The evaluation is carried out in accordance with and adherence to the scientific criteria indicated below, and to the editorial criteria of bibliographic completeness and formal consistency of Edizioni Ca’ Foscari.
Every scientific text must undergo a double-blind peer review. Certain types of texts are excluded from this procedure, such as: introductions, prefaces, editorials, reviews and the like. Based on the choices made by the individual advisory boards, texts or entire volumes deriving from conferences or other contexts that have already passed an evaluation process can be excluded from the double-blind peer review. In the event of failure to perform a double blind peer review, due notice will be given within the publication.
Revision policies for the different sections:
ECF is the University Press of Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. It has an Editorial Board that is made up of a coordinator and a representative of each of the subject areas of the University.
The Editorial Board receives, evaluates and approves each proposal for a new Journal/Series on the basis of the following criteria:
The Editorial Board of ECF works to ensure compliance with these basic criteria and has powers of control and veto over the work of the advisory boards of each Journal/Series, in case evident omissions on their part are found.
ECF provides all users with access to a peer review platform called ECFPeerflow, designed and developed by ECF itself. The recommended scientific evaluation standard is that of the double-blind peer review by scholars and researchers external to the advisory boards of the journals and specifically appointed by them.
ECF offers constant and timely support in the use of the platform through the email contact ecf_support@unive.it.
The Scientific Direction of the Journal/Series is autonomous and independent in the conduct of the Call for Papers, in the choice of peer reviewers, in the conduct of the evaluations, in compliance with ECF policy and general warnings.
The Advisory Board identifies the reviewers exclusively from its own externals and it is recommended that they do not belong to the institution to which the journal is affiliated. Reviewers must have an adequate curriculum and an appreciable number of publications, preferably themselves subjected to quality control procedures.
Within the peer review platform, the Journal/Series has a specific profile, whose accountable and main manager is the Editor-in-Chief.
Compliance with regular publication according to the periodicity of the Journal is the responsibility of the Editor-in-Chief.
The assignment of the articles to the Reviewers is carried out exclusively through the ECF editorial platform by the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal/Series, who is responsible for meeting the review deadlines.
The Editors of each Journal/Series (Editor-in-Chief and Editorial Board) take care of the creation of the profiles of their Authors and Reviewers within the editorial platform, undertaking to enter – and keep updated – all their personal information.
Each article is uploaded anonymously to the platform by the Author and is assigned by the Editor-in-Chief to a pair of Reviewers. The Author and the Reviewers cannot come into contact with each other, not even indirectly, during the entire evaluation process.
To ensure the proper conduct of the mutually anonymous scientific evaluation processes of the articles (double-blind peer review), every care must be taken so that the identity of the Authors and Reviewers remains mutually unknown. Therefore it is essential that the Authors and Reviewers (if the latter attach their own documents to the refereeing form) – and any other operating subject – before uploading any document, remove from all the documents subjected to peer review:
ECF editorial staff verifies that the documents comply with the aforementioned editorial guidelines and has the right to reject and request an adaptation of articles not suitable for the standards of the Journal/Series.
The Reviewer has to determine if the document is:
If the document is ‘accepted’, the Reviewer has to specify if it is:
The Reviewer justifies his/her decision by filling in an evaluation form in which he/she expresses a qualitative judgment of the article regarding the following items:
The Reviewer has to select one of the following five levels:
However, for each of these judgments it is possible to add a discursive comment.
The article is considered as ‘rejected’ by the evaluation system if even only one of the two Reviewers rejects it. In this case, the Editor-in-Chief may submit the document to a third judgment.
If the Reviewers have requested changes to the article, the Author must provide a second version, whose acceptance will be subject to the favourable opinion of the Editor-in-Chief.
At the end of the peer review process, ECF further verifies that the document complies with the prescribed editorial guidelines and, if necessary, requests the Editor-in-Chief or the Editorial Board to adapt or to have the document conformed to the established standards. The process is then concluded and the editorial staff starts the process of publishing the evaluated and accepted documents.
The entire review process is tracked, stored and archived in the platform database, which resides on a server managed by Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Authors and Reviewers maintain access to the archive linked to their respective profiles, where a track of all the activities carried out is kept.
