Editorial Policies

Focus and Scope

The below mentioned areas are just indicative. The editorial board also welcomes innovative articles in Educational Psychology and Guidance Counseling field. Focus and Scope OPTIMA are:

  1. Educational Psychology
  2. Developmental Psychology
  3. Assessment of Psychology
  4. Diagnostic of learning difficulties and tutoring
  5.  Professional Ethics of Guidance and Counseling
  6. Developmental Guidance and Counseling
  7. Program Development and Management of Guidance and Counseling
  8. Children’s Guidance and Counseling
  9. Adolescent’s Guidance and Counseling
  10. Adult’s Guidance and Counseling
  11. Special Population’s Guidance and Counseling
  12. Multicultural Guidance and Counseling
  13. Family’s Guidance and Counseling
  14. Guidance and Counseling in the Pascaglobal
Development of Technology and Guidance and Counseling’s Innovation

 

Section Policies

Articles

Checked Open Submissions Checked Indexed Checked Peer Reviewed
 

Peer Review Process

Submitted papers are evaluated by anonymous referees by double blind peer review for contribution, originality, relevance, and presentation. The Editor shall inform you the results of the review as soon as possible, hopefully in 2 weeks. Please notice that because of the great number of submissions that OPTIMA has received during the last few months the duration of the review process can be up to 3-4 months, with the following stages.
1)  Submission of an original manuscript via electronic online submission;
2)  Quick and holistic judgement by the OPTIMA Main Editors whether manuscript fits the Focus and Scope of the Journal and is comprehensible. If it does not, the Author will be notified with an e-mail of rejection;
3)  Assignment of 2 managing editors and one Main Editor to the manuscript by the editor-in-chief (or by the deputy editor-in-chief). The role of the Main Editor on the Managing Editors Team to represent the voice of the author (about a week);
4)  Quick but more in-depth judgment and decision by the Managing Editors Team on whether the manuscript has to be rejected without sending it to the full scale peer review. The rejection should be based on being out of the Aims and Scope of the journal or on having unsalvageable problems with the quality of its argumentation, grounding, and/or research that would not promise an important contribution and productive dialogue in the educational counseling field (no revision is possible). If the Managing Editors disagree with each other or find the manuscript promising, the manuscript moves to the next step (2 weeks);
5)  The Managing Editors Team selects 2 competent reviewers in the appropriate field in or out of the OPTIMA community and send them the manuscript aiming at 4-week review. If the invited reviewer do not accept the assigned job in a week or two, they have to be replaced with new reviewers. The reviewers provide recommendation to the editors, justifications, and suggestions (if appropriate) based on their own authorial judgment (4-6 weeks);
6)  The Managing Editors Team makes their authorial decision informed by the Reviewers’ Comments and their own authorial judgment: (“Decline Submission”, “Resubmit for (new) Review”, “(minor)Revision Required”, or “Accept Submission (as it is)”. If they cannot make the decision, the Editor-in-Chief is assigned to make it (or a Deputy of the Editor-in-Chief depending on circumstances) (1 week);
7)  If the manuscript is sent back to the author(s) for major or minor revisions, and the author(s) decide to follow the recommendations and resubmit the revised manuscript, there is a 2-month deadline for resubmissions. If the revisions are not submitted within 2 months, the article will be automatically archived, unless there is a new deadline negotiated with the Managing Editors. In case the author(s) still wishes to pursue the publication in OPTIMA, they will be asked to create a completely new submission. In case the author(s) decide to withdraw the manuscript they should inform the Managing editors right away.
Submission evaluation criteria:
1. Value or usefulness to field or profession.
2. Adequacy of design/accuracy of analysis.
3. Presentation and interpretation of findings, discussion, and conclusions.
4. Inclusion of appropriate implications for practice and/or policy.
5. Important and timely.
6. Consistency with existing literature.
7. Overall clarity of ideas and expression.
8. References to relevant existing work.
9. Grammatical construction; writing style; use of non-sexist language.

 

Publication Frequency

This journal will be published two times a year on the following months: March and October. Every issue consist of about 6 articles and therefore every volume has about 12 articles/reviews.

 

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

The published articles are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

 

Aims

Contributions are expected from senior researchers, students of doctoral program ,scholars and students, reseachers working at research organizations and government agencies, and also for enterprises undertaking applied R&D to lead innovations. OPTIMA focus on issues educational psychology, developmental psychology, assessment of psychology, diagnostic of learning difficulties and tutoring, professional ethics of guidance and counseling, developmental guidance and counseling, program development and management of guidance and counseling, children’s guidance and counseling, adolescent’s guidance and counseling, adult’s guidance and counseling, special population’s guidance and counseling, multicultural guidance and counseling, family’s guidance and counseling, and guidance and counseling in the pascaglobal.

