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(Updated: 2024/04/05)

About the journal

 

Overview

 

The journal DELTA: Documentação de estudos em linguística teórica e aplicada is published by São Paulo Catholic University (Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo; PUCSP). The journal has been published regularly since 1985, in four yearly issues. Since 2011, publications are exclusively online and since 2021 it has been adapting its publication policies to Open Science Green practices. Authors should refer to the journal as DELTA.

 

 

Open Science policies

 

DELTA follows the Open Access Green practices.

As from February 2024, every author that wishes to submit a manuscript has to fill in a form consenting to open access green practices. Such form is available here and authors have to submit it together with the manuscript. Non-submission prevents the beginning of peer review.

 

 

Ethics in publishing

 

DELTA supports COPE practices. The journal does not accept original research done by its editors, to avoid conflict of interests. It also adopts policies to the use of AI and AI-assisted technologies in scientific writing. Such policies are laid out in the guidelines for authors. The software Turnitin is used to detect plagiarism and self-plagiarism after peer review and before the manuscript is published ahead of print in SciELO Preprints. Studies that involve human beings must submit approval by an accredited Ethics Committee together with the manuscript.

 

 

Aims and scope

 

The journal publishes original research from any area of applied and theoretical linguistics, theoretical or applied. Only new contributions will be considered.

 

 

Digital preservation

 

DELTA follows the standards defined by the SciELO program digital preservation policy.

 

 

Indexing sources

 

The journal and its contents are indexed by:

 

 

Bibliographic record

 

Title ISSN: DELTA. Documentação de estudos em linguística teórica e aplicada.
Abbreviated title ISSN: DELTA, Doc. estud. linguíst. teór. apl.
ISSN On-line: 1678- 460X
ISSN Print: 010-4450
Publication information: Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo - LAEL
Periodicity: Quarterly
Publication mode: Continuous
Year the journal was launched: 1985.

 

 

Websites and social media

   

 

 

Editorial policies

 

Preprints

 

If authors wish so, accepted manuscripts, whose final versions are being prepared for publication in an issue of DELTA, will be published at SciELO Preprints. Such manuscripts will receive a DOI to be cited as forthcoming. Manuscripts will be potentially accepted sooner if (1) they have already been hosted in a preprint server acknowledged by DELTA and (2) they have followed some of the suggestions given by peers in the preprint server.

 

 

Editorial aim and policy

 

DELTA: Documentação de estudos em linguística teórica e aplicada publishes original research from any area of applied and theoretical linguistics. Only original unpublished contributions will be considered.

Submissions must fit into one of these categories: Article, Debate, Squib, Overview (critical overview of the state of the art), Book Note and Reviews.

Researchers from countries around the world are invited to submit their papers which will be sent to two anonymous referees from the Editorial Board. In the event of a tie, a third review will be called. If necessary, an ad hoc referee will be invited. Contributions can be submitted in Portuguese, English, or Spanish.

 

 

Peer review

 

DELTA adopts a continuous publication process. The journal reserves the right to reject submissions recommended by reviewers, given the availability of publication within a reasonable time frame. The journal receives a much higher number of submissions than the available spots in future issues. Recommended articles are selected for publication by the editors in view of internal criteria of academic excellence. The editor responsible for the submission will inform the authors of the decision to publish or not the submission recommended by the reviewers. The journal also reserves the right to reject submissions before sending them to reviewers (desk reject), in view of the scope of the work and its quality.

Peer review criteria:

  • compliance with guidelines to authors;
  • relevance and contribution to the area of knowledge;
  • theoretical consistency;
  • methodological consistency;
  • up-to-date bibliographical references;
  • consistency with technical standards.
  • idiomatic academic writing; If the author is not a native speaker of English, we strongly recommend that the manuscript be revised by a native speaker before submission. Non-idiomatic writing may cause your submission to be rejected.

