Focus and Scope

The Journal AtoZ: novas práticas em informação e conhecimento is a publication edited and published by the Master and PhD in Information Management Program at the Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil.

Goals:

To privilege and to openly and freely disseminate interdisciplinary research results related to the areas Information Science, Information and Knowledge Management and Information Technology.

It aims to contribute to promote greater visibility for young researchers who normally face difficulties when attempting to publish their first articles and/or works related to the areas of Information and Knowledge Management.

Journal approach:

It considers as new practices in information and knowledge the innovative and interdisciplinary studies in (and among the) areas of Information and Knowledge Management.

Scope/domains of interest:

• Qualitative and quantitative studies oriented to data, information and knowledge issues;
• Entrepreneurship focused on knowledge and information products or promotion of knowledge and information products, services and activities;
• Data, information, knowledge and the process of decision making;
• Data, information and knowledge management in public organizations;
• Data, information and knowledge policies and governance;
• Human Resources regarding activities in the data, information and knowledge;
• Strategic, managerial and operational dimension of the data, information and knowledge cycle;
• Technologies applyed to data, inofrmation and knowledge systems, products and services (artificial intelligence, datamining, big data, social mining, machine learning, internet of thinfs, semantic web, linked data);
• Legal context, regulation and information management (Information Access Law; Data Protection Law, Net Neutralit);
• Information managemente and scholarly communication;
• Legal information management;
• Interdisciplinary learning, information and strategy applied to education (teaching, legais approaches, ethics in the use of educational data and the use of analysis and learning tools);
• Open science (open access, scientific data, research data management, altmetrics, citizen science, open education, open innovation, open reproductioble research, open peer review);
• Cyberculture, social media, information literacy;
• Open data, transparency, open platforms, smart cities;
• Knowledge and information economy;
• Information and knowledge engeneering;
• Marketing for knowledge and information products and services;
• Knowledge organization (domain analysis, epistemological and critical studies, ontology, knowledge organization systems, taxonomy, semantic web).

Peer Review Process

The manuscripts submited to the paper and short paper section will be evaluated as follows:

Step One – Desk Review

The Chief Editor or the Associate Editors will do the first evaluation of the manuscript considering the author's guidelines, the research ethics and integrity policy, the focus and scope of the journal.

Step Two – Blind Review

The journal adopts the double blind review system and follows these guidelines:

• minimum number of reviewers: two;
• In case of controversy among the referees, the article is submitted to a third referee;
• evaluation system: double blind review. To manuscripts deposited in preprint servers, it will be adopt the single blind review;
• regular time for evaluation process: first step (up to 14 days); step two (up to 90 days);
• referees selection: by invitation (according to Editorial Board suggestions based on Lattes Platform) and/or by subscription through OJS (Editorial Board; a PhD degree (minimum) is recommended.

General conditions for evaluation:

• Research related to the objective of the journal and its thematic areas;
• Innovative focus and/or environement and/or methodology;
• present, as one of the two main authors, junior investigators (recommended);
• unequivocal definition of the investigation goals to be achieved in the end of the study;
• indication of the stage of development of the research;
• presents the state of the art of the literature on the main subject;
• appropriated definition and application of the elected methodologies;
• critical analysis of the facts, opinions and procedures;
• deep discussion based on the evidences showed by the data and its implications;
• validity of the study assumptions and argumentation;
• clear and coherent structure;
• compliance to current citations and reference standards;
• compliance to the submission guidelines (including layout and the procedures for metadata form filling).

AtoZ is prospecting open peer review. Authors are asked what level of openness in peer review they agree with. Likewise, reviewers are asked, through the evaluation form, which level of openness in peer review they agree with for their reviews.

Publication Frequency

AtoZ is operating under a continuous publication model, one volume a year.

Open Access Policy

The authors have permission and are encouraged to deposit their papers in personal web pages, institutional repositories or portals before (pre-print) or after (post-print) the publication at AtoZ. It is just asked, when and where possible, the mention, as a bibliographic reference (including the atributted URL), to the AtoZ Journal.

The authors license the AtoZ for the solely purpose of disseminate the published work (peer reviewed version/post-print) in aggregation, curation and indexing systems.

The AtoZ is a Diadorim/IBICT green academic journal.

All the journal content (including instructions, editorial policies e templates) - except where otherwise indicated - is under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Once published by AtoZ, the papers are open access for scholarly, research and non-commercial use. The indication of the original source is mandatory.

AtoZ does not apply any charges regarding manuscripts submission/processing and papers publication.

Research Ethics and Integrity Policy

AtoZ declares its commitment to practices that value ethics and research integrity and expects the same from everyone involved in the editorial process: editors, reviewers and authors.

This policy follows the guidelines of national and international documents to ensure compliance with the principles of ethics and research integrity, namely: Guide to good practices for strengthening ethics in scientific publication of SciELO Program, Guidelines of 2nd World Conference on Research Integrity, and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Editors' Guide.

Editorial Team Commitments

Confidentiality – the editorial team is committed to maintaining the confidentiality of any information related to manuscripts submitted to the journal throughout the entire editorial process. Authors' anonymity must also be kept, except for publications made available as preprints.

