PEER REVIEW PROCESS

Academic assessment

Articles must successfully pass the academic review process, which operates under a quadruple-blind peer review model, ensuring the anonymity of both authors and reviewers:

1.       Articles that pass the initial editorial screening will be sent to expert academics in the same disciplinary and thematic area as the submitted text; these experts will provide comments on the text's relevance and academic quality and determine the feasibility of its publication. In accordance with editorial policy, manuscripts that fail to comply with the formatting instructions for authors will not be accepted under any circumstances and will be automatically rejected.

2.       Reviewers are responsible for examining and analyzing the academic, theoretical, and methodological relevance of each article assigned to them. They are responsible for verifying the explicit inclusion of a theoretical-methodological section and its alignment with the field of study, the coherence between the academic contribution and the significance of the findings, and the currency and appropriateness of the cited bibliography.

3.       All manuscripts will be sent to at least four experts—affiliated with institutions other than those of the authors—who will provide their comments. Finally, based on the reviewers' recommendations, the editorial board of *Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Agrícolas* will make one of the following decisions:

4.       Recommend publication without modifications.

5.       Recommend publication with minor changes that do not require a second review by the referees.

6.       Make publication conditional upon significant changes, necessitating a new review by the reviewers. This process may be repeated for up to three rounds; if, at that point, the document is still not recommended for publication, the article will be rejected with no option for resubmission.

7.       Not recommending publication.

8.       For a text to be approved for publication, at least three of the four reviews must be positive.

9.       The editorial committee shall ensure, in all cases, that the reviews provided to the authors contain sound arguments supporting the editorial decision.

10.  The results of the academic review process shall be final and not subject to appeal in any case.

11.  Upon receiving comments, the author shall have three business days to submit the revised version of the work to the editor. Failure to do so within this timeframe will result in the automatic withdrawal of the document.

12.  The time required to forward the document for review depends on the number of articles on the waiting list. Once the article is received, reviewers have six weeks to conduct the review and submit their findings.

13.  Accepted documents will enter the editing process (copyediting, metadata tagging, formatting, layout, etc.) before being included in the appropriate issue, based on the editorial board's decision, which may be:

a)       Recommend its publication without modifications.

b)      Recommend publication with minor changes that do not require a second peer review.

c)       Make publication conditional upon substantial changes, necessitating a new peer review. This process may be repeated for up to two rounds; if, at that point, the document is still not recommended for publication, the article will be rejected with no possibility of resubmission.

d)      Not recommend publication.

14.  The journal does not send galley proofs to authors.

15.  In accordance with editorial policy, manuscripts that do not comply with the formatting instructions for authors will not be accepted under any circumstances and will be automatically discarded.