest and originality

Authors must disclose any financial, institutional or personal relationships that could influence the results or interpretation of the study. This includes, but is not limited to, funding, consultancy work, affiliations or commercial interests. In addition, authors must declare that the manuscript is original, has not been previously published, either in whole or in part, and is not under simultaneous review by another journal.

• Example: The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest relating to this study. The manuscript is original, has not been previously published, and is not currently under consideration for publication in another journal. All authors have contributed significantly to the development of the work and take responsibility for its content.

Ethical approval and regulatory compliance

Authors must specify whether the study involved human or animal subjects, the use of sensitive data, or any procedure requiring prior ethical review. In such cases, it is mandatory to state that the project was reviewed and approved by a recognised ethics committee or equivalent authority, including the full name of the institution, the country, and the approval or reference number. It must also be stated that the research was conducted in accordance with applicable international ethical principles, such as the Declaration of Helsinki or other relevant guidelines. In studies using secondary databases, public records or anonymised data, the source of the information and the conditions of access and use must be clarified. If the work did not involve interaction with participants, the handling of sensitive data or procedures subject to ethical review, authors must state this explicitly.

• Example (where applicable): The study was approved by XXX in accordance with the principles set out in the Declaration of Helsinki.
• Example (where not applicable): This work is based exclusively on a literature review and did not involve the participation of human subjects or the use of sensitive data; therefore, it did not require ethical review.

Informed consent and data protection

In research involving the direct participation of individuals or the use of information that allows them to be identified, authors must confirm that prior, free and voluntary informed consent was obtained. They must also indicate the measures taken to ensure confidentiality, anonymity and the protection of personal data, in accordance with current legislation, including data protection regulations. Where consent has been waived by an ethics committee, for example in retrospective studies or studies using anonymised data, this must be justified. In the absence of human participants or identifiable data, this must be explicitly stated.

• Example (where applicable): All participants signed an informed consent form prior to their inclusion in the study, ensuring the confidentiality of the information and the anonymity of the data.
• Example (where not applicable): The research did not involve human participants or data that would allow for their identification; therefore, it was not necessary to obtain informed consent.

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools

In line with current editorial policies, authors must transparently disclose any use of artificial intelligence tools in the development of their work, whether in writing, data analysis, content generation or methodological support. The name of the tool, the version where possible, and the purpose of its use must be specified. The use of these tools must be limited to support functions and does not replace the intellectual responsibility, critical judgement or scientific authorship of the researchers. Authors are responsible for verifying the accuracy, originality and validity of AI-generated or AI-assisted content, as well as for ensuring compliance with ethical and data protection standards.

• Example (where applicable): Artificial intelligence tools, such as ChatGPT, were used to assist with the linguistic editing and organisation of the manuscript. Their use was complementary and did not replace the authors’ analysis, interpretation of results or scientific responsibility.
• Example (where not applicable): The authors declare that no artificial intelligence tools were used at any stage of this study.

Review process

The Editorial Board will carry out an initial review of the manuscript and, if it does not meet the basic requirements or does not comply with the editorial policy, it will not proceed to the review stage. A response to this initial review will be provided within one month. If the manuscript is deemed to meet the requirements, it will be sent to two independent experts for review through a double-blind peer review system.

The outcome of the review may be:

1. Accepted, either without changes or with minor modifications.
2. Conditional upon revision and resubmission.

In the event of disagreement between the reviewers, the article will be sent to a third reviewer, whose assessment will determine the final decision. The results of the evaluation process are final in all cases.

The maximum review period will be three months. Where the outcome of a review is conditional upon further revision and resubmission, authors will have one week to submit the changes in a tracked-changes version of the manuscript.

The time between acknowledgement of receipt and evaluation is approximately 60 days. During this period, the author will receive the reports issued by the reviewers, together with any suggestions, and will be required to implement them within 15 days.

Authors of papers accepted for publication will receive a pre-publication proof so that they may correct any typographical or grammatical errors; however, changes that affect the content of the article will not be permitted. Corrected proofs must be returned to the journal’s Editorial Board within a maximum of eight days.

Review guidelines

External reviewers will follow an external evaluation protocol drawn up by the Editorial Board of Revista Complutense de Educación, which contains a set of criteria for determining the acceptance or rejection of manuscripts.

[Manuscript evaluation protocol]

Editorial policy

All papers submitted for publication in RCED must include a review and theoretical framework of the subject under study, as well as a description of the methodology used. Papers should be written in accordance with the standard structure of a scientific paper: Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion/Conclusions and References.

All contributions must comply with the Publication Guidelines available on the journal’s website. Papers that do not meet the requirements set out in the Editorial Policy will be rejected. The use of inclusive language in submitted articles is recommended.

The formal aspects assessed during the first review are as follows:

• The article conforms to the template.
• A brief CV for each author has been included in the submission metadata.
• The declaration of authorship, signed by all authors, has been uploaded to the platform.
• Download document.
• The article has been correctly anonymised: authors’ names do not appear either in the text or in the document properties.
• The article is between 6,000 and 7,500 words in length.
• The Spanish and English abstracts are between 150 and 300 words in length.
• The title, abstract and keywords conform to the Thesaurus in both Spanish and English.
• Tables and figures are correctly numbered and cited.
• The references are up to date: approximately 30% correspond to the last four or five years.
• All references are cited in the text, and all in-text citations appear in the reference list.

All submissions must be sent via the OJS platform, hosted on the website of the Publications Service of the Complutense University of Madrid.

Revista Complutense de Educación does not charge article processing fees, nor are there any costs associated with publication.