Submissions

Author Guidelines

Publication Guidelines for MHJournal Authors

In accordance with the entirety of this document and pursuant to Act 3/2007 of 22 March on the effective equality of women and men, any reference to individuals, groups, or academic positions expressed in the masculine grammatical gender shall be understood as referring to the neutral grammatical gender and therefore inclusive of both women and men.

Purpose

1. Academic articles may be submitted for publication when they relate to the interests of the journal, specifically Communication and its connections with Journalism, Audiovisual Communication, Advertising, Cinema, and the Visual Arts.
2. Articles must be unpublished, not under commitment for publication elsewhere, nor under review by other publications. Authors guarantee the journal the right of first publication of their work.
3. Responsible use of Artificial Intelligence: To safeguard the integrity and transparency of published research, authors must follow the guidelines on AI provided at this link.
4. Texts by the same author will not be published in consecutive issues. Manuscripts may be submitted in Spanish or English. In all cases, the title, abstract, and keywords must appear in both Spanish and English.
5. A declared commitment by authors at the start of the submission process to provide a bilingual version if the text is accepted will be positively valued. The maximum file size must not exceed 8 MB.
6. To expedite the admission process, authors are encouraged to use plagiarism-detection software and upload the report as a supplementary file together with their submission.
7. The author must provide their ORCID identifier (https://orcid.org).
8. Articles with a maximum of three authors are accepted.
9. Authorship and degree of editorial endogamy: MHJournal incorporates the CRediT taxonomy.
10. Authors must complete the table found at the end of the template. Fewer than 20% of articles may be linked to the editorial board or the publishing institution (UMH).
11. We encourage authors, when relevant, to incorporate sex/gender analysis into research design, method, results, etc. The journal recommends consulting the UMH Guide for Non-Sexist and Inclusive Language.

Submission

1. Article submissions must be made using the journal template and uploaded to the online platform. Authors must register on the platform. Google Chrome is recommended.

Already have a username and password for Miguel Hernández Communication Journal? Go to Log in.

Need a username and/or password? Go to Registration.

Registration and login are necessary to submit manuscripts online and to check the status of current submissions.

2. Texts must be submitted in Word (.doc). The file name should consist of the first five words of the article title (e.g., ‘Mediterranean noir novel testimony for.doc’).

3. When authors contact the journal by email regarding any query or issue, they must always include their article reference in the ‘Subject’ field to facilitate management.

Review Process

Received manuscripts will undergo an initial review by the Editorial Committee to verify:

• Their relevance to the journal’s thematic focus.

• That they are of notable interest.

• Compliance with style guidelines.

• That the author has duly completed their personal details, added their ORCID identifier, and included all required metadata for text submission.

• Plagiarism and AI checks using Turnitin (authors are encouraged to run their own plagiarism check and submit the report as a supplementary file).

• The article must be anonymised.

Once this initial review is passed, manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review by academics from national and international universities with recognised expertise in their fields, assisted by the Scientific Committee. If the blind review results in an unfavourable report, a third reviewer will be appointed. Based on reviewer comments, the editorial committee will issue one of the following decisions: Accept submission; Publishable with minor or major modifications; Not publishable.

Reviewer reports will be sent to the author. The revised article must highlight in yellow all modifications suggested by reviewers and include a brief report detailing the changes made. This report must follow a two-column structure: suggestions on the left and author comments on the right.

Finally, considering the reviewer reports and the authors’ revision report, the editorial committee will conduct a full citation review of the text, including both the manuscript and metadata in Spanish and English. Upon completion, the manuscript will be either accepted or rejected.

Only two rounds of review will be permitted, in addition to the initial editorial review.
The estimated duration of the entire process is 6–8 months from submission to acceptance or rejection, provided authors and reviewers meet deadlines and accept evaluations.

Article Structure

Academic articles (between 6,000 and 8,000 words including bibliography and footnotes) may be submitted for publication when they relate to Communication and are of notable interest. Manuscripts must use basic formatting: Garamond 12, regular or roman type, single spacing, and one space above and below each paragraph.

Title

Only two levels of titles will be accepted and must be clearly indicated. Titles must use uppercase and lowercase characters; be brief, clear, precise, and informative; preferably in a single sentence; without a full stop; in both Spanish and English; never exceeding two lines; and set in 15-point type. The English title follows in the same format.

Authors

Author data (name, affiliation, email, ORCID, etc.) must be fully completed in the platform. Maximum three authors. If more than three persons contributed to the research, any contributors beyond the third may appear as collaborators. Any collaborator (translator, statistician, research assistant, funders, etc.) who contributed partially to the text or facilitated the research must be acknowledged.

Upon submission, the author must ensure that no identifying information remains in the manuscript. Two files must be uploaded:

1. The anonymised manuscript: no name, affiliation, email, ORCID, nor self-references that may reveal authorship. Word metadata must be removed (File / Info / Check for Issues / Inspect Document / Remove all identifying metadata / Close and Save). This version will be sent to reviewers.