After being submitted to the DELTA’s editorial board, the paper is assigned to an editor who will be in charge of the paper. The editor will determine whether the paper can continue to be evaluated. In case the paper is accepted by the editor, it will be forwarded to two referees. Otherwise, the submission will be desk rejected. In case of contradictory reviews, a third referee will be chosen by the editor to evaluate the paper. The editor has the final word on whether or not the manuscript is accepted. In addition to the reviewers, the editor will take other parameters into account to determine whether or not the paper can be accepted for publication. Papers recommended by referees are not automatically accepted.

Reviewers will be kept anonymous throughout the entire editing process of the work and after its publication. During the submission/editing process, authors will also be kept anonymous. To this end, upon submission, the author(s) must replace any self-citation or co-author citation of the author by XXXXXX, 0000, page ???. In the References section citations must be replaced by. Only after the work has been accepted, the author(s) must complete the anonymized citations.

Manuscripts that have a preprint version, on a platform recognized by DELTA, will be evaluated by one of the journal's editors and may be approved without having to be peer reviewed once more. To that end, the manuscript submitted to DELTA must include a link to its preprint version before the title. The manuscript must be accompanied by a supplementary document with the changes that were made to the preprint version.

 

 

Open access

 

DELTA follows the TOP guidelines to grant access to research data. Such guidelines are provided by SciELO. We reproduce some of these guidelines below.

SciELO. Guia de citação de dados de pesquisa [online, p. 6-7]. SciELO, 2018 [20 de janeiro de 2024]. Disponível em: https://wp.scielo.org/wp-content/uploads/Guia_TOP_pt.pdf

Every manuscript based on original research must contain a section called Data availability. This section brings information on the availability of data and where it can be accessed. 

We suggest authors choose from the following wording for such section:

Data not available:

  • The data used in this study is not publicly available.

Data available:

  • The data used in this study is available in the manuscript.
  • The data used in this study is published in the article in the section “supplementary materials.”
  • The data used in this study was made available at [name and link to the home page of the repository] and can be accessed at [URL or DOI].
  • The data used in this study was made available at [name and link to the home page of the repository] with the digital object identifier [DOI].
  • The anonymized data used in this study was made available at [name and link to the repository] and can be accessed at [URL or DOI].

Data available upon request

  • The data used in this study is available upon request to the corresponding author [name of the corresponding author]. The data is not publicly available because [explain in detail why the data is not publicly available, e.g., “it contains information that compromises the privacy of the research participants.”]
  • The data used in this study is available upon request to [name of the institution]. The data is not publicly available because [explain in detail why the data is not publicly available, e.g., “it contains information that compromises the privacy of the research participants.”]

If the manuscript is accepted for publication the section Data availability will be published together with the manuscript.

 

 

Article processing charges (APC)

 

Delta does not charge APC for manuscripts submitted to the continuous publication process. A charge of 450,00 reais applies to manuscripts published in special issues that are organized by a guest editor.

 

 

Ethics and Misconduct Policy, Erratum and Retraction

 

Delta follows SciELO guidelines available at:
Guide to Best Practices for Strengthening Ethics in Scientific Publishing

For errata:
Guide to recording, marking and publishing Correction
 
For retraction:
Guide for registering, marking and publishing a retraction

 

 

Conflict of interest policies

 

Conflicts of interest can be of a personal, commercial, political, academic or financial nature. Conflicts of interest can occur when authors, reviewers or editors have interests that may influence the preparation or review of manuscripts. When submitting the manuscript, authors are responsible for recognizing and disclosing financial or other conflicts that may have influenced the work. If there is, even potentially, a conflict of interest, the author(s) must disclose this in a signed document attached to the submission platform. For more information: Disclosure of Financial and Non-Financial Relationships and Activities, and Conflicts of Interest.

 

 

Sex and genre issues

 

DELTA's editorial team, as well as the authors who publish in the journal, must always observe the Sex and Gender Equity in Research guidelines (Sex and Gender Equity in Research – SAGER). The SAGER guidelines comprise a set of guidelines that guide the reporting of sex and gender information in study design, data analysis, results, and interpretation of findings. In addition, DELTA observes the gender equity policy in the composition of its editorial board.

