About the Journal

Focus and scope

Palabra clave (La Plata) (ISSN 1853-9912) is a semi-annual (april-october) peer-reviewed journal edited by the Departamento de Bibliotecología, Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.

The purpose of the journal is to offer a specialized communication medium, contributing to the development of Library and Information Science (LIS) through the publication of high quality rigorous academic works. It is addressed to researchers, teachers, executives, officers, professionals, and students in the LIS field, particularly, but not exclusively, for the Latin American area.

Palabra clave (La Plata) reserves the right to accept or refuse contributions, in accordance with its thematic scope and compliance with publishing policies and standards. The opinions expressed in papers and other texts published in Palabra clave (La Plata) are the sole responsibility of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Palabra clave (La Plata) board.

Palabra clave (La Plata) reserves the right to accept or reject contributions based on their thematic scope and strict adherence to its editorial guidelines. The opinions expressed by the authors of the articles are their sole responsibility.

There are no charges for submission to, publication in, or access to Palabra clave (La Plata). Once published, the article will be available for anyone to read or download without charge.

Once the submission is accepted, the Editorial Secretariat edits the article and sends it to the author for galley proofs. The final version is immediately uploaded online in the current issue of Palabra Clave (La Plata). This process aims to expedite the publication of articles, reducing the time between issues

Frequency

Palabra clave is a semi-annual publication, released in April and October.

Peer review process

Each submission to Palabra clave (La Plata) passes through a quality control and peer-review evaluation process before receiving a decision. The average processing time is 10 days. In case of not responding to this requirement, the submissions are rejected.

The accepted submissions are double blind peer reviewed, each article is submitted to two reviews but in case of a divided opinion, a third review is requested. The average processing time is 30 days.

Reviewers are asked to evaluate:

1. Originality of the argument

2. Coherency and grasp of previous critical literature on the topic

3. Methodology used

4. Clarity

5. Adequate referencing

Submission of a work implies the author's obligation not to submit it simultaneously to another publication.

Submissions are preliminarily evaluated by the Editorial Board to determine if the topics align with the journal's stated scope. Submissions that do not meet this requirement are rejected. The editorial team reserves the right to accept or reject submissions based on the thematic scope, strict adherence to editorial guidelines, and compliance with the ethics and anti-plagiarism policy. The journal uses anti-plagiarism software.

Authors are expected to respect the best practices and ethical codes of scientific publications, that is, to avoid duplicate submissions, ghost and honorary authorship, plagiarism, data manipulation, conflicts of interest, and to comply with research ethics policies. Submission requirements can be found in the journal's Submissions section.

Submissions accepted by the editorial team undergo academic peer review by external experts (double-blind peer review, maintaining author anonymity). The evaluation process and possible outcomes are detailed in the Submissions tab. Formal document requirements are also detailed there.

The journal periodically opens calls for articles. Subscribe as a Reader to receive updates.

There are no fees for submission, publication, or access. Once published, your article will be available for anyone to read or download.

Online Submissions

Registration and login are required to submit items online and to check the status of recent submissions.

Already have a username and password for Palabra clave? Go to Log In

Open access policy

Palabra clave (La Plata) is an open access journal licensed under Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgnual 4.0 International.

The acceptance of manuscripts by the journal will mean, in addition to the electronic publication, the open access under Creative Commons (CC) Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license 4.0, as well as the incorporation and full text diffusion through the institutional repository Memoria Académica of the Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, and in all the specialized databases the publishers considered adequated for its indexing, in order to increase the journal visibility.

Palabra clave (La Plata) provides immediate open access to its content based on the principle that freely offering academic and scientific output to the public contributes to a greater global exchange of knowledge.

Palabra clave (La Plata) is an open access publication licensed under a Creative Commons Atribución-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 4.0 International.

Its content is also available in the institutional repositories of the UNLP (Memoria Académica and SEDICI) and in Redalyc, under an open access Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.es), and in the databases that the publisher deems appropriate for indexing, with the aim of increasing the visibility of the journal and its authors.

Furthermore, our institution, the Faculty of Humanities and Education (UNLP), promotes and supports the open access movement for scientific and academic literature. Their promotes and supports the open access movement for scientific and academic literature. His publications are free for both authors and readers, encouraging authors to deposit their contributions in other institutional and thematic repositories, based on the conviction that culture and knowledge are a common good for everyone.

