About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Palabra Clave is a diamond open access scientific journal for disseminating new knowledge from research and reflection on communication and audiovisual arts topics.

The content has a scientific, analytical, and critical approach, supported by humanism, with clear contributions to development and the resolution of society’s problems from communication.

Topics of most significant interest to the journal 

1) Communication theories and research methods

• Reassessment of classic communication theories
• Critical and cultural approaches to communication
• Narrative theories and construction of meaning
• Audiovisual communication theories
• Corporate communication theories
• Journalism theories
• Communication ecology

2) Traditional media, native digital media, and social media

• Digital transformation of traditional media
• Social media and digital communication (TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, podcasts, X (formerly Twitter), etc.)
• Journalism in the digital age
• Media convergence
• Streaming and entertainment platforms
• Media consumption and its influence on cultural change
• Disinformation
• Audiences, public, and users
• Transmedia narratives

3) Communication in organizations

• Corporate communication
• Strategic communication
• Organizational communication
• Digital communication of organizations
• Marketing communications
• Public relations
• Corporate reputation
• Advertising
• Public, activism, and crisis

4) Political and social communication

• Campaign strategies
• Government communication
• Communication amid political crisis
• Political media representation of new social subjects and minorities
• Social and digital activism

5) Media culture and social representations

• Collective memory and historical narratives in the media
• Construction and circulation of social representations about events, personalities, or subjects
• Influence of social representations and historical narratives on present events

6) Audiovisual culture

• Value ecosystem of the audiovisual industries (cinema, television, radio, video games, or interactive media)
• Pop culture and media consumption
• Photography
• Aesthetics and visual language
• Audience studies
• Transmedia and expanded narratives
• Fiction and non-fiction content and narratives

7) Emerging technologies

• Artificial intelligence
• Big data and algorithms
• Virtual reality
• Augmented reality

Publishing Fees (APC)

Publishing an article is free of charge for any author. There are no submission, editorial, layout, or publication fees or article processing charges.

Sections. The journal receives articles related to research and reflection in the various fields of communication.  The sections are divided according to the type of works submitted for publication (see "Guidelines for Authors").

In the event of a special edition, Palabra Clave will create sections according to the selected topic.  Existing means will be used to extend an invitation and to establish contact with interested parties. Special editions are subject to the same peer review process as regular editions.

In the Statement of Originality, the author can choose to receive a printet version of the issue.

Peer Review Process

The editor of Palabra Clave is appointed by the Universidad de La Sabana, pursuant to Regulation 38 adopted by the Committee on General Affairs of the Governing Council, as per Minutes No. 1362 dated October 4, 2012. According to that regulation, a scientific journal should "have an editor who preferably is an active researcher with articles published in journals that are listed in citation indexes (...) and has more than two years of experience in scientific publishing."

The thematic relevance, rigor, clarity and demands expressed by this publication are analyzed, first and foremost, by the editor. In addition, the editor coordinates the selection of articles and communication with outside peers.

The verification of work submitted for publication also involves the Editorial Committee, which ensures all the criteria specified in these instructions are met. If a text fails to comply with any of these requirements, the editor will be informed accordingly.  The editor, in turn, will notify the author(s).

After this review, the article is sent to at least two peer experts who will evaluate its scientific and academic merit. The identity of the authors is not revealed to the peer reviewers, nor are the authors informed of the identity of the peer reviewers.

When evaluating an article, Palabra Clave and its reviewers follow the international ethical standards on scientific research that were adopted at the Second World Conference on Research Integrity, which was held in Singapore on July 22 - 24, 2010.

Once the outside academic peer reviewers have submitted their evaluations, a decision is made either to accept the work with modifications, to accept it definitively, or to reject it.

The journal notifies the author within 60 days. After an article has been accepted for publication and the required changes or clarifications have been made, it is submitted for proofreading.  The author’s particular style is respected during the proofreading process, which addresses form, not content.  Track changes in Word are used to mark any suggestions made, in addition to comments and doubts or questions.   Communication with the author is direct, so as not to alter the original content.  The author has up to eight (8) days to approve any changes and to resolve all doubts or questions.  If the author fails to do so within that period of time, the article will be published in a later edition of the journal, but only after all doubts or suggestions have been resolved entirely.

Publication Frequency

Open Access Policy

Index and visibility

Biblat
CLASE
Dialnet
Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)
Fuente Académica Premier (EBSCO)
Google Scholars
Infoamerica
Latindex (directorio)
MIAR
ProQuest
Publindex (A2)
Red ALyC
REDIB (Red Iberoamericana de Innovación y Conocimiento Científico)
Scielo
Scimago Journal Ranking (SJR) (Q2 arts and humanities; Q3 social sciences)
Scopus (48th percentil, social sciences; 87th percentil arts and humanities)
Ulrich
Web of Science (Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) (Q3, Journal Citation Indicator (JCI))

Content Permanence

CrossMark Policies

What is CrossMark?

It is a Crossref initiative identified with the brand’s flagship icon:

This method guarantees that the reader is accessing the current version of a publication, as long as it displays the CrossMark logo. Click on the logo to access the version history and find information regarding minor or major changes to the published versions. It is also linked to the DOI, ensuring the stability and permanence of updates over time.

In this journal, we upload the PDFs available to the public in two instances:

1. when the editorial process ends, with the approval of the author and editorial team,
2. when the last modifications are made to that PDF as a result of a design review for printing purposes.

Adding the CrossMark icon commits our journal to and makes it responsible for notifying and updating readers about any change in an article.

What kind of changes and updates are part of the CrossMark version history?

• Addendum: Secondary documents that provide additional information about what has been published. It mainly presents other results. The content added will be specified.
• Correction: New versions with minor changes that do not affect the meaning of the paper, such as typos or otherwise. Any version update due to this type of modification will be informed.
• Duplicate: If a paper is already published in another medium or republished either due to technical errors or operational accidents, it will be clarified publicly. The appropriate files will be modified and updated in the CrossMark versions.
• Erratum: Articles for which, after digital or physical publication, significant errors in the writing, images, tables, graphs, references, or otherwise are reported in the available version. The erratum will be specifically mentioned and corrected for the new version.
• Rectification (corrigendum): When the author of the published article reports errata, the rectification and appropriate corrections will be explained.
• Elimination: At the relevant authorized party’s request, all available content will be eliminated. Only the article’s citation information and an explanation will be included on the article page and the different means of accessing the content.
• Retraction: At the relevant authorized party’s request, a statement of the retraction and, where applicable, the party’s note about the retraction will be posted on all the means of access to the article provided by the journal. The stipulated texts and the note will be retained on the article data page. The title will change to “Retraction: <article title>” and the PDF will have a watermark on all pages where the retraction is announced. The same applies to other versions in the reading formats that the journal may have (HTML, XML, ePub, etc.). For further information on the COPE policies we follow, click here.

Sources of Revenue or Funding

The journal is funded entirely by the University of La Sabana.

It does not carry advertisements and does not offer a subscription service.

Author Contribution Statement according to CRediT

CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) aims to recognize each author’s individual contribution to a submitted manuscript. This practice seeks to prevent authorship disputes that may arise during the editorial process with the journal.

Additionally, it avoids the addition of any author who was not previously listed, since the journal will understand that this statement reflects the full list of authors who participated in the preparation of the manuscript.

Through CRediT, authors provide a detailed description of their specific contributions to the manuscript being published, offering transparency to the journal’s editorial team.

Who is responsible for submitting this information?
In the Open Journal Systems (OJS), the author who created the submission account is considered the corresponding author (CA). The CA is responsible for submitting all final information in a PDF file along with the rest of the submission materials.

