Editorial Policies
Open Access Policy
The Revista Brasileira de Agroecologia (Brazilian Journal of Agroecology) is an open access journal, which means that all of its content is freely available, at no cost to authors, users, or their institutions. There are no fees for processing published articles. Users are permitted to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without seeking prior permission from the publisher or author. This is in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) definition of open access.
Submission Evaluation Policy:
Each submission to RBA, in the categories of "Articles" and "Agroecological Notes," for both regular and special issues, initially undergoes a preliminary evaluation by a committee of editors from the Editorial Board. At this stage, it is verified whether the submission is within the scope and complies with the journal's submission guidelines. If not approved at this stage, the committee may reject the submission, justifying the rejection, or request adjustments to the journal's standards. If approved by the committee, the submission is forwarded to the section editor, who is assigned a Section Editor, or a guest editor in the case of a special issue, who is responsible for overseeing the peer review stage. In the evaluation stage, at least two ad hoc reviewers are appointed in a double-blind review system (authors and reviewers do not know each other's identity). Nominated reviewers must be professionals with recognized training and experience in the subject area of the submission, working in teaching, research, or extension institutions in Brazil or abroad, and not serving on the RBA Editorial Board.
Reviewers may suggest that the submission be: rejected; accepted; accepted with changes; or require a complete revision and new evaluation. If there is a majority opinion in the reviews received, the editors responsible for the evaluation communicate the decision to the authors. If there is disagreement between reviews, more reviewers are nominated. If the decision is to reject, authors are informed by message with justification and copies of the reviews.
When modifications are requested, authors are informed, receiving a message containing reviews and, possibly, files annotated by reviewers, with a deadline established for returning the file with the modifications. If authors disagree with any suggested modification, they must justify not having adopted it. Upon receiving the file with the corrections, editors may consider that the modifications have complied with the recommendations of the reviewers and accept the submission for publication. If they deem it necessary, they may open a second round of evaluation and request new reviews.
Submissions for the categories of "Letters to the Editorial Board," "Book/Media/Event Reviews," "Dissertation or Thesis Abstracts," and "Interviews" do not undergo peer review. Submissions to one of these categories initially undergo an evaluation by a committee of the Editorial Board to determine if they fall within the scope of the RBA and comply with the submission guidelines. After this evaluation, an editor from the Editorial Board is responsible for issuing an opinion on the acceptance or rejection of the submission. This editor may ask for a double-blind review of an ad hoc reviewer if deemed necessary to have an extra opinion.
Once approved for publication, all submissions proceed to the text editing stage, during which authors may be asked to make further corrections to the text, without modifying the content, and, if necessary, adjustments to citations and references. After this stage, layout editing is carried out, with the production of a proofreading, which is sent for final review by the authors to correct printing errors before publication by RBA. Even after receiving approval for publication, if authors do not respond adequately, making the corrections requested by text and layout editors and meeting the established deadlines, the submissions may still be rejected.