Data Availability Policy

Palabra Clave (La Plata) promotes transparency and reproducibility of published research so that other researchers can replicate the studies described in its articles, either to corroborate or refute the results obtained, in accordance with the provisions of National Law 26.899 on Open Access Institutional Digital Repositories.

To facilitate the reproducibility of results, the journal requires authors to make the datasets used in the research described in their article freely available. If there are limitations arising from ethical or legal reasons, authors must indicate how other researchers can access these data.

All information and research data submitted to Palabra Clave (La Plata) must be made available in the UNLP Research Data Repository, where extensive, systematized datasets that support the article can be published, adhering to the FAIR principles. Authors are encouraged to deposit their data before submitting their contribution to the journal. This way, when submitting the article, they will only need to provide the URL where the research data is located.

Digital Preservation

Palabra clave (La Plata) uses the PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN). This storage system allows journals managed on the OJS (Open Journal Systems) platform to digitally safeguard their content by creating permanent archives of the journal for preservation and restoration purposes.

Indexing and Inclusion

Palabra clave (La Plata) is part of the Core Collection of Argentine Scientific Journals (CAICYT-CONICET). It is included in the Latindex Catalog (Level I), SHERPA/RoMEO, Ulrich Directory, EZB Elektronischen Zeitschriftenbibliothek, ERIH Plus European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences, SCIMAGO Journal and Country Rank (SJR), MIAR Information Matrix for Journal Analysis, LatinREV Latin American Network of Academic Journals in Social Sciences and Humanities, and CAPES-Qualis (Class A4, 2017/2020).

The article "Palabra clave (La Plata)" is indexed in SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online), Dialnet, DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals), RedALyC (Network of Scientific Journals of Latin America and the Caribbean), REDIB (Ibero-American Network of Innovation and Scientific Knowledge), EBSCO (Educational Source Premier), GALE (Cengage Learning), LatAm Studies (Latin American Studies), BibLat (Latin American Bibliography in Scientific and Social Research Journals), CLASE (Latin American Citations in Social Sciences and Humanities), LISTA Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts, Scopus, and Google Scholar. Full-text articles are available in E-LIS.

Ethical Considerations and Conflicts of Interest

This scientific journal is the collective result of the work and effort of authors, editors, and reviewers who are committed to the advancement of science for social and cultural development. For this reason, and within the framework of the open access policy promoted by the National University of La Plata, the journal will not charge authors any publication fees, and articles will be immediately available in open access.

The journal editors are committed to avoiding any conflicts of interest among those involved in its production. All submitted texts will be evaluated based on their intellectual content, ensuring that the authors' ethnic or national background, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, or political philosophy do not interfere with the evaluation process. Similarly, external reviews that prioritize personal opinions over the quality of the work will be rejected.

Authors and reviewers are requested to disclose any relevant conflicts of interest they may have in advance so that these can be considered when assigning reviews. Should any conflict arise after the publication of the contribution, a retraction or disclosure of the fact will be made, if necessary.

A “conflict of interest” is understood as a situation in which a divergence occurs between an individual's personal interests and their responsibilities regarding the scientific activities they carry out, whether as an author, reviewer, or member of the editorial committee, which could influence their critical judgment and the integrity of their actions.

Conflicts of interest can be:

Financial: when the participant (author/reviewer/editor) has received or expects to receive money for activities related to the research and its dissemination.
Academic: when reviewers or editors adhere to a particular methodological or ideological trend in such a way that they may be biased in evaluating the work of others. For this reason, they are asked to disclose this beforehand.
Personal or professional relationships: when the participants (authors/reviewers/editors) have any type of relationship, whether friendly, hostile, or professional. To avoid this, editors should consider the funding sources and affiliations of authors in order to choose reviewers who do not belong to those specific circles.

International guidelines

Based on an analysis of the specific problems of scientific publishing practice, various international organizations have taken on the task of agreeing on criteria and generating guides and documents that provide support to both editors and authors, among them:

The editors of the journal will consider guidelines and guides that have been agreed upon at the international level to solve the specific problems of scientific publishing practice. The instructions given by COPE | Committee on Publication Ethics will be taken into account. Guidelines from other internationally recognized organizations such as the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, the Council of Science Editors and the Office of Research Integrity (ORI) will also be considered | U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

Authors, researchers and reviewers are invited to familiarize themselves with the international guidelines linked to ethics in publication, specifically those linked below, in order to avoid faults that could be generated by their ignorance.