2. A second file containing the full, non-anonymised manuscript as it would appear if published, including the author order.

Abstract

The abstract in Spanish must appear in a single paragraph and follow this structure: justification of the topic, objectives, research methodology, results, and conclusions. Length: 150–200 words. The English abstract follows in the same format.

Keywords

Maximum 6 keywords, alphabetically ordered and separated by “;”. Whenever possible, keywords should be selected from the UNESCO Thesaurus. In both Spanish and English.

Acknowledgements or Funding Sources

Acknowledgements may be given to individuals who merit recognition or to funding sources other than the author’s university (indicating call, start and end year, original research title, and reference).

Table of Contents

After the word “Table of Contents:” the article headings shall be listed using Arabic numerals. Example: Table of Contents: 1. Introduction. 2. Methodology. 3. Results. 4. Discussion. 5. Conclusions. 6. Bibliography. 7. Notes.
It must appear as a single paragraph, left-aligned, with full stops and followed by the English version. Maximum two levels, though the text may contain three.

Text Structure

Research articles must follow the standard IMRaD structure: Introduction (including justification) and Theoretical Framework; Methodology linked explicitly to stated objectives; Results based strictly on analysis (references cited only when required by the method); Discussion and Conclusions (discussion may be omitted if unnecessary). Bibliography follows.

Footnotes should be used only when essential for clarifying relevant issues. They must not be used for bibliographic citations.

Paragraphs should not exceed 10 lines, should not be indented, and must be separated by a blank line.

Headings:
First level: Garamond 12, bold.
Second level: Garamond 12, italic and not bold.
Third and final level: Garamond 12, underlined and not bold.

No text may appear in italics except for book or journal titles and headings. No text may appear in bold except for headings. Underlining is not permitted under any circumstance.

Headings must be numbered according to the Table of Contents.

Figures, illustrations, and tables

These must be in Garamond 10, numbered in order of appearance, embedded within the text, and include a title (also Garamond 10) and source. Text centred.

Proper Use of Citations and References

• Citations may not exceed 20% of the text.

• Citations longer than 40 words must appear in a separate paragraph, in Garamond 9, with a 2 cm left indent, and without quotation marks.

• Citations shorter than three lines must appear within the text, in quotation marks, without italics. Use standard quotation marks: “ ”.

All citations must include author, year, and page number, or year only if material is unpaginated.
The journal follows APA 7th edition.

If citing a text in another language, it is recommended to use the language of the article for coherence and, if desired, include the original text in a footnote.

Bibliography

Bibliographic references must appear in alphabetical order. DOI must be included whenever available. Online links must be included whenever available.

Bibliographies must contain at least 20 references. 70% must be from the past 10 years, except when the subject matter does not permit this. At least 50% must be references to academic journal articles unless the subject is so original that no relevant literature exists. Up to 20% self-citation is permitted, with a maximum of 3 self-citations, and only published works. Up to 3 citations of MHJournal are permitted when justified, as these help maintain continuity with the journal’s thematic line.

Only references cited in the text may be included.
Bibliographies must include international sources.

Examples:

• Book by one author:
  Casals Carro, M. J. (2005). Periodismo y sentido de la realidad. Teoría y análisis de la narrativa periodística. Madrid: Fragua.

• Book by two authors:
  Chomsky, N. & Herman, E. S. (1990). Los guardianes de la libertad. Propaganda, desinformación y consenso en los medios de comunicación de masas. Barcelona: Crítica.

• One author cited twice:
  Wolf, M. (1994). Los efectos sociales de los media. Barcelona: Paidós.
  Wolf, M. (1996). La investigación de la comunicación de masas. Crítica y perspectivas. Barcelona: Paidós. 3rd reprint; 1st ed., 1987.

• One author cited twice, two books same year:
  De Pablos Coello, J. M. (2001a). La red es nuestra... Barcelona: Paidós.
  De Pablos Coello, J. M. (2001b). El periodismo herido... Madrid: Foca Investigación.

• Chapter in edited volume:
  Chimeno Rabanillo, S. (1997). Las fuentes... En F. Esteve Ramírez (Ed.), Estudios sobre Información Periodística Especializada (pp. 125–140). Valencia: Fundación Universitaria CEU San Pablo.

• Journal article:
  Fogel, J.-F. (2005). ¿Dónde está el contrapoder? Etcétera, 56, México, June, pp. 67–70.

• Article published on a website:
  Ordóñez A., Ó. (2005). Hábitos profesionales de los periodistas latinoamericanos. Sala de Prensa, 80, México, June. http://www.saladeprensa.org/art613.htm

Video files

Surname of producer, A. (Producer). (Year). Series title [Format]. Location. http://xxxx

Audio files

Surname, A. (Date). Podcast title [Audio podcast]. http://xxxx

Photographs and graphic representations

Author surname, A. (year). Title of work [type of image]. City: museum, archive, or holding institution. http://www.example.com

Artistic, technological, and cultural objects

Author surname, A. (year). Title of the work [Type of work]. City: holding institution. http://xxxx