Author Guidelines

Version 2025

PRESENTATION AND SCOPE OF THE JOURNAL

Desenvolvimento e Meio Ambiente (DMA) is an open access journal edited by the Graduate Program in Environment and Development (PPGMADE) of the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR). Its main target audience is the academic community, but its content is also of interest to readers outside academia, such as government agencies, civil society organizations, social movement entities, and business segments.

The journal's main objectives are to publish original quality articles on socio-environmental topics at the local, national and international levels and to disseminate them widely in various academic circles. Anchored in an interdisciplinary perspective, the journal's central focus is the discussion of problems at the intersection between society and nature. Its socio-environmental focus seeks an innovative, multidimensional and comprehensive view, which originates in a deep dialogue between the various fields of scientific knowledge. Articles of a disciplinary nature or of an exclusively technical nature must be submitted to other journals and will not be considered for publication, regardless of their quality.

The Copyright of the publications in this journal is retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the journal. The published content is the sole responsibility of the authors. DMA adopts a Creative Commons license for distribution of its articles, having changed its policy in January 2023 from the CC BY-NC-ND condition to the CC-BY simple attribution condition. Before submitting a manuscript, authors should read the full Copyright and Open Access Policy, as well as the journal's other policies, on the Policies page (tab).

All correspondence should be sent to the Editors via email at revistamade@gmail.com or to the following address:

Universidade Federal do Paraná – UFPR, Programa de Pós-graduação em Meio Ambiente e Desenvolvimento. Av. Cel. Francisco H. Dos Santos, 100, ed. OMMA, térreo, Centro Politécnico. Jardim das Américas, 81530-000 - Curitiba - Paraná - Brasil

ATTENTION ! Make sure you receive our emails by preventing them from going to your spam box. There are two steps you can take to do this. The first one is to add the sender revista_ojs@ufpr.br to your contacts. The other is to configure your software or email service to not consider our messages as spam. The procedures vary depending on the software, but in some cases just click with the right mouse button on a message from us that is in your spam box and an option “mark as non-spam” or similar will appear. In other cases, it will be necessary to change the software Settings, but usually the path and procedures are simple and intuitive.

PUBLICATION TYPES

DMA is an electronic journal, available for consultation and submission online at www.revistas.ufpr.br/made. It accepts submissions on a continuous basis and eventually organizes thematic dossiers published alongside the regular volumes or in special volumes. The journal publishes: (i) original and review articles (up to 30 pages), (ii) essays (up to 20 pages), and (iii) reviews of recently published books (up to five pages).

Review articles should contain a truly integrated synthesis, not just a summarized survey, of previously published research on a clearly defined topic. They should constitute a state of the art on the topic, provide a critical overview of current thinking, as well as produce emerging knowledge. Review articles can include bibliometric analyses and systematic reviews, but the journal will not accept articles that are limited to these approaches. Essays are critical and argumentative texts, with room for the author's subjectivity, which present the author's argument, perspective or reflections on specific issues. Their nature does not exempt them from being intellectually rigorous and formally written, using appropriate sources to back up the author's observations, perceptions, analyses and evaluations. Book reviews must necessarily be critical and thought-provoking, including a minimum of dialogue between the work reviewed and literature.

Eventually the journal will republish articles of great interest, translated or not. In this case, those responsible for the translation and article submission should inform the editors that they have the authorization of the author(s) and/or the original publisher for the republication of the article, either in the original language or translated. The republished text will contain a note stating the complete original reference. DMA does not republish articles already published in full in events' proceedings.

Since 2020, two volumes are published per year, in streaming mode, one for the period from January to June and the other from July to December. In this way, articles are made immediately available once ready for publication.

SUBMISSION AND EVALUATION RULES AND POLICIES

Submissions to DMA, as well as tracking of its evaluation process, will be made exclusively through UFPR’s Journals Digital Library OJS Platform at www.revistas.ufpr.br/made (see details below). Submissions that do not carefully follow the rules below will not be accepted.

At least one of the authors should REGISTER in the system before submission, marking the option “AUTHOR”. One of the authors should be designated as Corresponding Author, which will be responsible for communicating with the editors via email. The journal will not accept submissions via email or regular mail. If the author cannot access the system properly, he/she should contact the editors through the email revistamade@gmail.com.

Submitted manuscripts must not be under revision by any other journal and must have been approved by all the authors. By completing the submission process, all authors automatically accept to abide by the rules and policies presented herein.

It is the job of the Editors to preliminarily evaluate the contents of the manuscript, rejecting it in case of any restrictions to publication. In that case, the manuscript will not be assigned to a reviewer. It will be archived, and the decision will be communicated to the authors by e-mail within an average of 30 days. As is customary in most journals, an evaluation of the manuscript will not be sent to the authors at this stage, but the message communicating non-acceptance will indicate one of the following four fundamental reasons:

1) The article "does not follow our PUBLICATION GUIDELINES ", established on this page.

