Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice Statement

Code of Conduct

SPOLIA. Journal of Medieval Studies is a double-blind peer-reviewed scientific magazine that takes its inspiration from the code of ethics of the publications developed by COPE: Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.

All the parties involved – authors, editors and referees – must be aware of and comply with the following ethical requisites.

Duties of the editors

Decisions regarding publication

The editors of SPOLIA. Journal of Medieval Studies are responsible for deciding whether to publish the articles proposed. They may consult with the referees in order to make said decision.

Correctness

The editors assess the articles proposed for publication based on their content, without discriminating against the race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnic origin, nationality or political persuasion of the authors.

Confidentiality

The editors and the other members of staff hereby undertake not to disclose any information about the articles proposed to persons other than the author, the referees and the editor.

Conflict of interests and disclosure

The editors hereby undertake not to use the contents of an article proposed for publication for their own research without the written consent of the author.

Duties of the referees

Assistance to the editors during the decision-making process

The peer review is a procedure that helps the editors to make decisions about the articles proposed and that also helps the author to improve the piece submitted.

Compliance with time schedule

Any referee who does not feel that he is able to carry out the task proposed, or who knows that he will be unable to read the article within the required time period must notify the coordinators immediately.

Confidentiality

Each text assigned for reading must be considered confidential. Therefore, said texts must not be discussed with other persons, unless explicit authorisation has been granted by the editors.

Objectivity

The peer review must be conducted objectively. No personal observations regarding the author will be permitted. The referees must give adequate reasons to justify their observations.

Indication of texts

The referees hereby undertake to accurately indicate any bibliographic details regarding works on which the article is based that may have been omitted by the author. The referee must also highlight to the editors any resemblances or overlaps of the text received for reading with other works he may know.

Conflict of interests and disclosure

Any reserved information or indications obtained during the peer-review process must be considered confidential and cannot be used for personal ends. The referees must not agree to read articles for which a conflict of interest exists due to previous relationships of collaboration or competition with the author and/or the organisation to which he belongs.

Duties of the authors

Accessing and storing data

If the editors deem it appropriate, the authors of the articles must also provide their sources and the data on which their research is based, so that these can be stored for a reasonable length of time after the publication of the article, and made available if necessary.

Originality and plagiarism

The authors must declare that the piece of work produced is entirely original and that they have cited all the texts used.

Multiple, repetitive and/or rival publications

The author must not publish articles describing the same research in more than one magazine. Proposing the same text to more than one magazine contemporaneously is ethically incorrect and unacceptable.

Indication of sources

The author must always indicate his sources and the contributions mentioned in the article accurately.

Authorship of the work

The authorship of the work must be correctly attributed, and all parties who have made a significant contribution in conceiving, organising, creating and re-developing the research on which the article is based must be indicated as co-authors. If additional persons have participated to a significant extent in some of the research phases, their contributions must be explicitly acknowledged.

In the case of articles written by more than one person, the author who sends the text to the magazine must declare that he has correctly indicated the names of all the other co-authors and that he has obtained their approval of the final version of the article and their consent for its publication in SPOLIA. Journal of Medieval Studies.

Conflict of interests and disclosure

All the authors must explicitly state that they are not aware of any conflicts of interests that might have conditioned the results obtained or the interpretations proposed in the article. The authors must also indicate any bodies that may have financed the research and/or the project on which the article is based.

Errors in the articles published

Should an author identify a significant error or inaccuracy in his article, he must notify the magazine editors immediately and provide them with all the information they may need in order to print the due corrections at the end of the article.

Review procedures

All scientific essays, preliminarily evaluated by the editorial boards, undergo double-blind peer review: peer review (author and reviewer from outside the journal), both anonymous. The author's name and any reference to it is removed from the essays sent to the referees. The referees' evaluation is communicated to the author completely anonymously. The referees have four possible final options for each article:

Can the article be accepted for publication?

- Yes, without revisions

- Yes, with few revisions

- Yes, with radical revision

- No

The content of the references is confidential. Authors, by agreeing to be peer-reviewed, agree not to disclose the peer review. Reviewers and editors are required to make a serious and responsible commitment of discretion to the author and the scientific community. Any conflicts of interest or disputes that may arise during the review process will be handled by the editorial bodies according to current legal regulations and the advice of ANAC (National Anti-Corruption Authority).

Conflicts of Interest

The conflicts of interest, listed above and identified before and after publication, as well as the individual processes provided for their management, with reference to the possible stakeholders (authors, reviewers, editors, journals and publishers, scientific community), such as refusal of publication for authors, rejection of evaluation for reviewers dismissal from assignment for editors, sending an information notice to other journals and publishers, and publication of a Warning Note for the scientific community, will be handled by the editorial bodies in accordance with the principles of the journal's Code of Ethics, current legal regulations, and the possible advice of ANAC (National Anti-Corruption Authority).

Practices contrary to scientific integrity

Practices contrary to scientific integrity (plagiarism, reproduction of previously published work without quotation marks and/or mention of the source, falsification of data, etc.), even with reference to external reports brought to the attention of the journal or publisher, will be handled by the editorial bodies in accordance with the principles of the journal's Code of Ethics and international copyright law.

Post-publication debate

Response notes or letters to the editor will be published to allow for publicity of the post-publication debate; any changes or corrections to articles already published, as well as their possible withdrawal, will be made possible to the authors and made explicit in specific Notes of Warning to Readers, which will be published in the journal.

Policies for the supervision of ethical aspects

The editorial bodies oversee the constant respect for the integrity of research through the management of conflicts of interest, the protection of confidentiality and privacy, and the protection of copyright.

Consents and releases

Consents and releases for the publication and accessibility, including in open mode, of text, data, images, audio and video will be evaluated and requested by the editorial bodies in compliance with international copyright and intellectual property law.

Intellectual Property, Copyright and Publishing Licenses

The publisher holds the Copyright and may grant Open Access publication licenses of the CCBY 4.0 type https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.it; the author remains the intellectual property holder in all cases.

APC (Article Processing Charge) and Open access.

Publication in SPOLIA does not involve APC (Article Processing Charge), i.e., costs for authors; in case of choosing to publish in Open Access, the APC fee will be calculated on a per-article basis, starting from a contribution that cannot be less than 300 euros per essay, payable to the publisher, and the license granted is CCBY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.it.