Policy

Publisher’s Ethics Policy

Introduction and Scope

Edizioni Ca’ Foscari (ECF) is an internal unit of the Ca’ Foscari University Foundation, whose founding and sole member is Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. The Foundation operates as a publisher on behalf of the University, using the Edizioni Ca’ Foscari brand for open-access scientific and cultural publishing.

ECF is directed by an Editorial Board, an organ recognized in the Foundation’s organizational chart, established and appointed by the University’s Academic Senate. The Editorial Board supervises the conduct of the scientific boards of series and journals, peer review processes, publishing programs, and all aspects related to academic and scientific planning.

ECF acts as the publisher responsible for the official registration of publications (publisher of record), assuming full legal, ethical, and archival responsibility for the publications released under its brand.

This Ethical Policy governs the conduct of ECF as an open access academic publisher and applies to all publications, digital and print, including those managed by the scientific boards of affiliated series and journals, produced under its publishing brand. The document affirms the publisher’s commitment to ensuring the highest standards of conduct in scientific communication, in line with the guidelines of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, international codes (COPE, OASPA), and the ethical principles contained in the codes of conduct adopted by ECF.

General Principles

The publisher safeguards academic freedom and ensures that editorial choices are free from ideological, political, or economic pressure. ECF recognizes its role as a public guarantor of editorial integrity and scientific quality, guided by the principles of academic integrity; process transparency; impartiality in editorial decisions; respect for the rights of authors, readers, editors, and reviewers; and openness to disciplinary, cultural, and geographical diversity. These principles are implemented according to an ethics of editorial care and procedural impartiality, based on mutual recognition of roles and respect for the timing, processes, and vulnerabilities of those involved in scientific production, in line with ALLEA recommendations (All European Academies 2023).

Roles and Responsibilities of the Publisher

Editorial ethics are expressed not only in the declaration of values but also in their systematic application and observance throughout the entire publication cycle. In this regard, ECF recognizes as its operational editorial guidelines the set of instructions, criteria, and protocols formalized and published on the publisher’s website, aimed at the scientific boards of series and journals and, more generally, all users of its editorial services. These guidelines, which are binding for all actors involved in the editorial process, regulate scheduling, content selection, committee composition, peer review management, transparency in publishing, and dissemination of results. Each series and journal published by ECF also makes available to the public on its homepage, within the publisher’s website, both the adopted editorial policies (including peer review procedures) and the specific editorial rules applied to its line. These policies and guidelines are essential ethical tools to ensure responsible, verifiable, and publicly oriented governance and conduct. ECF will update this policy and all other guidelines on its institutional website annually and, in any case, whenever necessary in light of regulatory evolution and international principles.

Editorial Quality and Best Practices of Scientific Boards

Good editorial practices combine ethics and operations. They allow the founding principles of editorial responsibility to be translated into concrete, daily choices capable of ensuring publication quality and transparency. In this framework, ECF considers as an integral part of its ethical-editorial system the guidelines addressed to the scientific boards of series and journals, published on the publisher’s official website. These guidelines establish key criteria such as: transparent and regular publication scheduling; commitment to scientific excellence and interdisciplinarity; internationalization of content; thematic and authorship variety with particular attention to the absence of self-referentiality and role conflicts; active and responsible participation of Scientific Committees in selection, review, and dissemination phases; systematic exclusion of internal members from author or reviewer functions, except in well-justified cases.

Such practices strengthen ECF’s role as a guarantor of the public mission of knowledge and support its direct action as an impartial and responsible actor in the editorial process. ECF collaborates with scientific boards, committees, and reviewers, but maintains control over formal procedures, peer review regularity, publication accessibility and transparency, while ensuring compliance with internal guidelines and conformity with external indexing, evaluation, and preservation requirements.

One of the central commitments that concludes the editorial cycle is shared responsibility for the broad and universal dissemination of published content. ECF considers it essential, also from an ethical standpoint, that all those involved in the editorial process actively promote and enhance published works, fostering their accessibility, visibility, and impact within the scientific community and society at large. In this perspective, consistent with the publisher’s open access mission, “publication is the starting point, not the end point.”

Edizioni Ca’ Foscari’s Peer Review Platform

To ensure maximum control over scientific evaluation processes, ECF has designed, developed, and directly manages its own peer review platform, ECFPeerflow. This digital infrastructure enables: traceability and secure archiving of all stages of the review process; integrated management of roles and interactions among authors, reviewers, editors, and editorial staff; adherence to timelines and workflows established by editorial policies; transparency and documentability of decisions; protection of personal data in compliance with the GDPR; and alignment with the quality standards required by universities, funding bodies, and international networks (COPE, OASPA, DOAB, etc.).