2) The article "does not fit within the scope and focus of the journal" (see above). In particular, we emphasize the need for an approach that promotes dialogue between different areas of knowledge. From this perspective, it is mandatory that the research problem be at the interface between nature and society - this cannot be just its context. For example, manuscripts of environmental law will not be accepted if their approach is exclusively legal, only because they deal with environmental legislation - connections with other dynamics (social, ecological, economic, political, etc.) must be part of the research problem and discovery. Another example: manuscripts using techniques such as GIS or remote sensing will not be accepted if the approach is exclusively technical, just because there is a potential (context) of application in, say, environmental management - this potential needs to be effectively discussed as part of the research problematization and findings.

3) The article "does not present the profile expected by the journal". The profile desired by DMA can be summarized as that of original and quality scientific articles, that is, that meet the good practices of scientific production and writing, and have complexity and intellectual sophistication compatible with the level that the Editors aim for the journal. Examples of manuscripts that will be refused because they do not qualify as scientific articles are journalistic texts, pamphlets, anecdotal accounts, or mere research reports. As for quality, we look for professionally written articles, concise, clear and objective, with good text structure, adequate contextualization and research problematization (with clear research questions or hypotheses), explicit and pertinent methodology, due support in the relevant literature, coherent answers and conclusions and good logical-scientific inference, good quality illustrations, and minimally relevant and current. Examples of texts that will be rejected are those extracted from theses and dissertations and not adequately converted to article or essay format, texts with serious problems of language or writing and / or simplistic content, works with very narrow empirical bases, or whose findings bring little novelty.

4) "At its present stage", the manuscript is not yet in a position to be sent to reviewers. This is a rarer situation in which editors find the manuscript has the merits and potential to satisfy the above conditions, but is still immature, requiring one or two more rounds of refinement by the authors. For example, there may be excessive or unnecessary content, or at least one of the major components of the text (such as theoretical reference, elaboration and discussion of results, theory-empirical articulation, etc.) is still embryonic and / or the manuscript still needs at least one major revision to comply with submission conditions.

The Editors may also perform or request, when deemed necessary, minor modifications to the original manuscript, to better fit it to the journal standards. The editors will send to the reviewers only manuscripts whose defects or limitations have realistic chances of correction by them, without an unreasonable load of work.

The manuscripts approved by the Editors for peer-reviewing will be forwarded to at least two independent reviewers. The evaluation is done by a double-blinded process in which evaluators do not have access to the name(s) of the author(s) and vice versa. The DMA’s body of reviewers is formed only by Ph.D. researchers from Brazilian and foreign institutions. The evaluation is done taking into account the scientific quality and correctness of the contents, the structure of the text and quality of writing. Reviewers will either recommend acceptance, rejection or request modifications. It is up to the Editors to take the final decision on the acceptance or rejection of the manuscript, based on the opinions expressed by the reviewers. Authors must indicate 3 to 5 potential reviewers for their manuscript, inserting their names and respective e-mails in the COMMENTS FOR THE EDITOR field in Step 1 of the submission process in the system. People with good knowledge on your paper topic and who have done research and published papers in the same field make good suggestions. Also, he/she should have some knowledge on how scientific journals work. The suggested reviewers will not necessarily evaluate the manuscript, the editor in charge being responsible for deciding whether to include any of them as a reviewer. The status of the submissions can be tracked through SER (www.revistas.ufpr.br/made) with the same login used for submission.

It is the responsibility of the authors of research involving human beings to have complied with the relevant ethical principles, especially those subject to research ethics committees. We also recommend consulting our “Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement”.

BILINGUAL PUBLICATION

All manuscripts accepted for publication must be published in the original language and also in English, i.e., bilingual.

The translation and its costs will be the responsibility of the authors, and should be provided only after the conclusion of the evaluation and reviewing processes of the original text. The authors are responsible for contacting the translators, requesting quotes, and controlling translation deadlines and costs. The translation must necessarily be performed by one of the services listed below, whose quality is recognized by DMA. Foreign authors who have difficulty in hiring the indicated services should contact the editors for further guidance. DMA is not responsible: (1) for the quality of the translation service, (2) for any delays in the delivery of the translation, (3) for the payment of the service and (4) for the issuance of documents such as quotes and invoices. The deadline for authors to provide the translation will be communicated by the editors when the final version of the manuscript is ready.

Texts submitted directly in English by non-English-speaking authors, if approved for publication, should also be forwarded for final review by the listed professionals, except in exceptional cases defined by the editors. Thus, we encourage submission in Portuguese when there are Portuguese-speaking researchers among the authors, leaving the preparation of the English version only for after the text has been approved. In the case of texts originally submitted in English, the journal reserves the right to reject the manuscripts if the language level is considered insufficient by the editors.

