Listed below are some fundamental principles that Edizioni Ca’ Foscari has decided to adopt in accordance with the University’s Strategic Plan. The objectives are the quality of publications and an efficient editorial organisation, in the common interest.
They are addressed to all members of Scientific Directions and Advisory Boards of series and journals in the form of strong recommendations to be translated, as of now, into the adoption of common and consistent good practices.
- Editorial planning Each November, the submission of an editorial programme for the following year is required and it needs to be completed using the forms provided by ECF, and then updated and confirmed in March and September.
- Programmi editoriali Two key criteria are recommended for their elaboration:
- scientific quality the selection of content that has distinctive characteristics of originality, innovativeness, interdisciplinarity, accuracy and comprehensiveness;
- internationality the inclusion of proposals from scholars from all over the world, working in the disciplinary fields that are most relevant to the identity and recognisability of the Ca’ Foscari disciplines.
- Non-self-referentiality of programmes The programmes shall manifest and propose, in a balanced measure, such a variety of themes and authors as to express not only the rich Ca’ Foscari dimension but also a genuinely national and international breath.
following types of publications, it is strongly recommended that:
- monographs over two years, external publications outnumber internal ones (i.e. Ca’ Foscari affiliate scholars);
- edited books over two years, the majority of contributions collected in edited books are by non-Ca’ Foscari scholars (this criterion is not prescribed for editors);
- journal articles Ca’ Foscari-scholars papers do not exceed about 40% of the total number of papers published in each year.
The publication – in the same series or journal – of works by the same Ca’ Foscari authors within two years of their previous publication will not be accepted.
- Continuity and punctuality of publications Series that do not present an editorial programme consisting of at least one publication within two years (in which case the author must be an external person) will be archived. Similarly, journals that do not respect the established periodicity for two entire years will be archived.
- Priority in publication time Priority shall be given, in editorial production schedules, to proposals that have striking characteristics of excellence and international relevance.
- Participation and sharing The members of the ECF Editorial Board should be involved in a meeting with the Advisory Boards of the series and journals at least once a year, where decisions on editorial planning will be made. It will be the responsibility of the Scientific Directions to send a brief report of any subsequent meetings among the members of the Advisory Boards.
- Series for each volume proposed in the programme, an editorial sheet (according to the template provided by ECF) must first be provided to the ECF Editorial Board.
- Journals for each issue, a list of proposals will be presented, complete with abstracts, keywords, email and author affiliations.
- Composition of the Boards The Advisory Boards of series and journals (excluding Scientific Directions) should be composed of at least 70% scholars from outside Ca’ Foscari and affiliated with Italian and foreign universities. The current Boards will have to be adapted to these criteria.
- Role of the Boards members The members of the Advisory Boards are called upon to:
- promote the call for papers or call for projects;
- carefully evaluate the proposals;
- carry out continuous project and proposal research in their respective subject areas;
- identify and propose reviewers;
- promote the dissemination of the published contents by making use of their respective networks of contacts and relations.
Scientific Directions should receive regular updates on these activities.
It is strongly recommended that members of the Scientific Directions and Advisory Boards are not authors or reviewers of publications within their own series and journals. Sporadic exceptions should be reported and adequately justified to the ECF Editorial Board.
- Peer review All peer review processes are to take place through the use of ECF’s peer review platform.
Reviewers should be identified on the basis of their competence and willingness to carry out a thorough critical evaluation.
To this end, it will be crucial to plan, together with the ECF, a work schedule that gives the reviewers an adequate amount of time to carry out a complete and thorough evaluation.
The ECF Editorial Board will have access to the peer review platform and will check how the evaluations are carried out.
The acceptance of evaluation forms without comments and justifications by reviewers is strongly discouraged, and it is recalled that the platform allows interaction with reviewers to complete and enrich their evaluations, in the interest of the authors and the overall final quality.
- Journals for research articles, only double-blind peer review (authors and reviewers unknown to each other), entrusted, article by article, to a pair of reviewers external to the journal’s Advisory Board, is permitted.
- Monographs the accepted review methods are double-blind peer review or, alternatively, open peer review (authors and reviewers mutually known to each other), conducted by two reviewers from outside the Advisory Board of the series.
- Edited books the accepted review methods are double-blind peer review or, alternatively, open peer review, conducted by two reviewers from outside the Advisory Board of the series. The reviews must be conducted on individual contributions and not on the volume as a whole.
Variations or exceptions to these guidelines, which may be justified by special cases (e.g. editions of sources, grammars, literary translations, conference proceedings, Festschrifts, exhibition catalogues, etc.), will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis by the ECF Editorial Board.
- Dissemination The Advisory and Editorial Boards of series and journals are called upon to foster or carry out effective publication promotion activities, sharing with the ECF Editorial Board appropriate plans to this end. The main actions will be:
- provide personal and institutional addresses to ECF for mailing and newsletter activities, collected within the relevant scientific community, involving the authors and editors themselves and any other useful partners;
- periodically report repositories, catalogues and databases to which ECF will offer content indexing;
- making or suggesting to ECF useful contacts for the promotion (reviews, interviews, reports, etc.) of publications, also in the printed edition;
- actively pursue any other practices deemed effective for these purposes.
