Editorial policies

Revista Brasileira de Avaliação (RBAVAL) is a publication of Rede Brasileira de Monitoramento e Avaliação (RBMA) that fosters, hosts and disseminates knowledge on evaluation theories and practices. Exclusively digital and with full open access, it accepts articles in continuous flow, consolidating them in semiannual issues.

RBAVAL accepts articles in Portuguese, Spanish and English from authors of any nationality. Editors encourage multidisciplinary and intersectoral productions and seek to favor evaluative cultures marked by respect for social actors, epistemological plurality, methodological density, rigor in valuation, and commitment to use.

By promoting the use of evaluations on topics of public interest, RBAVAL seeks to contribute to the guarantee of civil, political, environmental and social rights in Brazil, democracy strengthening, and intelligent use of public and private resources.

General guidelines

Papers submitted to RBAVAL are the authors' sole responsibility and cannot be submitted simultaneously elsewhere.

RBAVAL will accept material written in Portuguese, Spanish and English, from authors of any nationality residing in any country.

RBAVAL believes that international dialogue is essential to strengthen evaluation practice. Reason why the journal welcomes national and international papers that can provide relevant contributions to evaluation theoretical and practical dimensions.

RBAVAL supports efforts related to the visibility of African descent authors in scientific production. Thus, our publications request the self-declaration of color/ethnicity of the authors to make such information visible in the journal.

RBAVAL supports efforts related to the visibility of women in scientific production. Thus, our publications require that the bibliographic references at the end of the papers include the full first and middle names of the authors and not just the initials.

RBAVAL respects the writing styles of the authors, but recommends that the original articles, essays and experience reports contain conventional elements such as (a) introduction, with a clear definition of the problem, object or experience investigated; (b) method, described in an objective and clear way in order to allow the best understanding of the investigation path and its eventual reproduction; (c) results and discussion, which can be presented together or separately; (e) conclusions, pointing out learnings, uses, developments, limitations and effects of the assessment or research in question.

Manuscript types

1. Original articles: text with up to 8000 words that is the result of empirical research of qualitative or quantitative nature and can be used to deepen knowledge on the object of study, generalize data, or replicate experiences.

2. Essays: text with up to 6000 words that presents analysis and/or critical review of themes, social phenomena, and literature relevant to the thought and practice of evaluation.

3. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses: text of up to 6000 words that use primary studies as its data source, assessing the methodological quality of these data, analyzing (meta analysis) and synthesizing them, and thus generating new evidence on the object of study.

4. Interviews: text with up to 5000 words, exclusively for authors invited by the editors, discussing topics of relevance to the thinking and practice of evaluation.

5. Opinions: text with up to 3000 words, exclusively for authors invited by the editors, discussing topics of relevance to the thinking and practice of evaluation.

6. Experience reports: text with up to 4000 words that describes real cases and experiences of monitoring and evaluation previously carried out or under progress, presenting significant contributions to the field of evaluation and the training of evaluators.

7. Reviews: text with up to 1000 words that presents a book review of interest to the field of evaluation, with an overview of the content of the work, theoretical assumptions, and target audience.

Publishing and processing fees

RBAVAL does not charge fees from authors for the submission or publication of works, and articles approved for publication are subject to technical and language review under the responsibility of RBMA.

Evaluation process

Every original manuscript received by RBAVAL is submitted to prior analysis. Papers that do not comply with the journal's publication standards are returned to the authors for adequacy and new submission.

RBAVAL will send a submission confirmation within 48 working hours of receipt.

Once the journal's rules are fully complied with, the original manuscripts will be appreciated by at least two (02) reviewers, who will assess the originality, scope, timeliness, and compliance with the journal's editorial policy.

The reviewers are appointed by the members of the editorial board according to their theme of the work and expertise, and may approve, refuse and/or make recommendations for changes.

Evaluation of the manuscripts is carried out through the double-blind method; the names of the authors and reviewers are omitted during the entire evaluation process.

RBAVAL will give feedback to the authors within 45 days of the date of submission confirmation. The authors will then have 15 days to make the necessary adjustments or provide the additional information requested by RBAVAL. Failure to meet the deadline will result in an extension of the analysis time for subsequent phases, including publication.