Click to see the LIST OF DMA SUGGESTED AND ACCEPTED TRANSLATION SERVICES

INFORMATION FOR SUBMISSION TO THE SYSTEM (OJS)

First of all, make sure that the names of the authors do NOT appear in the file(s) to be submitted. Names should also be absent from the hidden information or metadata of the file (in Word, use the “inspect document” function to remove personal data). The authors' names will be entered into the system's appropriate fields during the submission process.

To submit, 1) access the system with your login and password, 2) click on the SUBMIT button and then 3) click on the “Make new submission” link. The page opens with Step 1 - Getting Started. From there, just follow the instructions on the screen.

ATTENTION: In Step 3 - Entering metadata, make sure you include all co-authors by clicking on the appropriate button. Note that the required data will appear in the published article (be sure to see published articles as examples). Guidelines:

a) In the Surname field, enter the surname as it should be cited, even if compound. Examples: Smith, Gomez y Conde, Smith Jr., Gomes-Conde. In the Name field, enter the rest of the name, without abbreviations, including connectors. Example: Maria Dolores Diaz de.

b) Authors who do not yet have ORCID iD can obtain it at https://orcid.org/register.

c) In the URL field, you can enter the address of the author's Lattes CV or another institutional link.

d) In the Institution/Affiliation field, enter the desired institutional link, which will ideally be the institution during the course of the research. If not, fill in “independent researcher” or equivalent.

e) The country is that of the institutional link.

f) In Summary of Biography, try not to exceed the size of the field. As a minimum, indicate the area and institution in which you completed your undergraduate degree and your most recent degree (indicating whether it was a specialization, master's or doctorate). 

IMPORTANT: After receiving the submission receipt email, be sure to access it and make sure that all data fields (metadata) for all authors are filled out, especially the ORCID and Biography Summary fields. The content of these fields will appear later on the published article page (see examples on the journal website). In the Publishing tab, click on Contributors, then on the arrow in front of each author's name, and then on the Edit button.

STRUCTURE AND FORMATTING OF THE MANUSCRIPT

DMA publishes papers in Portuguese, English, Spanish and French. Manuscripts should be submitted in their original language, and must contain title, abstract and keywords in the original language, and also in English and Portuguese.

Manuscripts should be typed in MS Word for Windows or OpenOffice and submitted in .doc or .docx formats, in A4 page size, top and bottom margins of 2.5 cm, left and right margins of 3.0 cm, 1.5 line spacing, font Times New Roman size 12, left-aligned text, and all pages numbered. DMA does not provide a layout file.

Tables and figures should be numbered in Arabic numerals, with subtitles in font size 10, and inserted in the text in the first convenient point after their respective first mention. Color figures are accepted, preferably in JPEG format, although they are also acceptable in GIF, TIFF, BMP, and PNG. Maps, graphs, plots and photographs are all considered figures and should be referred to as such in the text. In the submission file, the quality of the pictures must be sufficient for evaluation, but, if necessary, it can be lower than in the published version, so that the file does not exceed 5 MB. Should the manuscript be accepted, the figures may be provided later with a better resolution for the published version (at least 300 dpi), and must be sent separately with their identification (example: Figure 1).

The expression “Table” must be used, regardless of whether the content is numeric or textual. “Boxes” are used only when the content is textual and covers a single column. Tables should contain only horizontal borders, avoiding, whenever possible, internal borders. It is strongly recommended that the authors check articles already published by the journal regarding the formatting of tables and figures.

Section’s headings should be numbered in Arabic numerals in bold and italic type (example: 1. Introduction), and subsection’s headings, at any level, numbered and only in italic. The number of pages, including figures, tables and references, is limited to 30 for articles, 20 to essays, and 5 for book reviews.

Articles and essays should be structured as follows:

a) Title in the original language, then Portuguese and English.

b) Abstract (300 words, maximum) in the original language, Portuguese and English, followed by three to five key words in each language.

c) Introduction.

d) Article body, with sections as deemed appropriate by the authors.

e) Acknowledgements (optional). Use this section to mention scholarships and research funding sources.

f) References.

Book reviews do not need to be structured as above. The complete book reference must be presented (according to the norms for references below) in the original language.

Footnotes should be at the end of each page (not the end of the document) and numbered in Arabic numerals, Times New Roman font size 10, left aligned.

CITATIONS AND REFERENCES

DMA follows the APA (American Psychological Association) style for citations and references. Summary rules, as well as templates and examples, can be found at the links below. Citation of monographs, dissertations, theses, abstracts and papers published in conference proceedings, as well as reports of difficult access, should be avoided. The DOI (Digital Object Identifier) number, when available, must be included at the end of the reference. For articles without a DOI, but available in electronic addresses, the hyperlink must be indicated at the end of the reference ("Available at: link").

Link to citation formatting:

https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/basic-principles/author-date

Link to reference formatting:

https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/elements-list-entry

https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples