Submissions

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, and submissions may be returned to authors that do not adhere to these guidelines.

The submission has not been previously published, nor is it before another journal for consideration (or an explanation has been provided in Comments to the Editor).
The submission file is in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF, or WordPerfect document file format.
Where available, URLs for the references have been provided.
The text of the manuscript has an extension of between 6,000 and 10,000 words, DIN A4 paper size, 1.5 line spacing, 12 point Times New Roman font; and all the graphs, figures, and tables are placed in the right places in the text, instead of at the end.
The text adheres to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines, which is found in About the Journal.

Author Guidelines

1. Topic. DEC publishes twice a year research articles about Cooperatives and Social Economy.

2. Sending articles. The articles must be original and unpublished. They should be sent on line to the following link: Make a new submission

3. Format. On the first page should include the title, author`s name and academic affiliation or profession. The submitted manuscript is written in Spanish or English in a neat style. The second page should include two abstracts, in Spanish and in English, about 120 words each, and a list of keywords (3 to 5 words), in Spanish, Portuguese, Basque and English. The texts are preceded by a brief summary of the different sections in which the article is structured, in Spanish and in English. The submission file should be in OpenOffice, Microsoft Word, RTF or WordPerfect format.

4. Editing standards. The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) should be used as a reference for manuscript preparation. Authors are required to format their citations and references using the ‘Author-Date’ system of the CMOS, 16th edition, and not its ‘Notes and Bibliography’ system.

The paper should include full bibliographic references on the last page. The papers presented will have a length between 10 and 35 pages.

5. Use of AI-assisted technologies

AI Authorship
This policy aims to provide greater transparency and guidance to authors, reviewers, readers, and editors regarding the use of AI-assisted technologies. Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, currently do not meet the authorship criteria of DEC. It is important to note that attributing authorship implies accountability for the work, which cannot be effectively applied to LLMs. Authors must declare in their manuscript the use of AI and AI-assisted technologies, and this will be appropriately cited. Declaring the use of these technologies promotes transparency and trust among authors, readers, reviewers, and editors, and facilitates compliance with the terms of use of the relevant tool or technology. The use of LLMs should be adequately cited following the CMOS (17th edition) guidelines, which can be consulted in full here (https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/qanda/data/faq/topics/Documentation/faq0422.html):

In-text Citation: for example ChatGPT can have the following format:
Citation in text (ChatGPT, March 7, 2023)

We can also include the full texts of long LLM responses in an appendix to our work or in supplementary materials.

Reference:
Text generated by ChatGPT, OpenAI, March 7, 2023, https://chat.openai.com/chat.

6. Publication process. The Journal editors with the participation of the Editorial Staff and the Advisory Board shall decide the publication of articles on the basis of an independent external evaluation. The evaluation process of the papers will be a blind peer review, following DEC's code of ethics. Authors may make proofreading and, if within 10 days was not received corrections, it is understood that the author is satisfied with the impression received.

7. Fees. Currently, no charges for manuscript submission, processing, and publication are applicable.

Copyright and Open Access

^{Last update: 22/05/2026}

The authors are advised to read their rights carefully. We believe this approach ensures a fair agreement for both parties. These instructions should be read in conjunction with the Ethical Guidelines and the Open Access Policy, Licensing Terms and Copyright of the journal "Deusto Estudios Cooperativos (DEC)".

1. Authorship and Ethics

By submitting their manuscripts to Deusto Estudios Cooperativos (DEC), the authors accept and undertake to comply with the conditions of publication without the need to sign an additional transfer agreement with the Publisher (University of Deusto). In doing so, they guarantee that their work is unpublished in any form, original, and does not breach DEC’s Ethical Guidelines or the rights of third parties, and that no licences have been or will be granted that are incompatible with the rights granted to the Publisher.

The authors assume full and exclusive responsibility for the content of the study and formally declare that they have no conflicts of interest that affect the integrity of the research.

2. Publisher’s Rights

By submitting the manuscript, the authors agree to its publication under the Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence. Consequently, they grant the Publisher the exclusive, royalty-free and worldwide right of first publication, editing, layout and exploitation of the article. This grant authorises the Publisher to distribute, sub-license and index the work in any format, medium, database or institutional repository, for the purposes of promotion and scientific dissemination.

3. Copyright

The authors retain the intellectual property rights to their article and retain the right to distribute and use their work for teaching purposes, future research or personal archiving, provided that the original publication in the Journal is cited. They are also permitted to republish in other media, provided that a (foot)note is included with the full reference to DEC (including the DOI, where available) and no explicit endorsement of the Journal and/or Publisher is implied.

4. Open access

DEC is an open-access journal; this means that it is freely and fully accessible in its entirety immediately upon publication of its content. However, in accordance with the licence mentioned above, the authors of the articles must always be properly cited; and both commercial use and any modification intended for distribution will require the express prior written permission of the rights holder.

More details are available under the section “Open Access Policy, Licensing Terms and Copyright”.

Privacy Statement

The names and email addresses uploaded to this website will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this Journal and will not be made available for any other purpose, or to any other party.

In addition, the University of Deusto provides adequate support and maintenance to the Journal's website, paying special attention to security aspects that help protect users against viruses and malware.

For all of the above, the guidelines regarding privacy and security policies established by the University of Deusto (https://www.deusto.es/es/inicio/privacidad) will be followed.