Anti-Plagiarism Policy

Palabra Clave publishes original, unpublished works written by authors who declare their authorship. The journal considers the following practices to be plagiarism:

Direct plagiarism (failure to acknowledge authorship, minimal changes made to another's text, failure to indicate borrowed material with quotation marks).
Plagiarism through improper use of paraphrasing.
Plagiarism through inappropriate use of quotation marks or failure to clearly identify paraphrased passages as such.
“Self-plagiarism” or recycling fraud occurs when a work's appearance is altered and it is presented as something different, or when the fact that the work is being recycled is omitted.

Palabra Clave implements procedures to prevent plagiarism—translations, fragmentation of results or “salami slicing,” duplication, among others—:

Authors are required to declare that the article has not been previously published or submitted to other journals for evaluation and that the text is original.
Reviewers are asked to pay attention to potential indicators of plagiarism, as they are familiar with the sources and literature on the topic.
The journal Palabra Clave uses the Similarity Check tool (a service offered by Crossref that employs iThenticate technology) to detect similarities and prevent plagiarism. This tool is provided by the National University of La Plata through Crossref.

In the event of plagiarism and a false declaration, the authors will be notified and given 10 days to provide an explanation or withdraw the submission. In the event of plagiarism being found, FAHCE Journals will remove the text, indicating in the bibliographic record (if one exists) "Excluded for plagiarism".

Artificial Intelligence Use Policy

This journal, in manuscript preparation, evaluation, and editorial work, adheres to the criteria for responsible use and application of artificial intelligence (AI) tools proposed by the Heredia Declaration, COPE, and WAME, and adopted in the Decalogue developed by the Argentine Center for Scientific and Technical Information (CAICYT-CONICET) and established in the UNLP Journal Coordination Document.

In all cases, authors must critically review and validate any content produced with the assistance of these tools, following the recommendations detailed herein.

Authorship: AI does not replace authorship, scientific reasoning, critical analysis, or decision-making. Therefore, the ethical and legal responsibility for the published content rests with the authors, even when using AI. The ethics and plagiarism policies detailed in this journal will prevail in all cases. Authors are fully responsible for the content of their manuscript, including parts generated by an artificial intelligence tool.

Transparency: The use of AI must be reported transparently. Therefore, authors must disclose which AI tools they used, their purpose, the parameters employed, and the type of supervision performed. A subheading titled “Use of Artificial Intelligence” must be included, detailing the tools used and the type of intervention performed. Proper citation of sources used (algorithm developer, year, model, etc.) is also mandatory.

Evaluation: Reviewers may not upload manuscripts (either partially or entirely) to an AI application to supplement the review process, as this could incorporate the content into the training data and infringe upon the authors' intellectual property rights.

Copyright Policy

Acceptance of contributions by the journal implies the non-exclusive transfer of the authors' economic rights to the publisher, who permits reuse after publication under a Creative Commons (CC) Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

The material may be shared (copied and redistributed in any medium or format) and adapted (remixed, transformed, and used to create derivative works), provided that: a) the authorship and original source of publication (journal, publisher, and URL of the work) are cited; b) it is not used for commercial purposes; and c) the same license terms are maintained.

The transfer of non-exclusive rights also implies the authors' authorization for the work to be deposited in the institutional repositories of the Faculty of Humanities and Education (Memoria Académica) and the National University of La Plata (SEDICI), and disseminated through the databases that the editor deems appropriate for indexing, with the aim of increasing the visibility of the publication and its authors.

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses entered in this journal will be used exclusively for the purposes stated by this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other person.

Funding

This site, like all others on this portal, is financially supported by the Faculty of Humanities and Education of the National University of La Plata.

Publisher

Departamento de Bibliotecología
Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación
Universidad Nacional de La Plata
Calle 51 e/ 124 y 125 | (1925) Ensenada | Buenos Aires | Argentina
e-Mail: relmecs@fahce.unlp.edu.ar

Support Contact

Prosecretaría de Publicaciones y Gestión Editorial - FaHCE. UNLP
Phone: +54 221 4236671 ext 1268
Email: publicaciones@fahce.unlp.edu.ar

Actualizado mayo 2026