Submissions

Revista Espaço do Currículo (REC) operates under a continuous publication model organized into three issues per year, published every four months. Each issue is released by the 10th day of the first month of its respective four-month period. Within this editorial model, approved manuscripts are first made available as Ahead of Print (AOP), enabling the early dissemination of articles that have already been accepted and edited. Subsequently, the articles are formally assigned to the journal’s regular issues, following the order of the editorial pre-publication queue and the organization of each four-month issue. This procedure aims to reduce the time between acceptance and publication, thereby enhancing the visibility and dissemination of scientific research in the field of curriculum studies.

1. REC does not charge any article processing charges (APCs) for submission or publication.

2. The journal accepts submissions in the following categories:

I. Articles

Description: Scientific articles are understood as manuscripts resulting from empirical research and analytical studies that focus on discussions within the field of curriculum studies. Manuscripts should range from 25,000 to 60,000 characters (including spaces).

II. Book Reviews

Description: Book reviews are texts that critically engage with works, such as books, edited volumes, films, and documentaries, of relevance to curriculum studies. Submissions should not exceed 10,000 characters (including spaces).

III. Interviews

Description: This category includes interviews with scholars recognized in the academic field, leaders of organized social movements, artists, and other public figures whose contributions are relevant to debates in curriculum studies.

3. Submitted manuscripts must comply with the current standards of the Brazilian Association of Technical Standards (ABNT), including: NBR 6022:2018 (Article in printed periodical publication), NBR 6028:2021 (Abstract, review, and critical review), NBR 10520:2023 (Citations in documents), NBR 14724:2011 (Preparation of academic works), and NBR 6023:2020 (References).

4. Manuscripts must be original, written in Portuguese, Spanish, or English, and related to the subfield of curriculum studies. In accordance with the journal’s internationalization policy, all accepted manuscripts will be published in two versions: one in Portuguese and another in a foreign language (English or Spanish). Manuscripts submitted in Spanish or English must therefore include a Portuguese translation upon acceptance. The translation must be completed after the manuscript has been accepted and before the publication stage. The responsibility for arranging and covering the costs of the translation lies with the author(s). The translated version must include the translator's credits (name and email address).

5. Illustrative elements (tables, photographs, drawings, maps, diagrams, graphs, etc.), when included in the manuscript, must be submitted as separate files corresponding to the element indicated in the text. For example, if the manuscript includes Figure 1, a file saved as Fig1 corresponding to the referenced image must be included among the submission files. The file must be saved in .jpg format, with a resolution of at least 300 dpi, and must not exceed 2 MB in size.

6. Research or experience reports must be revised and formatted as articles in order to be considered for publication in this journal, in accordance with REC’s guidelines.

7. Manuscripts received for publication are subject to an initial screening by the scientific editor(s) responsible for the section to which the text is submitted.

8. The selection of articles for publication is based on their contribution to curriculum studies, in accordance with the journal’s editorial scope. Originality of the topic or of the approach adopted, as well as the consistency and rigor of the theoretical and methodological framework, are also essential criteria.

9. Manuscript files must be submitted only after registration through the journal’s website: https://periodicos.ufpb.br/index.php/rec/index.

10. All author identification details must be entered directly into the appropriate fields on the article and author registration pages in the submission system, in Portuguese, English, and Spanish.

11. Authors must include, on the identification page, a brief biographical note of no more than three lines, following the model: “PhD in Education from the Federal University of Paraíba. Professor at the State University of Paraíba. Lattes Curriculum: https://lattes.cnpq.br/00000000000000.” For international authors, an ORCID identifier may be provided in place of the Lattes Curriculum link.

Important note: After the manuscript has been accepted, the author(s) will receive an email with instructions on how to link their ORCID to the submission. Completing this procedure is mandatory for the publication of the manuscript in the journal.

12. Two versions of the manuscript must be submitted: one anonymized, containing no information that could identify the author(s), and another identified version.

13. Manuscripts reporting research involving human participants must adhere to recognized ethical standards, as outlined in item 1 of the Ethical Issues section. Authors are required to include, within the theoretical and methodological section of the manuscript, a clear and explicit statement detailing how ethical considerations were addressed throughout the study, including procedures for informed consent, confidentiality, and data protection.

Where applicable, authors should indicate whether the study was reviewed and approved by a Research Ethics Committee (REC), in accordance with institutional and national regulations, and provide the corresponding protocol number. A copy of the REC approval may be submitted as a supplementary document; however, its submission is not mandatory.

14. Manuscripts may have a maximum of three authors.

15. At least one of the authors must hold a PhD or equivalent doctoral degree.

16. Submission files must be in .doc or .docx format and must not exceed 2 MB.

17. REC provides a template for manuscript submission, which can be found below. Its use is mandatory to ensure that the article complies with the journal’s guidelines.