The adoption of a proprietary platform represents a strategic choice to directly oversee the ethical, procedural, and quality dimensions that govern scientific communication.

Management of Conflicts of Interest

All parties involved (authors, editors, reviewers, staff) must disclose any potential conflict of interest of a financial, personal, academic, or professional nature, transparently and promptly. The publisher evaluates each declaration received and, if any interference with process impartiality is found, adopts corrective measures. These may include recusal from the editorial decision, reassignment of the contribution to another reviewer or editor, or redefinition of assigned tasks. All cases are handled with confidentiality and documented traceability.

Plagiarism, Manipulation, Duplications

ECF implements measures to counter, using industry-recognized tools such as anti-plagiarism software: plagiarism and self-plagiarism; manipulation of data, graphics, images, or sources; and undisclosed duplication of already published content. All contributions are subject to formal checks and anti-plagiarism screening. Internal or external reports are rigorously assessed and may lead to suspension, rejection, or retraction of the publication. The rejection or withdrawal of contributions from publication may be publicly disclosed with justification in a dedicated section of the ECF website, in line with COPE practices.

Corrections, Retractions, and Updates

The publisher manages corrections, errata, addenda, retractions, and post-publication updates according to formalized procedures. Where applicable, tools such as Crossmark are used to ensure traceability of changes and consistency of the scientific record.

Use of Artificial Intelligence

ECF allows the use of AI-based tools for writing and review assistance but does not accept content entirely generated by AI. Authors must declare their use and remain fully responsible for submitted content. Reviewers who use AI-based tools during evaluation must also explicitly disclose this. In any case, all parties involved in the editorial process must promptly inform ECF of the name, version, and purpose of any AI tools used and comply with the prescriptions contained in the AI policy, which is likewise published on the publisher’s website.

Personal Data Protection

In accordance with GDPR (EU 2016/679), ECF ensures the confidentiality and protection of personal data processed during editorial activities. Such data are used exclusively for purposes related to scientific publishing and are not shared with third parties without the explicit consent of the data subject.

Copyright, Licenses, Reuse, Interoperability, and Economic Models

ECF adopts an approach consistent with the principles of open science and maximum knowledge dissemination while ensuring full respect for copyright. Each individual content unit published by ECF is governed by a publishing contract signed between the author (or editor) and the publisher. This contract specifies the rights and obligations of the parties, as well as the conditions for use and dissemination of the work.

All content is published under copyleft using a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) license, except for justified exceptions. Authors retain full copyright ownership and are encouraged to reuse, rework, translate, and disseminate their content in accordance with the license conditions.

ECF supports self-archiving of content in personal or institutional repositories and promotes its inclusion in open databases and digital archives, in full compliance with transparency, accessibility, and interoperability policies.

With a view to maximum transparency, ECF adopts two internationally recognized open access publishing models: a) the Diamond OA model for journals, which does not involve costs for authors (APCs, Article Processing Charges); b) the Gold OA model for books, with editorial costs covered by research, departmental, or institutional funds (BPCs, Book Processing Charges), always without profit purposes.

Economic conditions, any applicable costs, and available options are detailed and publicly accessible in the Publish with us section of the publisher’s website, which is also constantly updated.

Consistent with its open access mission, ECF adopts a publishing approach that separates production formats from publication formats. This choice makes it possible to generate reusable source files useful for updating, migration, translation, or the creation of new digital editions, according to the principles of modularity, traceability, and openness. All source files are preserved according to FAIR principles and version-tracked through persistent systems (e.g., DOI, Crossmark). The publisher aims for progressive and systematic adherence to FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) standards and IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) protocols for advanced use of textual and visual digital content.

Equity and Inclusion

ECF actively promotes gender equity, inclusion of minority voices, and cultural diversity and encourages proportional representation in review panels and Committees and scientific boards of journals and series. These boards are also encouraged to include scholars of diverse geographic, generational, and disciplinary backgrounds. Any form of direct or indirect discrimination is unacceptable.

Accessibility and Sustainability

The publisher is committed to ensuring full accessibility of digital publications in compliance with the EAA (European Accessibility Act). All content is progressively adapted to PDF/UA and WCAG 2.1 AA level standards. ECF also adopts sustainable editorial practices, promotes long-term content preservation, and adheres to FAIR and IIIF standards for interoperability and reuse.

Reporting and Responding to Violations

ECF has a dedicated channel for reporting potential ethical violations. Reports, including anonymous ones, can be submitted to the Editorial Board at: edizionicafoscari@unive.it. Each report is handled according to criteria of impartiality, proportionality, and documentability, in line with COPE principles. Decisions may entail corrective actions, editorial sanctions, corrections, or rejections.

