About the Journal

Aims and Scope

The Interdisciplinary Journal of Applied Science (Revista Interdisciplinar de Ciência Aplicada - RICA) is a scientific publication that accepts works in Portuguese, English, and Spanish. Due to the interdisciplinary character, the journal has the mission of sharing knowledge linked to Engineerings, Nature, and Exact and Social Sciences.

RICA receives, in continuous flow, orginal works of scientific and/or technical character related to the journal's topics, such as: Complete articles, Review articles, Book reviews, Case studies, and Short Communications, for publication in the several journal sections. The target audience of RICA are researchers, professors, and technicians that work in areas related to the journal's thematic axes.

Section Policies

The Interdisciplinary Journal of Applied Science (RICA) has the objective of being a means of scientific communication directed to the academic audience, aiming to share information and to foster scientific development and maturation. RICA serves as an incentive to the academic's journeys (undergraduates, postgraduates, and professors) who believe that can contribute to society through concrete knowledge, critical reviews, or reflections based on scientific research.

The sections are structured to encompass from the beginners in scientific career up to the most experimented researchers, keeping an interdisciplinary focus and including areas from science and pedagogy to engineering and technology.

Professor Model

The section 'Professor model' will be directed to an article that honor an educator highlighted in the academic environment.
Editor: Drª Gladis Franck da Cunha

Short Communications

Short papers, that encompass clearly the scientific method, compose the section "Short Communications". As examples, it can be a classroom work, an extension project, and/or internship.
Editor: Prof. Dr. Scheila de Ávila e Silva

Complete Articles

In the section "Complete articles", the works present a more extensive review and deeper data analysis. This section has as interest to receive monographs, dissertations, and thesis, or even scientific initiation works with years of investigation.

Editor: Me. Wendel Paulo Silvestre

Review Articles

The section "Review articles" has as a focus the review of a current topic/subject matter in the most diverse scientific areas.
Editor: Prof. Dr. Matheus Poletto

Book Reviews

In this section, book reviews that are related to the scope of this journal (Interdisciplinarity, Education, and Applied Science) will be included.
Editor: Prof. Dra. Gladis Franck da Cunha

Case Studies

The secition "Case studies" encompass articles that describe and evaluate cases/situations or present experiences from some real application in all areas of knowledge.
Editor: Prof. Drª Scheila De Avila e Silva

Peer Review Process

The journal has an Editorial Board composed of qualified and acknowledged scientists and researchers; its members exercise the function of evaluating and ensuring the quality of publications, issuing recommendations about the works in every journal section. The submitted papers are evaluated by two reviewers external to the editorial board, with the omission of author information, in a double-blind review process. If any divergence between the reviewers' recommendations occurs, the final decision to publish the article is made by the Editor-in-Chief and has the joint approval of the Editorial Board.

The submitted works undergo a three-part evaluation process:

Part 1: Initial evaluation

When receiving a submission, the Editorial Board carry out the first part of the evaluation, which encompass:

  • formatting aspects considering the instructions available in the "Author Guidelines";
  • the removal of elements that may identify the authorship;
  • verification of plagiarism using the copyspider software;
  • quality of the submission considering aspects related to coherence and consistency as expected for a scientific work, and proper spelling and grammar quality.

If discrepancies are observed and/or there is the possibility of plagiarism, the submissions will be immediately archived and the authors will be informed about the impossibility of continuing the evaluation process. If approved in this stage, the submissions will be forwarded for evaluation by section editors.

Part 2: Peer review

The submissions approved in the first stage will be assigned to two external reviewers that will issue recommendations in, preferably, no more than three weeks. The reviewers will access and evaluate the submission through the journal portal.

Based on the recommendations of the reviewers, section editors will present a decision proposal to the Editor-in-Chief, which may be: (1) approve the submission for publication; (2) request the authors to revise the paper; (3) reject the submission for publication.

If the decision is the revision of the submission, the authors will have 15 (fifteen) days to submit the revised version of the work. The involved reviewers may be consulted again and will have three weeks to verify the treatment of the raised issues. If the recommendations are not treated as requested by the reviewers, the submission will be rejected.

Part 3: Final revisions

Accepted submissions will be forwarded to publishing, in which the bibliographic standards (citations, references, text formatting, figures, and tables), the metadata, and the article descriptors will be reviewed.

After paper acceptance, no changes in authorship are allowed.

Afther these three stages, the paper will be forwarded to the authors to aprove the final version (proofs). If mistakes are identified, the authors are instructed to indicate them in the text itself for the editorial team to correct them and compose the final version. The deadline for this feedback will be 10 (ten) days for the authors to manifest themselves and submit the corrected article file in the journal's system. If there is no manifestation within the stipulated period, the text will be considered approved and will be published.

One corrected and published as online first or in final indexed version, no further changes are possible. In cases where corrections are necessary, the authors should contact one of the journal editors and request the publication of an erratum.

Immediate access after acceptance

Articles accepted for publication will be made available as soon as possible after acceptance, following the stage of copyediting.

Periodicity

Since 2023 the journal adopted a continuous flow system, and any papers published within the year are encompassed in a single annual volume.

The average decision time (from submission to final decision) is 90 days.

Open Access Policy

The RICA offers open and immediate access to its content, following the principle of making available free the scientific knowledge to the public and fostering a wider worldwide knowledge democratization. RICA does not charge submission fees for processing and publication (APC's).

About CC Licenses - Creative Commons

This journal and the works published are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.

The authors retain the copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication, with the work simultaneously licensed under the Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), allowing the sharing of the work with recognition of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statements

RICA is committed to maintaining the highest ethical standards to guarantee the quality and integrity of the published works. Thus, RICA has the following principles:

  • The Editorial Board members work voluntarily to keep the quality of the published papers and may, at any moment, point irregularities that may violate copyright or present any form of plagiarism, also taking the appropriate measures.
  • The Editorial Board guarantees the confidentiality of the submitted works until publication, with exception of award-winning articles and special editions with productions by already known authors.
  • The reviewers are committed to treating the assigned works as confidential, not using the received information to obtain any personal and/or professional advantage.
  • The authors must guarantee that the submitted work is original. When using other materials, the sources must be properly cited. Any plagiarism attempt will result in the immediate rejection of the submission or archiving if the paper was published and the plagiarism identification occurs after publication.
  • Authors must not submit the same work to more than one journal. The submission of the same work to more than one journal at the same time constitutes unethical behavior that may preclude publication.
  • If the existence of plagiarism is verified after publication, the author(s) will be subject to the applicable legal measures. The published work will be immediately excluded and, in its place, a notice explaining the motive of the exclusion will be published.

The RICA follows the guidelines determined by the code of ethical conduct of the Comitee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Thus, it is essential that all parties involved (editors, authors and reviewers) adopt them, in order to prevent any instances of unethical behavior and bad practices in publications. RICA repudiates all types of plagiarism, falsification of information, fabrication of results, undue or phantom authorship and any other kind of fraud that harms scientific ethics. Furthermore, we endorse the guidelines for authors determined by the Integrity Commission of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), available here.

For more information about the ethics and publication practices of RICA, access the journal Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement.

Digital preservation policy

RICA performs long-term preservation of articles using the PKP LOCKSS network for preservation.