 

Author(s)' Publication Ethics

OPTIMA: Journal of Guidance and Counseling publication ethics and publication malpractice statement is mainly based on Committee on Publication Ethics. The present statement is committed to ensuring publication ethics and quality of articles intended for publication in OPTIMA. 

Conformance to standards of ethical behavior is therefore expected of all parties involved: authors, editors, reviewers, and publishers.
 
A. AUTHORS’ DUTIES
Authors should present an objective discussion of the significance of their research work as well as sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable. 
Review articles should also be objective, comprehensive, and accurate accounts of the updated text. Authors must ensure that their work is entirely original, and therefore wherever and whenever the work and/or words of others are used, all instances must be appropriately acknowledged. 
Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable. Authors should not submit articles describing essentially the same research to more than one journal. The corresponding author should ensure that there is a full consensus of all co-authors in approving the final version of the paper and its submission for publication.
For more technically information about Author's duties and submission, please see Author Guidelines. 
 
B. EDITORS’ DUTIES
Editors should evaluate manuscripts exclusively on the basis of their academic merit. An editor must not use unpublished information in the editor's own research without the express written consent of the author. Editors should evaluate the manuscripts initially without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, citizenship etc.
Editors should address and take sufficient steps about ethical complaints to the published data and/or methodologies. Further communications should be made to the corresponding authors.
For more technical information about editor duties please read
CODE OF CONDUCT AND BEST PRACTICE GUIDELINES FOR JOURNAL EDITORS
 
C. REVIEWERS’ DUTIES
All manuscripts received for review must be treated as confidential documents. Privileged information or ideas obtained through peer review must be kept confidential and not used for personal advantage. Reviews should be conducted objectively, and observations should be formulated clearly with supporting arguments so that authors can use them for improving the paper. Any appointed reviewer who feels unqualified to review the research reported in a manuscript, or is otherwise aware that a prompt review will be impossible, should notify the editor and step down from the review process. Reviewers should not consider manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, or other relationships or connections with any of the authors, companies, or institutions connected to the papers.
Suggested information for COPE:
 
Guidelines for the Board of Directors of Learned Society Journals
Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing
Code of Conduct of Journal Publisher

 

Plagiarsm Screening

Before going to review process, all manuscripts will be checked that they are free from plagiarism practice (less than 20% similarities). If there an indication of plagiarism (higher than 20% similarities), the manuscript will instantly be rejected.

 

Ethics Statement

PUBLICATION ETHICS AND PUBLICATION MALPRACTICE STATEMENT

(Based on Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME)'s Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors)

Ethical guidelines for journal publication

The publication of an article in the peer-reviewed journals published by Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia is process of permanent knowledge improvement. It is a direct reflection of the quality of the work of the authors and the institutions that support them. Peer-reviewed articles support and embody the scientific method. It is therefore important to agree upon standards of expected ethical behaviour for all parties involved in the act of publishing: the author, the journal editor, the peer reviewer, the publisher and the society of society-owned or sponsored journals.

Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia takes their duties of guardianship over all stages of publishing extremely seriously and we recognise our ethical and other responsibilities.

We are committed to ensuring that advertising, reprint or other commercial revenue has no impact or influence on editorial decisions. In addition, Editorial Board will assist in communications with other journals and/or publishers where this is useful to editors.

Duties of authors

Reporting standards

Authors of reports of original research should present an accurate account of the work performed as well as an objective discussion of its significance. Underlying data should be represented accurately in the paper. A paper should contain sufficient detail and references to permit others to replicate the work. Fraudulent or knowingly inaccurate statements constitute unethical behavior and are unacceptable. Review and professional publication articles should also be accurate and objective, and editorial 'opinion' works should be clearly identified as such.

Data access and retention

Authors may be asked to provide the raw data in connection with a paper for editorial review, and should in any event be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable time after publication.

Originality and plagiarism

The authors should ensure that they have written entirely original works, and if the authors have used the work and/or words of others, that this has been appropriately cited or quoted. Plagiarism takes many forms, from 'passing off' another's paper as the author's own paper, to copying or paraphrasing substantial parts of another's paper (without attribution), to claiming results from research conducted by others. Plagiarism in all its forms constitutes unethical publishing behavior and is unacceptable.

Multiple, redundant or concurrent publication

An author should not in general publish manuscripts describing essentially t