 

 

Copyright

 

Authors of manuscripts published in DELTA retain the copyright of their work, licensing it under the Creative Commons Attribution license, which allows articles to be reused and distributed without restriction, as long as the original work is correctly cited. Authors grant DELTA the right of first publication.

 

 

Intellectual property and terms of use

 

Journal responsibility:

DELTA reserves the right to make normative, orthographic and grammatical changes to the manuscripts in order to maintain language standards, while respecting the authors' style.
The mansucripts will not be returned to the authors.

Author responsibility:

Authors retain full rights to their published works. Their total or partial reprinting, deposit or republication is subject to the indication of first publication in the journal, by means of the CC-BY license; the original publication source must be cited.

The opinions and concepts expressed by the authors of the articles are their sole responsibility.

The whole DELTA content and manuscripts published by the journal, unless otherwise specified, are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY. Authors of manuscripts published by DELTA retain the copyright of their work, licensing it under the Creative Commons Attribution license, which allows manuscripts to be reused and distributed without restriction, provided that the original work is correctly cited. DELTA encourages authors to self-archive their accepted manuscripts, publishing them on personal blogs, institutional repositories and academic social media, as well as posting them on their personal social media, as long as the full citation to the journal's website version is included.

 

 

Sponsor

 

Publication of the journal is sponsored by:

 

 

 

Editorial Board

 

Board of Governors

   

 

Editors

 

Founding Editor

Editor-in-chief

General Editor

Editors

 

 

Executive committee

   

 

Editorial assistants

   

 

Editorial board

   

 

 

Instructions to authors

 

Gudelines for submissions

 

The papers must be submitted through the DELTA website and follow the steps listed below.

(1) Author(s)can register by clicking here. Once registered, the author(s) will be able to access the system.

(2) Every author must have an ORCID iD, to publish in DELTA.

(3) Every author must fill in the following fields: name, email, institution, and ORCID. In the field "Abstract of Biography" indicate the highest degree of the author, place of work and occupation.

(4) DELTA will publish works by authors with a PhD. Non-doctors may submit papers as long as they are accompanied by a PhD.

(5) On submitting a paper to DELTA, the author(s) agree(s) not to submit it simultaneously to another academic journal. They can only submit their work to another academic journal if it has not been accepted by the referees and by the DELTA Editorial Board.

(6) Papers submitted to DELTA that use data collected directly from human beings must present certification from an ethics committee linked to the author(s) authorizing the use of these data.

(7) Works sent to DELTA should be formatted in APA Style 7th edition.

(8) Once papers have been accepted, they must contain the Authors' Contribution section. In this section, the authors should detail the participants in the study conceptualization, methodology, study design, formal data analysis, statistical data analysis, acquisition of funding, project administration, project supervision, data collection, generation, validation and editing, discussion of results and final revision of the manuscript. All authors must participate in the discussion of the results, the final review, and approval of the manuscript.

(9) Accepted papers must also include the Conflict of Interest and Data Availability sections. In the Conflict of Interest section, authors must declare that they had no interests that influenced the preparation of the manuscript. In the Data Availability section, authors must choose one of the options described in the section Open Access.

(10) All published articles will receive a DOI number issued by DELTA.

 

 

Paper preparation

 

(1) Papers from the following discursive genres will be accepted: article (theoretical and applied), squib, essay, review, review article.

  • article – 5,000 to 8,000 words
  • squib – 1,500 to 3,000 words
  • essay – 3,000 to 5,000 words
  • review – 2,500 to 4,000 words of works published in the last 3 years
  • review article – 5,000 to 8,000 words of works published in the last 3 years

(2) The title must be left aligned, in bold and sentence case, followed by the title in a second language (authors’ choice), also in bold, sentence case, and left aligned, both in Times New Roman font, size 12.