• Article Template

Note: The template provided was developed by Revista Espaço do Currículo based on adaptations of a model originally used by the journal Praxis Educativa.

18. In cases of detected or suspected plagiarism, redundancy (duplicate publication), fabricated data, conflicts of interest, or ethical issues (e.g., violation of protected patents, or experiments involving animals or human subjects conducted without proper ethical oversight), whether before or after publication, the journal’s editor(s) will take appropriate measures in accordance with the guidelines recommended by the Comitê de Ética em Publicações - Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Authors will be given the opportunity to respond to any complaints or allegations, and all documentation related to the case will be properly archived.

19. REC reserves the right not to publish manuscripts by the same author (or co-author) within intervals shorter than one year (12 months). Exceptional cases (for example, calls for thematic issues) will be considered by the editorial team.

20. After final acceptance of the manuscript, the text must undergo language editing and formatting in accordance with the standards of the Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas - Brazilian Association of Technical Standards (ABNT). These services will be carried out by the editor(s) designated by Revista Espaço do Currículo, and the costs will be fully borne by the author(s), due to institutional budget constraints.

ETHICAL GUIDELINES

1. REC is committed to the ethical principles inherent to the evaluation and publication process of articles, book reviews, interviews, and any other texts published in the journal. The journal follows the recommendations, decisions, and procedures established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and other relevant documents, as outlined below:

a) CNS Resolution No. 466/2012 (Ethics in Research Involving Human Subjects);

b) CNS Resolution No. 510/2016 (Ethics in Research in the Human and Social Sciences);

c) CNPq Document – Ethics and Integrity in Scientific Practice;

d) Ethics and Research in Education, Vol. 1 (ANPEd);

e) Ethics and Research in Education, Vol. 2 (ANPEd);

f) Ethics and Research in Education, Vol. 3 (ANPEd).

2. Ethical principles and procedures adopted:

a) Regarding manuscripts

• Authors are responsible for the content of their manuscripts, as well as for the copyright of images, videos, and any textual or supplementary elements included in the article.
• Manuscripts involving research with human participants must have been submitted to a Research Ethics Committee (CEP/CONEP system or another equivalent system). Authors are required to attach the Ethics Committee approval report as a supplementary document.
• During the preliminary assessment, section editors seek to identify compliance with ethical standards and submit manuscripts to the iThenticate software to check for possible textual similarities.
• Section editors also request that reviewers pay attention to ethical considerations and indicate, in their reports, any previously published passages that have not been properly cited.
• As stated in the CNPq document (Ethics and Integrity in Scientific Practice), in items 17 and 20, authorship should be attributed to those who have made a significant contribution to the development of the manuscript and who are able to describe their contributions when requested.
• If the research project underlying the article was not submitted to a Research Ethics Committee, authors are advised to justify this decision in the manuscript and include a section on research ethics. The entry “Self-declaration of ethical principles and procedures” is recommended, as suggested in the e-book Ethics and Research in Education: Guidelines – Vol. 1, pp. 205–211.
• It is emphasized that articles derived from research conducted with groups considered to be in situations of vulnerability must observe ethical standards throughout the entire process of their development. The definition proposed by Elida Séguin (2002, p. 12) is adopted, which characterizes minorities by their “non-dominant position within the country in which they live” and defines vulnerable groups as those in conditions of power vulnerability, which may include numerically significant populations, such as women, children, older adults, and persons with disabilities, among others (SÉGUIN, Elida. Minorias e grupos vulneráveis: uma abordagem jurídica. Rio de Janeiro: Forense, 2002)..

b) Regarding the review process

• All manuscripts submitted to Revista Espaço do Currículo undergo peer review using the double-blind method, which involves obtaining evaluations from experts in the field of curriculum studies. This process is described in the “About” section, under “Peer Review Process”.
• During the review process, manuscripts are treated as confidential documents. Accordingly, editors, reviewers, and all individuals involved in the editorial process are prohibited from citing, reproducing, or distributing copies of submitted texts, regardless of the reason.
• Reviews are prepared by completing the standardized form available in the journal’s submission system, which includes space for additional comments that should be written in a clear and objective manner.
• The selection of reviewers is contingent upon the absence of conflicts of interest, which must be declared by the reviewer(s) in the evaluation form. In the event of a conflict, the review process will not proceed, or the report will be disregarded by the editor(s) and/or section editor(s).
• The journal considers any form of plagiarism unacceptable and uses anti-plagiarism screening tools.
• The final decision regarding the publication of a manuscript rests with the editor(s).
• Whenever a manuscript demonstrates academic quality and meets the journal’s criteria, it will be submitted to double-blind peer review by at least two reviewers.
• The editor(s) are available to address any ethical issues related to a submission.

c) Other principles

• Information regarding the journal’s ownership, copyright, and/or management is clearly indicated in the “About” section on the journal’s website.
• This journal does not charge any submission, review, or publication fees.

