Scope and policy

CoDAS (online ISSN 2317-1782) is an open-access scientific and technical journal published bimonthly by the Sociedade Brasileira de Fonoaudiologia (SBFa), as a sequel to the former journals: “Revista de Actualização Científica Pró-Fono” - – ISSN 0104-5687, published until 2010, and “Jornal da Sociedade Brasileira de Fonoaudiologia (JSBFa)” - – ISSN 2179-6491, published between 2010 and 2012.

The name of the journal, CoDAS, was thought based on the main areas of “Communication, Audiology, and Swallowing Disorders” and designed to be short and easy to remember.

The mission of the journal is to contribute to disseminating scientific and technical knowledge in the field of Communication Sciences and Disorders – specifically in the areas of Language, Audiology, Voice, Orofacial Motricity, Dysphagia, and Public Health.

CoDAS charges no submission fee and accepts research manuscripts produced in Brazil and abroad by either national or international researchers, academics, and professionals. Submitted articles can be written in Portuguese, English, or Spanish.

All accepted articles originally sent in Portuguese or Spanish must be translated into English and will be published both in both versions. The translation will be paid for by the authors and must be carried out by companies designated by CoDAS or others with proven experience in the translation of scientific articles in the area. All accepted articles originally submitted in English will not be translated into Portuguese, but the English version will be evaluated and, if necessary, an English review will be requested, at the authors' expense.

Types of articles

The journal publishes the following types of articles: “Original Articles”, “Review Articles” (Systematic Reviews, Critical Review, and Scope Review), “Short Communications”, “Case Reports or Experience Reports”, and “Letters to the Editor”.

A. Original article:

Articles aimed at the dissemination of scientific research results that must be original and unpublished. Their structure must contain the following items: abstract and descriptors, abstract and keywords, introduction, method, results, discussion, conclusion, and references.

The information in the abstract must encourage the article reading. It is suggested not to enter numerical or statistical results. The introduction should present a brief literature review, the justification, and the objectives of the study. The method must be described in detail and cover only the relevant information for the study to be reproduced. The results must be presented, and must not be duplicated in tables, charts, figures, and/or vice versa. It is recommended that the data be submitted to inferential statistical analysis, when applicable. The discussion must comprehend the interpretation of the results and must not repeat the content of the results and the introduction. The conclusion must present a concise answer  to the proposed objectives, clearly and objectively indicating the relevance of the study and its contribution to science advancement. At least 90% of the cited references must consist of articles published in indexed journals of national and international literature, preferably in the last five years. Quotes from these papers or others presented at scientific conferences must not be included. The file must not exceed 30 pages (excluding references, tables, graphs, and figures).

It is mandatory to present the approval number by the Research Ethics Committee and the statement that all individuals involved (or their guardians) signed the Informed Consent Form, in the case of research involving people or animals (as well as surveys of medical records or documents from an institution) in the method section. The Research Ethics Committee approval document and the Informed Consent Form model must be scanned and attached to the system when submitting the article.

B. Review article:

• Systematic review or scope review:

Articles aimed at answering a research question and analyzing the available scientific evidence regarding that research question. They result from research with a well-defined objective to analyze or map the literature, and their methods must contain the research question, the approaches and search strategies indicating the respective sources and choice justification , selection methodology, and eligibility criteria, as well as the methodology of data extraction and synthesis. In systematic reviews, the methodology must also include risk of bias and evidence certainty assessments. In many circumstances, the numerical results of the studies included in the systematic review can be statistically analyzed using meta-analysis. Articles including meta-analysis must comply with the norms indicated for this technique strictly. All systematic and scoping reviews must be reported following the PRISMA or PRISMA-ScR guidelines, whose completed checklist should preferably be submitted as supplementary material. Systematic and scope reviews must observe the following structure: abstract and descriptors, abstract and keywords, introduction, method, results, discussion, conclusion, and references. All works selected for the systematic review must be listed in the references. The file must not exceed 30 pages (excluding references, tables, graphs, and figures). The record number of the systematic review protocol must be contained in the method. For scoping reviews, it is suggested to indicate the protocol registration number.

• Critical review:

All articles must present a descriptive-discursive character and a critical discussion of topics of scientific interest, respecting the scope of CoDAS. They must present a clear formulation of a scientific object of interest, theoretical-methodological criticism of the works consulted, and a conclusive synthesis, or even a consensus review. They must be prepared by specialist researchers of recognized knowledge, invited by the chief editors. All articles must not exceed 30 pages (excluding abstracts, tables, figures, and references). Tables and figures must be no longer than five pages. The number of references is unlimited. Abstracts must contain not exceed 250 words.