(3) Two abstracts, from 150 to 180 words each. The abstracts should be in Times New Roman font, size 12, in a single paragraph aligned to the left with no indentation, and 1.5 spacing. For papers written in English, one abstract in Portuguese followed by an abstract in English. For papers written in Spanish one abstract in either Spanish (if the paper is in Spanish) followed by an abstract in English. For research papers, the authors must make sure to mention the research goals, the theoretical and methodological frameworks, and the results, in the abstracts. For other genres, the authors must make sure to mention the main points of the paper, in the abstracts.

(4) Keywords must be kept to a minimum of 3 and a maximum of 5.

(5) The manuscript must be prepared as follows: Times New Roman font, size 12; margins 1 inch or 2.5cm all around; paragraphs with no indentation, 1.5 spacing, left aligned, separated by a blank line from each other.

(6) Footnotes, numbered from 1, can be used along the text, to insert comments, when necessary.

(7) The sections must be numbered, starting at (1) Introduction. Only the References, Acknowledgements, Conflict of interest, Authors’ contributions sections, and the complementary documents section (Annexes/Appendixes, if any) should not be numbered.

(8) The subsections must not be numbered either and must be written in Times New Roman 12pt and in italics.

(9) Complementary documents (ex.: annexes, appendices) must be inserted after the References, numbered from 1 (Ex.: Annex 1, Appendix 1...)

(10) Any kind of acknowledgment (partners, reviewers, funding agency, etc.) can be mentioned in the Acknowledgments section, which should come after the Conclusion section.

(11) All accepted manuscripts must contain a declaration of conflict of interests, authors' contribution, and data availability, in which the authors must express their full responsibility for the content of their papers and state how the data is made available or why the data cannot be made available. A template for these declarations and formatting of the paper is available here.

(12) Citations and references should be formatted according to the APA 7th edition guidelines:

  • in-text references:
    • two or more authors: ... according to Halliday e Matthiessen (2004, p. 152), ...; In fact, “a flexible mind is a healthy mind” (Palladino & Wade, 2010, p. 147).
    • three or more authors: ... according to Siegmund et al. (2008), ...;
  • References at the end of the text:
    • two or more authors: ... linguistic relevance (Santos & Alves, 2008).
    • three or more authors: ... after adapting technological resources (Silva et al., 2004), ...

(13) References must include all and only the documents cited in the body of the text. These should be presented in alphabetical order, following the APA Style 7th edition standards. All references must be aligned to the left and separated by a blank line from each other.

Examples:

Woo, C., & Leon, M. (2013). Environmental enrichment as an effective treatment for autism: A randomized controlled trial. Behavioral Neuroscience, 127, 487–497. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0033010.

Labov, W. (2001). Principles of Linguistic Change. Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444327496.

Lobato, L. (2000). Formal features and parameter setting: A view from Portuguese past participles in romance future tense. DELTA, 16(Especial), 99-128. https://doi.org/10.1590/S0102-44502000000300004.

Oliveira, M. A., & Braga, M. L. (1997). On Focussing sentences in Brazilian Portuguese. In G. R. Guy, C. Feagin, D. Schiffrin, & J. Baugh (Eds.), Towards a Social Science of Language, vol.2, Social Interactional Discourse Structures (pp. 207-221). John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.127.

(14) Titles for tables, figures and graphs must be written in sentence capital, inserted in the text immediately after being cited, and formatted in APA Style 7th edition. Figures must be saved in .png format, with at least 600 dpi.

(15) For emphasis use italics and not bold or underline.

(16) Do not use idem, ibidem.

 

 

Suplementary Documents

 

Authors must send with their manuscripts the Open Science Compliance Form and if necessary, the approval form from the ethics committee. The data set used to prepare the manuscript should only be sent if the manuscript is accepted.

 

 

Financing Statement

 

Authors of unpublished work must provide information in the accepted manuscript about sources of support for the work, including names of sponsors, contract number (if any), together with explanations of the role of such sponsors.

 

 

Policy on the Use of Artificial Intelligence in International Academic Journals

 

1. Introduction:

The advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has introduced new capabilities and opportunities in the production and review of academic content. However, this innovation also poses ethical and technical challenges. This policy guides the responsible use of AI in our publication, ensuring the integrity, transparency, and excellence of the research we endorse.

2. Use of AI in Manuscript Submission:

2.1. Authenticity and Originality: Authors employing AI to generate or analyze content must ensure that their work is original and makes a meaningful contribution to the field of study. Furthermore, authors should explicitly state the extent of AI's involvement.

2.2. Declaring the Use of AI: All manuscripts utilizing AI, be it in generation, analysis, or any other capacity, must clearly indicate this in the method and materials sections.

3. Use of AI in Peer Review:

3.1. Assistance, not Replacement: AI can be used to assist reviewers in identifying plagiarism, inconsistencies, or other technical issues. However, the final decision on a manuscript's acceptance remains a human responsibility.

4. Ethics and Responsibility:

4.1. Training and Bias: We recognize that AI algorithms can harbor unintentional biases. We commit to using models trained on diverse data sets and to regularly reviewing our systems to detect and rectify biases.

5. Policy Updates:

Given the rapid evolution of AI technology, this policy will be regularly reviewed to reflect current best practices and ensure that we continue to meet academic standards of excellence.

6. Conclusion:

We advocate for the ethical and transparent use of AI, believing in its potential to enrich academic research while upholding the integrity and trust in our publications. We encourage the academic community to join us in this commitment and to actively engage in the ongoing discussion about AI's role in academia.

Obs.: DELTA keeps the copyright of the papers submitted unless it officially withdraws this right on request. Papers submitted are not to be witdrawn after the process of refereeing starts.

 

 

Submission Preparation Checklist

 

As part of the submission process, authors are required to check off their submission's compliance with all of the following items. Submissions that do not adhere to these guidelines will be returned to authors.

  • The Open Science Compliance Form has been filled in to be sent with the manuscript as supplementary material.
  • The text is within the word limits for the different discoursive genres accepted by DELTA.
  • The submission is original and is not being evaluated by other journals.
  • The submission does not include samples of text from its author or different authors published elsewhere without acknowledging the source of these samples. If the submission does include such samples, plagiarism or self-plagiarism will be detected and this will result in its rejection. Should plagiarism or self-plagiarism be identified in a paper already published by DELTA, the paper will have its publication revoked.
  • The text has been properly anonymized, that is, identification has been removed in the option “File Properties”, in Word documents, thus ensuring the criterion of blind review when the paper is submitted to peer review.
  • The text, or portions of it, is not available elsewhere, on the web or in print.
  • The text is all aligned to the left; the first line of each paragraph is not indented; there is a line between paragraphs; the text is 1,5 spaced and written in Times New Roman 12-pt; italics are used for emphasis instead of underline (except for URLs); Tables and Figures are included in the body of the text.
  • The text is formatted according to the author guidelines, found in the tab About.
  • All web addresses (URLs) included in the text (for example, http://www.ibict.br) are active and ready to be accessed.
  • The text must be submitted in Microsoft Word.
  • For reviews only: the work reviewed was not published earlier than two years ago.
 

 

Contact

 

Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo - PUC-SP
Linguística Aplicada e Estudos da Linguagem - LAEL
Rua Monte Alegre 984, 4B-02, CEP: 05014-001
São Paulo, SP, Brazil
Tel.: (+55 11) 3670-8374
E-mail: delta@pucsp.br

 

 

 

Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo - PUC-SP PUC-SP - LAEL, Rua Monte Alegre 984, 4B-02, São Paulo, SP 05014-001, Brasil, Tel.: +55 11 3670-8374 - São Paulo - SP - Brazil
E-mail: delta@pucsp.br
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