The diagrammed version (layout proof) will be e-mailed to the author responsible for correspondence for final review, who must return the text within 5 calendar days from the date of sending it to the author. The author's non-response within this period will be considered as the author's consent to the RBAVAL layout proposal.

By this time, only corrections of layout errors, or data and texts that may compromise understanding will be accepted. This final reviewing should not be used to change or improve the style of the text.

Language review

RBAVAL accepts original and unpublished works in Portuguese, Spanish and English, and receives contributions from both Brazilian and foreign authors.

In order to ensure a good quality standard in its publications, RBAVAL will be responsible for the final review of the texts in Portuguese. The texts sent to RBAVAL in English and Spanish must be submitted to spelling and grammatical revision by the authors themselves.

Good scientific and ethical practices in research and publication

In line with advances in the field of ethics and good scientific practices, all approved articles are submitted to plagiarism and “self-plagiarism” tests or republication (publication as unpublished material of texts already published) in the final stage of the editorial process.

Cases of bad practice by the authors will be examined and decided by an ad-hoc committee formed by members of the editorial board and the editor, following: (1) the Basic Guidelines for Integrity in Scientific Activity of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq ); (2) the The São Paulo Research Foundation Good Practice Code (FAPESP); (3) the Guidelines of the Committee of Publications Ethics (COPE).

Instructions for Authors

In order to ensure the double-blind analysis process, manuscripts must be submitted without any authorship identification. Therefore, it is necessary that the authors, at the time of submission, remove from the body of the manuscripts information that facilitates authorship identification such as acknowledgments, references to research projects, and self-citations.

Declaration of Responsibility and License Agreement

All authors must sign the Declaration of Responsibility and License Agreement, which can be downloaded here. 

The Term of Responsibility is one of the documents to be submitted to RBAVAL separately from the manuscript.

Cover letter

All information related to the authorship of the manuscripts should be placed on the title page, which can be downloaded here.

The title page is one of the documents to be submitted to RBAVAL separately from the manuscript, which must follow the guidelines below.

Manuscript text

Manuscripts should not contain information that makes it possible to identify the authors or institutions to which they are affiliated. Type in standard A4 sheet (210X297mm), 2.5 cm margin on each of the four edges, Times New Roman font, size 12, 1.5 line spacing.

Title: clearly and succinctly expressing the text content, containing up to 10 words. The title must be written in bold, with capital letters for proper names and not using acronyms. Texts in Portuguese and Spanish should also have a title in English.

Abstract: in Portuguese and English or in Spanish and English containing a maximum of 150 words. The problem, central argument, contribution to the field, materials or empirical path and methodological choices should be clear. It should be unstructured, that is, topics such as introduction, methods, results, etc. should not be employed; citations or acronyms should not be used, except for internationally recognized abbreviations.

Keywords: at the end of the abstract, include three to five keywords with only the first letter capitalized, separated by a period.

RBAVAL respects the style and creativity of the authors when composing the text. Since the field of evaluation is admittedly plural, RBAVAL publications seek to reflect such diversity. However, preference will be given to productions that are of interest to managers, evaluators and researchers, and that are written in a way that is accessible to the broad public that is interested in evaluation.

Bibliography

References must follow the American Psychology Association (APA) standard. For further clarification, we recommend consulting standardization manuals. The most common citations are as follows.

One author

According to Silva (2020), equity in higher education is…

This is why equity in higher education (Silva, 2020) can be seen…

Two authors

For Freire and Faundez (1985), questions are strong levers…

Questions are strong transformation levers (Freire & Faundez, 1985), what...

Three to five authors

1st citation:

(Oliveira, Chieregato, Perez, & Gomes, 2002)
Oliveira, Chieregato, Perez e Gomes (2002)

Subsequent citations:

Oliveira et al. (2002)
(Oliveira et al., 2002)

Six authors or more

To Alves Filho et al. (2001)...

Institutional author

Data from the American Association Evaluation [AEA] (2003) demonstrate…

No author

According to Law 9.984 (2000), the way people...

To support efforts related to the visibility of women in scientific production, our publications propose an adaptation of the APA standard. The final list of bibliographic references must contain the full first and middle names of the authors, and not just the initials.

Silva, Marisol. (2020). The pedagogical dimension of equity in higher education. education policy analysis archives, 28, 46. doi:https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.28.5039

Underlined, bold and italics

RBAVAL does not use underlined and bold letters. Italics should be used exclusively to mark words written in another language.

e.g., The Bolsa Família analysis demonstrates that local communities...

Quotation marks

Single quotes should be used sparingly exclusively to draw attention to expressions or titles of works.

...‘target population’ and ‘street level bureaucracy’, for instance.

Use of acronyms

The use of acronyms should be avoided as much as possible. The acronym must be cited following the complete spelling of the words it represents the first time it appears in the text. In other passages, only the acronym must be used.

According to the European Evaluation Society (EES)... Data from the EES also demonstrate that...

Capital letters

Avoid using capital letters in the text, except when absolutely necessary.

The board members agreed that program purposes are...

Literal quotes

They must be presented in italics and in double quotation marks in the body of the text, when shorter than three lines. If they are longer than three lines, they must be written in italics, without quotation marks, detached from the text, justified to the right side, with single spacing and font size 11.

"We always claim that the health unit should have the complete team, with a doctor, nurse, assistant, health agent, dentist and dental assistant. There are almost five thousand in the community and it is not possible to travel to the city to get a treatment" (community leader)

Footnotes

Footnotes should be used sparingly, only for supplementary information of substantive nature.

Footnote markings must be written in superscript and sequentially numbered.

Figures

Graphs, photographs, diagrams, illustrations, etc. must be cited as figures (Figure 1, Figure 2, Figures. 1, 2, 5-7, etc.) in ascending order to their citations and follow the guidelines of the sections "Use of Colors" and "Preparation and manipulation of figures" .

In the case of using arrows, symbols, letters or numbers to highlight parts of the figures, be sure to clearly identify their use in the respective legend.

Images of people must ensure that they cannot be identified, except in cases where their use has been specifically authorized for publication in the article.

Tables and charts

Tables and charts must be in high resolution and submitted in files separate from the text, one by one, following the order they appear in the material. They must be prepared using the Microsoft Word table tool or corresponding text editor, and never be constructed using spaces, tabs and images. Even the smallest text must be perfectly legible.

They must be numbered and contain title and source. In the text, the authors must identify the place where such elements should be inserted. The file must be editable and, therefore, not have been removed from other files, such as a print screen, for example.

Use of colors

Although the use of color is permitted, it is important that the authors (or professionals hired for editing) strive to ensure that the use of color does not impair understanding for readers with vision disorders. We recommend that the following resources be consulted before preparing figures or tables using colors:

• How to make scientific figures accessible to readers with color-blindness (2019, Science News,The American Society for Cell Biology)

• Wong, B. Points of view: Color blindness. Nat Methods 8, 441 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.1618

• Tips for designing scientific figures for color blind readers

Preparation and manipulation of figures

Resolution and formats

Graphs, photographs, diagrams, illustrations, etc. must be sent in TIFF or JPG formats with high resolution (300 or 600 dpi). We recommend that authors (or professionals hired for editing) follow the following guidelines:

• Imagine whether the figure will be published occupying the width of the entire page or a column, and then make sure that it allows the perfect reading of all the text and symbols used.

• If you believe the figure will use the width of a page, send it with a width between 2500 and 5000 pixels.

• If you believe the figure will use the width of a column (or half a page) send it with a width between 1200 and 2400 pixels.

Editing and manipulation

When preparing your images, be careful when using filters or other types of editing to include highlights, etc. The images should not be excessively manipulated or adjusted, so that they can cause misinterpretation of the information. We recommend that authors (or professionals hired for editing) observe the following tips and examples:

• "What's in a picture? The temptation of image manipulation" (Mike Rossner, Kenneth M. Yamada. J Cell Biol 5 July 2004; 166 (1): 11–15. doi: https://doi.org/10.1083/jcb.200406019).

• Digital Images and Misconduct. (Council of Science Editors, White Paper on Publication Ethics)

• Preparing a Manuscript for Submission to a Medical Journal > Illustrations (Figures). (International Committee of Medical Journal Editors)

Submission orientation

The two documents (Title Page and Manuscript) must be produced using Microsoft® Word or compatible software, recorded in doc or docx format, and sent using the online submission and evaluation system in use by Revista Brasileira de Avaliação.