Which categories are recognized by CRediT?
There are fourteen (14) categories, and each author may be credited with one or more:

1. Conceptualization: ideas; formulation or evolution of overarching research goals and aims.
2. Methodology: development or design of methodology; creation of models.
3. Software: programming, software development; designing programs; implementing code and algorithms; testing code components.
4. Validation: verification, whether as part of the activity or independently, of the reproducibility/replicability of results, experiments, or other research outputs.
5. Formal analysis: application of statistical, mathematical, computational, or other formal techniques to analyze or synthesize study data.
6. Investigation: conducting the research process, including experiments or data/evidence collection.
7. Resources: provision of study materials, reagents, patients, lab samples, animals, instrumentation, computing resources, or other tools.
8. Data curation: annotation, cleaning, and maintenance of research data (including software code) for initial and future reuse.
9. Writing – Original draft: preparation, creation, and/or presentation of the initial draft of the published work (including substantive translation).
10. Writing – Review & editing: critical review, commentary, or revision of the published work at any stage.
11. Visualization: preparation, creation, and/or presentation of data visualizations.
12. Supervision: leadership and oversight in the planning and execution of the research, including mentoring.
13. Project administration: management and coordination of the research activity.
14. Funding acquisition: acquisition of financial support for the project leading to this publication.

Example of a contribution statement:
Sergio Roncallo-Dow: investigation, methodology, writing – original draft; Nicolás Mejía-Torres: formal analysis, data curation, visualization, resources; Lilu Dallas: writing – review & editing, project administration.

Ethical Commitment and Use of Artificial Intelligence Policy

The journal upholds a strong commitment to publication ethics, academic integrity, and transparency throughout all stages of the editorial process for any type of document submitted to the scientific journals of Universidad de La Sabana. In alignment with the cases and guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), we have adopted an explicit policy on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the editorial, peer review, and scientific writing processes.

We recognize that AI tools can support tasks such as grammar checking, text analysis, information structuring, or data analysis suggestions. We promote responsible use of such tools, always grounded in the authors’ critical thinking.

The journal does not accept manuscripts in which the writing or analysis has been entirely delegated to AI systems. Furthermore, authors are required to explicitly and transparently disclose any significant use of these tools.

This commitment reflects our mission to safeguard the reliability of published knowledge and ensure that every scientific contribution meets the highest standards of quality and ethics.

Journal Policy on the Use of Artificial Intelligence

The journal publicly declares the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools to support specific tasks within the editorial and dissemination processes, in line with its commitment to transparency, scientific integrity, and editorial efficiency.

Institutional Use of AI

Our editorial team uses AI systems—including language models such as ChatGPT—to support processes such as:

• Drafting and improving communications with authors, reviewers, and collaborators (e.g., informational messages or reminders).
• Organizing, normalizing, and standardizing data for publication metadata (e.g., author names, affiliations, ORCID, keywords, among others).
• Suggesting keywords in Spanish, English, and Portuguese based on disciplinary thesauri and content analysis of the article.
• Assisting in the creation of short descriptions or promotional texts for institutional channels.
• Producing support materials such as automated podcasts (derived from scientific articles) using AI-generated voice synthesis tools.

Transparency in Derivative Products

When the journal produces derivative content (such as podcasts, audio summaries, images, or social media posts) involving the use of generative AI, it will be explicitly stated that such content was created with the support of these technologies. This disclosure will be included on the website, in the content description, or in the corresponding promotional materials.

Limitations and Human Oversight

In all cases, AI is used as a complementary tool under the supervision and editing of members of the editorial team. No content is published or disseminated without prior human review to ensure its accuracy, relevance, and quality.

This policy is aligned with the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and will be periodically reviewed to adapt to technological developments and the needs of the academic community.

Channel of request, complaint, claim, congratulation or thank you

Although the journals have their OJS, where it is expected to have all the correspondence of the submissions, it is the responsibility of Universidad de La Sabana to provide them with an institutional space called “Communicate with us: channel of request, complaint, claim, congratulation or thanks” to contact this system of the University.