Last update: August 2025.

Policy on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Edizioni Ca’ Foscari recognises the potential benefits and risks of using generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools in the context of scholarly publishing. While AI can support certain technical or linguistic tasks, its use must be transparent, limited, and rigorously governed to preserve the integrity of academic research. ECF is committed to responsible innovation and adheres to the highest ethical standards in all stages of the publishing process.

In particular, ECF discourages the uploading of unpublished original research into AI tools, even when evaluating or working on it (papers, essays, or any unpublished academic and scientific content). This practice presents significant copyright infringement risks. Submitting such work can inadvertently lead to the transfer of rights or the granting of broad licenses to the AI tool provider, depending on their terms of service. This means that original content, ideas, or unique phrasing might be used to train their models, potentially becoming reproducible by others through the AI. Essentially, control over the dissemination and use of original research could be lost, potentially undermining intellectual property rights and future publication opportunities.

ECF’s General Position on AI

ECF adopts a cautious, transparent, and human-centred approach to AI in scholarly publishing, in line with Ca’ Foscari University’s guidelines, the ethical principles of COPE and best practices in humanities research. Furthermore, this policy is fully consistent with and complies with the relevant requirements of Article 50 (entitled “Transparency obligations for providers and deployers of certain AI systems”) of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 of 13 June 2024, which establishes harmonised rules on artificial intelligence.
AI tools may assist with minor editorial or linguistic tasks, but must never replace the intellectual contribution of human authors, editors, or reviewers.
No AI tool shall be recognised as an author or co-author under any circumstances.
All uses of AI must be explicitly disclosed, documented, and validated by responsible human agents.
Undisclosed or inappropriate use of AI may result in editorial action, including manuscript rejection, retraction, or institutional notification.
ECF itself does not use AI tools for decision-making in peer review or editorial evaluation.

Policy for Editors-in-Chief of Series and Journals

Editors-in-chief bear responsibility for enforcing this policy within their editorial boards and among contributors.

Permitted uses:

Spelling, grammatical and syntactical revision of texts (e.g. correction of typos or grammatical errors): it shall be the responsibility of the author and/or the editor of the magazine or series to inform the Publisher of the AI system(s) used, if any, so that the Publisher may assess the full compatibility of each system or tool actually used with the provisions of this policy.
Use of AI tools or systems also for purposes other than those listed in the preceding point – for example, and as a rule, in the function of anti-plagiarism control – provided that such systems have been deemed compatible by the Publisher with the modalities set out in the preceding point.

Prohibited uses:

Using AI tools to evaluate submissions, select reviewers, or make editorial decisions.
Uploading any unpublished manuscript content to AI platforms (e.g. for summarisation or review drafting).
Delegation to the IA of editorial correspondence or evaluation of contributions submitted for publication.

Responsibilities:

Ensure that authors and reviewers comply with ECF’s AI policy.
Report suspected misuse of AI tools to the ECF editorial office.
Validate that all published content results from transparent, human-led processes.

Policy for Authors (including Editors of Edited Volumes)

Authors retain full responsibility for the integrity of their work, including any sections drafted with AI support.

Permitted uses (with disclosure):

Grammar or style revision.
Translation support, with authorial post-editing.
Text mining or data analysis, with transparent methodology.

Prohibited uses:

Generating original content, arguments, or interpretations.
Fabricating references, data, or quotations.
Creating or modifying figures or images via AI tools.
Using AI to paraphrase existing content to evade plagiarism detection.

Disclosure Requirements: If AI tools were used:

Declare tool name, version, and purpose.
Include disclosure in the “Acknowledgements”, “Methods” or a dedicated note.
Confirm human verification of all AI-assisted output.

Undisclosed use of AI may constitute a breach of publication ethics and lead to sanctions.

Policy for Peer Reviewers

Peer reviewers must provide assessments based solely on their own critical judgment and expertise.

Permitted uses:

Grammar or clarity checking of the review text (not the manuscript), provided the reviewer does not enter manuscript content into external tools.
Translation of the review (not manuscript content), subject to verification and disclosure.

Prohibited uses:

Uploading any part of the manuscript under review to AI platforms.
Using AI to summarise, analyse, or critique the manuscript.
Generating reviewer comments or decisions via AI tools.

Responsibilities:

Disclose any allowed use of AI in the reviewer comments.
Maintain confidentiality and refrain from exposing manuscript content to third-party systems.
Failure to comply with these rules may result in removal from the reviewer pool and notification to relevant editorial boards.

ECF reserves the right to update this policy as AI technologies and international best practices evolve.