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.