3. Plagiarism and Self-Plagiarism Detection

Manuscripts submitted to Revista Espaço do Currículo will be screened using iThenticate software to identify textual similarity. A similarity rate of up to 20% will be considered acceptable, provided it does not involve central concepts or ideas from other publications, whether by the authors themselves or by third parties, that are not properly referenced. If plagiarism is identified, the manuscript will be returned to the author(s). During the review process, authors may be contacted for clarification based on the similarity reports generated by the system.

PEER REVIEW PROCESS

1. The average time for manuscript evaluation is approximately eight months. After acceptance, an additional period of around two months is expected for editorial processes (copyediting and layout) and publication. However, these timeframes may vary depending on the volume of submissions and the timeliness of reviewers’ responses.

2. Review Guidelines: The evaluation process for Articles, Book Reviews, and Interviews submitted to Revista Espaço do Currículo follows the peer review workflow outlined below:

I. Initial screening: At this stage, manuscripts are reviewed by at least two editors and evaluated for their compliance with the general criteria and editorial scope of Revista Espaço do Currículo. Manuscripts will be returned to the author(s) if they:

a) consist of descriptive accounts of experience or research, lacking the analytical development expected of a scientific article;

b) when submitted as articles, consist solely of a literature review;

c) constitute, in essence, excerpts from a dissertation or thesis, without proper adaptation into an article format;

d) are presented in the form of a research proposal or research report;

e) do not present a sufficiently in-depth analysis of the proposed topic;

f) do not place curriculum studies as the central focus of the discussion;

g) contain writing and structural issues that hinder the understanding of parts or the text as a whole;

h) are merely descriptive and do not present an analysis of the issue addressed;

i) do not conform to the scientific article format commonly adopted in Education journals when submitted as articles;

j) do not comply with the submission guidelines of Revista Espaço do Currículo (formatting, citations, references, etc.);

k) when submitted as articles, do not present results, arguments, or conclusions that contribute to advancing the proposed topic;

l) when submitted as articles, do not present sufficient empirical elements or well-developed arguments to support their conclusions;

m) yield a similarity index exceeding 20%, except where editorial evaluation determines that the overlapping passages do not compromise the manuscript’s originality or impinge upon its core arguments.

Manuscripts that do not meet any of the criteria above will be considered eligible to proceed to the next stage.

II. Peer review based on merit: In this second stage, the editorial team of Revista Espaço do Currículo sends the anonymized manuscript to at least two reviewers in the relevant subject area, affiliated with institutions from different states or from abroad. The evaluation will consider the following criteria:

a) contribution to curriculum studies;

b) originality of the topic and/or the approach adopted;

c) argumentative consistency;

d) rigor of the theoretical and methodological approach;

e) overall quality of the manuscript;

f) integration of the manuscript into recent debates in the field, considering relevant literature, including, where appropriate, articles published in Revista Espaço do Currículo;

g) reviewers may accept the manuscript, accept it with revisions, or reject it. In all cases, the decision must be justified in a descriptive report;

h) If both reviewers reject the manuscript, it will be returned to the author(s);

i) If both reviewers accept the manuscript, it will proceed to the next stage;

j) If the reviewers’ evaluations diverge, the manuscript will be sent to a third reviewer;

k) If one or both reviewers request revisions, the manuscript will be returned to the author(s), who will be asked to revise it in light of the reviewers’ comments within thirty days;

l) Once the revised manuscript is resubmitted in accordance with the reviewers’ suggestions, it will be reassessed and, if appropriate, proceed to the final stage.

III. Editoração do trabalho às normas da Revista Espaço do Currículo: uma vez aceito para publicação, o trabalho é submetido aos procedimentos de normalização e editoração, para posterior publicação.

CONFLICTS OF INTEREST

1. Conflicts of interest are understood as situations in which individuals involved in the editorial process of a manuscript have interests that may compromise the impartiality of editorial decisions. Personal, political, financial, academic, or religious considerations may affect objectivity in the evaluation of manuscripts (The COPE Report, 1999).

2. With regard to conflicts of interest:

a) Conflicts of interest must be disclosed not only by the author(s) but by all individuals involved in the editorial process of a manuscript.

b) Editors must avoid making decisions on manuscripts in which there may be potential conflicts of interest, such as those submitted by authors affiliated with their own department or by research collaborators.

c) If editors have a conflict of interest, they must delegate the decision-making process to another editor.

d) Reviewers must consider any potential conflicts of interest before evaluating a manuscript. Professional relationships with the author(s) should be taken into account, such as current or past involvement in research projects, collaboration with research groups, supervisory relationships, or any financial interests related to the project addressed in the manuscript.