Impartiality – the chief and associate editors are responsible for evaluating the manuscripts in desk review status and also for deciding which manuscripts should be published by the journal. Therefore, they are committed to evaluating and deciding whether to publish or not, based on what is provided for in the journal's Editorial Policy, in an impartial manner. The Editorial Board can be consulted to assist in any necessary decisions.

Editors must also be impartial in resolving conflicts resulting from allegations of misconduct (e.g. plagiarism, misuse of data, attribution of improper authorship) in the development of research for a manuscript submitted to the journal, considering the flowchart proposed by COPE's Core Practices to mediate the conflict.

Transparency - it must be observed by the editorial team in the preparation, compliance with the journal's policies, and conduction of verification processes for complaints about misconduct in the research development of a manuscript submitted to the journal.

Conflict of Interest – the editorial team must inform the editor of any potential or existing conflict of interest before acceptance of the review or during the review process. If a conflict of interest is related to the editor-in-chief, this one must refuse the review and pass the activity on to the associate editors or one of the Editorial Board members.

Commitments of Reviewers

Confidentiality – it is based on the commitment to maintaining the confidentiality of any information related to the manuscripts assigned for its evaluation and opinion.

Impartiality – manuscript evaluation must take into account the merit of the research and the journal Editorial Policy. The assessment and decision must not be influenced positively or negatively by professional, personal and/or financial motivations.

Transparency - if any evidence of misconduct is identified (e.g. plagiarism, misuse of methods, fabrication and/or falsification of data) in the research being evaluated, it is up to the reviewer immediately to inform the editor. The reviewer is also responsible for informing the editor when they don’t feel qualified to review a manuscript for thematic incompatibility.

Objectivity and Completeness – it refers to the commitment to presenting objective and sufficiently justified opinions, to support the editor's final decision.

Punctuality – reviewer must immediately notify the editor in case of impossibility to review the manuscript. And, when accepting the task of issuing an opinion on a manuscript, the reviewer is responsible for complying with the deadlines established by the journal.

Conflict of Interest – reviewer is responsible for informing the editor of any potential or existing conflict of interest before acceptance of the review or during the review process.

We recommend Nature's free online course "Focus on Peer Review" for reviewers who wish to improve their knowledge about this activity.

Authors' Commitments

Guidelines for Authors – it comprises the commitment to complying with the general rules presented in the Guidelines for Authors, considering that, in this way, many issues related to misconduct in research are minimized.

Authorship – recognize as authors all those who contributed directly and significantly to the conception of the research presented in the manuscript, who participated in writing and critical review of the manuscript, and assume responsibility for the information presented. Authors are also committed to declaring the roles and responsibilities of each author based on the CRediT – Contributor Role Taxonomy, as described in the Guidelines for Authors.

Information Sources - observance of ethics concerning information sources is essential to guarantee research integrity. Authors are responsible for properly citing all sources used in their research, following the Guidelines for Authors.

The authors must be aware of properly citing and identifying information sources when they use a third party publication.

AtoZ journal understands plagiarism as "[...] essentially an ethical issue that consists in the act of taking for oneself, in any form or means, an intellectual work of another person, presenting it as their own. [...] It is the misappropriation of a text, music, painting or any other intellectual work, in which the usurper assumes authorship, deliberately omitting the credits for the original author" (WACHOWSKI; COSTA, 2016, p. 110).

Any suspected plagiarism or other misconduct in manuscripts submitted to AtoZ will be investigated following the flowchart proposed by COPE's Core Practices.

Conflict of Interest – all authors are responsible for informing the editor of any potential or existing conflict of interest when submitting the manuscript and/or during the editorial process.

Indexing and Harvesting Services

	Directory of Open Access Journals
	Sumários.org: sumários de revistas brasileiras
	Google Acadêmico
	LivRe! Portal para periódicos de livre acesso na Internet
	InfoBCI
	Latindex Catálogo
	Bielefeld Academic Search Engine
	INFOBILA: Información Bibliotecológica Latinoamericana

Notice:

The information collected during the registration process and the data collected through a web analytics software will be used exclusively for metrics studies under responsibility of AtoZ editorial team.

Eventually, some findings derived from the data may be published as a research paper. Data that may identify individual users will never be used, published or shared.

Please contact the Chief Editor to discuss mutual responsibility for metadata use and storage and files transference to other databases/repositories.

Journal History

Considering the maturity of the areas of Information and Knowledge Management at the international level and in Brazilian society in particular, the Information Management Undergraduated Course - as an academic unity of the Applied Social Science Faculty/Federal University of Paraná (UFPR/SCSA) launched the inaugural issue the AtoZ: new practices in information and knowledge in August 2011.

During the first design process (2011) by the Team received support from  Laboratório de Mídias Digitais (DECiGI/UFPR/LabMIDI) in order to create the AtoZ logo.

From 2012 to 2014 the AtoZ was in a partnership with Intellectus Ágil (IÁgil) concerning the procedures and generation of epub format files.

From 2011 to 2015/Dec. it was published under the responsability of the Undergraduated Course in Information Management - UFPR. Since December 2015 it is sponsored by the Pos graduation Program (MSc) in Ciência, Gestão e Tecnologia da Informação (SCSA/UFPR).

In 2020, the journal Atoz started publishing quarterly issues and adopted the continuous publication.

In 2022 the journal adopted the one volume by year in continuous publication.