C. Case report or Experience report:

Articles introducing unprecedented, unusual, or innovative cases or experiences, from a single case or series of cases, with unique characteristics of interest to professional practice, describing their aspects, history, conduct, and observed results. It must encompass an abstract and descriptors, abstract and keywords, introduction (with a brief literature review), presentation of the clinical case, discussion, final comments, and references. The complete paper must not exceed 20 pages. The clinical case must be presented stating that the individuals involved (or their guardians) have signed the Informed Consent Form, agreeing to conduct the research and disseminate its results. In the case of using patient images, the article must be submitted along with a copy of the Term of Assignment of Use of Images for Scientific Purposes.

D. Brief communication:

Short research articles presenting interesting preliminary results with impact on speech therapy, covering no longer than 2,500 words (from introduction to conclusion). They follow the same format as the original articles and must contain an abstract and descriptors, abstract and keywords, introduction, method, results, discussion, conclusion, and references. If presented, tables/charts/figures must not exceed two items each. At least 80% of the references must consist of articles published in national and international literature journals, preferably in the last five years.

E. Letter to the editor:

Constructive, objective, and educational criticism of published articles, or discussions of specific current topics, as long as they are linked to an article published in CoDAS or relevant contemporary themes within the scope of its content. Letters will be published at the discretion of the Editors and must  be brief, not exceeding 1,200 words.

Other information

CoDAS supports the clinical trial registration policies by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), recognizing the importance of these initiatives for the international registration and dissemination clinical trials information in open access. Therefore, only clinical research articles will be accepted for publication upon an identification number in one of the Registers of Clinical Trials validated by the criteria established by the WHO and ICMJE, whose links are available on the ICMJE website http://www.icmje.org/ or https://www.who.int/clinical-trials-registry-platform/. The identification number must be presented at the end of the abstract.

CoDAS follows the policy of good scientific practices, being careful with cases of suspected scientific misconduct, whether in project preparation, research conduct, or science dissemination. Plagiarism and self-plagiarism are forms of scientific misconduct that involve the appropriation of ideas or the intellectual contribution of others without due acknowledgment in the form of citation. In this context, the journal uses the Ithenticate system to identify text similarities that may be considered plagiarism. It is worth emphasizing that the content of the manuscripts is the sole responsibility of the authors.

How to prepare the articles

The following norms must be observed for all types of works based on the format proposed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), as published in the article “Uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to Biomedical journals”, version of April 2010, available at http://www.icmje.org/.    

Article submission

Only the articles submitted through the Online Publishing System, available on http://mc04.manuscriptcentral.com/codas-scielo, will be accepted for analysis.

The evaluation process of papers submitted to CoDAS consists of the following three stages:

1. Technical evaluation:

All submitted articles are checked against the requirements described in the submission guidelines. Those that do not meet the criteria or do not present all the requested documents are returned to the authors with adjustment indications. The articles that meet the standards and present all required documents advance to the next stage.

2. Scope and interest evaluation:

All articles that pass the technical evaluation are forwarded to the chief editors, along with the similarity report (via iThenticate). The editors check the similarity report and carry out the preliminary scientific evaluation regarding the area, scope, relevance, and interest for publication. Any articles that have methodological problems, are out of scope or have no relevance or interest concerning mission of the may be “Immediately Rejected”, as an editorial decision. Potentially publishable papers proceed to peer review.

3. Peer evaluation:

The articles are evaluated by at least two reviewers from the respective research knowledge area, from both national and international educational and/or research institutions, with proven scientific production. All articles should receive a decision of “Approved”, “Approved with some modifications”, “Approved with many modifications”, or “Rejected”. The decisions of refusal or acceptance with modifications are always accompanied by the reviewers’ evaluation, with anonymity guaranteed throughout the judgment process. Upon any doubts or contestation of any editorial decision, the authors should contact the chief editors, who must receive the justifications and clarify the doubts on the process.

Papers under editorial analysis cannot be submitted to other publications, either national or international, until they are effectively published or rejected by the editorial board. Only the chief editor can authorize the reproduction of articles published in CoDAS in another journal.

In case of doubt, the authors should contact the executive secretary by email codas@editoracubo.com.br.

Documents required for submission

Technical requirements

The submission must include the following documents:

a) A letter signed by all authors containing permission to reproduce the material and transfer copyrights, in addition to a brief presentation of each author’s contribution. The document must be scanned. In the system, please type “Supplemental File NOT for Review” (model available here).

b) Research in human beings or animals must present the approval by the Research Ethics Committee of the institution where the work was carried out. The document must be scanned. In the system, please type “Supplemental File NOT for Review”.

c) Copy of the Informed Consent Term signed by the participant(s) (or their guardians), authorizing the use of data for research purposes; or the Assignment of Image Term, authorizing image use, when applicable. The document must be scanned. In the system, please type “Supplemental File NOT for Review”.

d) Conflict of interest statement, when applicable. The document must be scanned. In the system, please type “Supplemental File NOT for Review”.

e) Manuscript identification page. All authorship data must be on the Identification Page (click here to download the template). The manuscript must not contain authorship data. In the system, please type “Title Page”.

f) Tables, charts, figures, graphics, photographs, and illustrations must be cited in the text and presented in the manuscript, after the references. Figures, graphs, illustrations, and photographs must be presented in at least 300 dpi, with good resolution and sharpness.

g) Manuscript (see below how to prepare this document). In the system, please type “Main Document”.

h) When submitting the reviewed manuscript after the reviewers' suggestion, indicate specific changes highlighted in yellow throughout the text of the reviewed version. The “Response letter to reviewers” must be inserted in the article submission system under the item “Supplemental File for Review”, together with the submission of the new version of the manuscript.

IMPORTANT: The letter to reviewers is mandatory in the resubmission.

Article Preparation

The text must be formatted in Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect, on paper size ISO A4 (212x297mm), double-spaced, Arial font, size 12, 2.5cm margins on each side, justified, with pages in Arabic numerals; each section must start on a new page, in the following sequence: article title, in Portuguese (or Spanish) and English, abstract and descriptors, abstract and keywords, text (according to the required items for each article section), references, tables, charts, figures (graphs, photographs, and illustrations) cited in the text and annexes, or appendices, with their respective captions.

Check the “Types of Articles” section of these instructions to prepare your article according to the type and extensions indicated.

Tables, charts, figures, graphs, photographs, and illustrations must be cited in the text and presented in the manuscript, after the references, and be presented as an annex in the submission system, as indicated above. The text must be referred on a separate sheet, presenting the identification page, as indicated above. The text must not contain authorship data – this data must be contained only on the Identification Page.

Title, abstract, and descriptors

The text must begin with the article title, in Portuguese (or Spanish) and English, followed by the abstract, in Portuguese (or Spanish) and English, covering no more than 250 words. It must be structured according to the type of article, with a brief presentation of the main research sections and highlights  of the most significant data.

Thus, the following structures must be observed: original articles: in Portuguese: objetivo, método, resultados e conclusão; in English: objective, methods, results, and conclusion. Systematic reviews or meta-analyses: abstract in Portuguese: objetivo, estratégia de pesquisa, critérios de seleção, análise dos dados, resultados e conclusão; in English: objective, research strategies, selection criteria, data analysis, results, and conclusion. Case Reports: the abstract must not be structured, which must be followed by a minimum of five and a maximum of ten descriptors/keywords defining the research topic. All descriptors must be based on the DeCS (Health Sciences Descriptors) published by Bireme, which is a translation of the MeSH (Medical Subject Headings), from the National Library of Medicine and available on the link http://decs.bvs.br.

Text

All texts must comply with the structure required for each type of work. The citation of the authors in the text must be numerical and sequential, using Arabic numerals between parentheses and superscripts, undated and preferably without reference to the authors' names, as in the example:

“... Any speech disorder associated with both a nervous system injury and a dysfunction of the sensory-motor processes underlying speech can be classified as a motor disorder (11-13) ...”

Words or expressions in English that do not have an official translation into Portuguese must be written in italics. Numerals up to ten must be spelled out. The place of insertion of tables, charts, figures, and annexes must be indicated in the text, in the same way that they are numbered sequentially. All tables and charts must be in black and white; figures (graphs, photographs, and illustrations) can be colored. Tables, charts, and figures must be contained at the end of the article, after the references, and presented as an annex in the submission system, as indicated above.

References

All references must be numbered consecutively, in the same order in which they were cited in the text and identified with Arabic numerals, and presented based on the format called “Vancouver Style”, as shown below, with the titles of Journal Indexed in Index Medicus, from the National Library of Medicine and available on: ftp://nlmpubs.nlm.nih.gov/online /journals/ljiweb.pdf.

In all references, name all authors if there are up to six. For more than six, mention the first six, followed by the expression et al.

General recommendations:

• Preferably use references published in indexed journals in the last five years.
• Whenever available, the English version of the article titles must be used.
• References to theses, dissertations, or papers presented at scientific conferences should be avoided.

JOURNAL ARTICLES 

Shriberg LD, Flipsen PJ Jr, Thielke H, Kwiatkowski J, Kertoy MK, Katcher ML et al. Risk for speech disorder associated with early recurrent otitis media with effusions: two retrospective studies. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2000;43(1):79-99.

Wertzner HF, Rosal CAR, Pagan LO. Ocorrência de otite média e infecções de vias aéreas superiores em crianças com distúrbio fonológico. Rev Soc Bras Fonoaudiol. 2002;7(1):32-9.

BOOKS 

Northern J, Downs M. Hearing in children. 3rd ed. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins; 1983.

BOOK CHAPTERS 

Rees N. An overview of pragmatics, or what is in the box? In: Irwin J. Pragmatics: the role in language development. La Verne: Fox; 1982. p. 1-13.

BOOK CHAPTERS (same author) 

Russo IC. Intervenção fonoaudiológica na terceira idade. Rio de Janeiro: Revinter; 1999. Distúrbios da audição: a presbiacusia; p. 51-82.

ELECTRONIC DOCUMENTS 

ASHA: American Speech and Hearing Association [Internet]. Rockville: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association; c1997-2008. Otitis media, hearing and language development. [cited 2003 Aug 29]; [about 3 screens] Available from: http://www.asha.org/consumers/brochures/otitis_media.htm

Tables

Present the tables separately from the text, each on a separate page, at the end of the document, and annex in the submission system. All tables must be typed with double spacing and Arial font, size 8, numbered sequentially in Arabic numerals, in the order in which they were cited in the text. All tables must have a short, self-explanatory title inserted above the table. All table columns must be identified with a header. At the bottom of the table, there must be a caption for the abbreviations and statistical tests used. The number of tables should be just enough to describe the data concisely, and they must not repeat information presented in the body of the text. Horizontal strokes must separate the header, body, and conclusion of the table. All tables must be opened laterally. A maximum of five tables will be accepted.

Charts

All charts must be structured following the same instructions as those for the tables, differing only in the form of presentation, which can be vertically drawn and must be closed laterally. A maximum of two charts will be accepted. The charts must be separated from the text, each one on a separate page, at the end of the document, and annexed in the submission system.

Figures (graphics, photographs and illustrations)

All figures must be sent separately from the text, at the end of the document, numbered sequentially, in Arabic numerals, according to the order of appearance in the text. All figures must also be submitted as an attachment in the submission system. All figures must have adequate graphic quality (they can be in color, black and white, or grayscale, always with a white background), containing a captioned title, typed in Arial font, size 8. To avoid problems that compromise the CoDAS publication standard, the image digitization process (scanning) must comply with the following parameters: for graphics or schemes, use 800 dpi/bitmap for line; for illustrations and photos, use 300 dpi/RGB or grayscale.

In all cases, the extensions of the files must be .tif and/or .jpg. Files of formats .xls (Excel), .eps, and .wmf can also be accepted for curved illustrations (graphs, drawings, schemes). If previously published elsewhere, the figures must be accompanied by the author/editor’s written authorization and the source must be included in the illustration caption. A maximum of five figures will be accepted.

Captions 

Submit captions using double spacing, accompanying the respective tables, charts, figures (graphs, photographs, and illustrations), and attachments.

Abbreviations and acronyms

All must be preceded by the full name when cited for the first time in the text. Abbreviations and acronyms used in tables, charts, figures, and annexes must appear in the caption with their name in full. They must not be used either in the title of the articles or the abstract.

ORCID ID

All authors must have their ORCID registration number (Open Researcher and Contributor ID, http://orcid.org/) associated with their respective registrations in the ScholarOne system.
 

Intellectual property

All journal content, except where noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons attribution-BY License.

The online journal has free and open access.

Article Processing Fee, upon APPROVAL for publication

Upon the approval of an article, an Article Processing Charges (APC) will be charged for articles submitted from 10/June/2021.

Fee exemption criteria: at least two authors must be active members of the SBFa, with at least one of them in the “professional member” category.

• Brazilian authors:

- Members of the Sociedade Brasileira de Fonoaudiologia (SBFa): fee waived, see more information above.

- Original and Review Articles: BRL 800

- Notes (other types of articles): BRL 500

• International authors

- Original Articles and Revision Articles: USD 150

- Notes (Other types of articles): USD 100

The publication fee will only be paid upon the authors receiving the acceptance letter through a private link.