About the Journal

Focus and scope

Ar@cne. Electronic Journal of Internet Resources on Geography and Social Sciences (ISSN: 1578-0007) is an open access electronic journal, without publication costs, that receives and publishes articles in Spanish, Catalan, Galician, Portuguese and Italian. It was created by Dr. Horacio Capel in 1997 linked to the Department of Geography of the University of Barcelona.

Ar@cne aims to publish and disseminate conceptual, empirical or experimental research carried out by the geographical community and professionals from other areas of social and environmental sciences both nationally and internationally; from a wide range of topics, taking advantage of, preferably the wealth of information available on the Internet -scientific journals, Web pages, electronic documents or others-, although it also accepts other sources of analysis present in printed materials, surveys, interviews, etc.

The Ar@cne journal aims to constitute a space for debate, promoting the exchange of experiences from an inter and transdisciplinary perspective between researchers and their institutions, defending and respecting the principles of pluralism of philosophical, political and scientific ideas, through a process of continuous publication that is organized in an annual volume.

Ar@cne is a journal that supports open access to science and for this reason publishes its articles under a Creative Commons Reconocimiento-No Comercial 4.0 Internacional license. It is also committed to guaranteeing the ethics of the articles it publishes, taking as reference the Code of conduct and good practices for editors of scientific journals defined by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

Ar@cne is integrated into the Institutional repository of the University of Barcelona and indexed in the following platforms and databases: DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals), bibliográphic portal Dialnet, DICE (Difusión y Calidad Editorial de las Revistas Españolas de Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales y Jurídicas), ÍnDICE CSIC (Información y Documentación de la Ciencia en España),   REDIB (Red Iberoamericana de Innovación y Conocimiento Científico), MIAR (Matriu d’Informació per a l’Anàlisi de Revistes), Qualis Periódicos (CAPES, Brasil),  Latindex (Sistema Regional de Información en Línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina, el Caribe, España y Portugal), Rěsh (Indicador de calidad para las revistas españolas de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades), Carhus Plus+ (Proyecto de Evaluación de Revistes de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades),  ISOC (Base de datos de artículos publicados en revistas españolas del ámbito de las Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades),  RACO (Revistes Catalanes amb Accés Obert), CIRC (Clasificación Integrada de Revistas Científicas),  ROAD (Directorio de Recursos Académicos de Acceso Abierto), Dulcinea.

Peer review process

Articles sent to Ar@cne are read and evaluated first by members of the Editorial Board, who, after analyzing work, can accept or reject them. In the latter case we will specify the author the reason for rejection (it does not fit into the editorial profile of the magazine, not suitable for publication in the journal, it is not a contribution to the topic studied, etc.). This internal evaluation can also recommend to the author to enter modifications to the article before being sent to external evaluation.

The article proposals that have passed this first filter will be subject to an external double-blind peer review. From the Editorial Board, this task will be proposed to at least two people who are experts in the subject matter of the text so that they can carry out their evaluation within a maximum period of 30 days, and issue the pertinent report through the completion of a standardized form. In case of discrepancy in the opinion, the collaboration of another evaluator will be requested, whose report will have a decisive character.

In accordance with the opinions issued, the editor will inform the authors of the decision adopted, clearly stating their reasons, which may be: 1. Publishable (Accept submission with minor or major modifications); 2. Not publishable.

The articles that are accepted for publication with modifications will be reviewed again after the implementation of these changes by at least one external evaluator. This expert may be the same one from the first review or another in the same subject.

The average evaluation time for articles is 30 days, counting from the date of confirmation of receipt of the same, except for incidents. Evaluators receive the evaluation request with a suggested deadline and their commitment is requested to avoid delays. Once the evaluation process is completed, the Editorial Board will inform the author, by email, if the article has been accepted, as well as the date of its publication.

More than 70% of the articles of each number corresponds to researchers external to the University of Barcelona, ​​headquarters of the magazine.

Publication frequency

Ar@cne is a journal that has always adopted a continuous publication system, and has had a number of papers in each volume, which has varied since its creation in 1997.

Thus, for example, in its volume 1 (1997), when the Internet was in its beginnings, Ar@cne published 33 articles. In the following and until 2019, the number of papers published in each volume was varying between five and thirteen, predominantly ten, eleven or twelve articles in each annual volume.

Since 2020, and maintaining the continuous publication system, Ar@cne has adopted a frequency of twelve articles by annual volume, one each start of the month.

Open access policy

Ar@cne provides immediate free access to its contents based on the principle that the fact of putting research available to the public free of charge favors the global exchange of knowledge.

Code of ethics

The University of Barcelona promotes the edition of digital journals in open access and sailing for the transmission of scientific knowledge of quality and rigorous. Likewise, it is committed to ensuring the ethics of the articles published by taking as reference the code of conduct and good practices for editors of scientific journals that defines the Publications Ethics Committee (COPE).

It is essential that all parties involved in the editing process -Directors, evaluators and authors - know and abide by the principles of this code.

Authors

- They are responsible for the content of their shipment.

- They are committed to informing the directors of the Journal in case they detect a relevant error in one of their published articles, so that the appropriate corrections are introduced.

- They guarantee that the article and associated materials are originals and that do not infringe the copyright of third parties. In case of co-authors, for the final version of the article to be published, it is necessary the consent of all the authors involved.

Reviewers

- They are committed to making an objective, informed, critical, constructive and impartial review of the article. The acceptance or rejection is based solely on the relevance of work, its originality, interest and compliance with the standards of style and content indicated in the editorial criteria.

- Respect the established deadlines (if this were not possible, they must communicate it well in advance to the direction of the magazine).

- Inform about any question linked to originality, plagiarism, repeated publications, etc., of the material received and possible bad practices associated with research.

- Do not share, disseminate or use the information of the articles submitted to review without the corresponding permission of the director and / or the authors.

Editorial team

- They are responsible for the decision to publish or not in the journal the articles received, which are examined without taking into account race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, ethnic origin, country of origin, citizenship o the political orientation of the authors.

- Publish updated guidelines on the responsibilities of the authors and the characteristics of the works sent to the journal, as well as about the arbitration system used to select the articles and the evaluation criteria that external evaluators must apply.

-Commit to publish the necessary corrections, clarifications and apologies in the event that it deems it appropriate, and not to use the articles received for their own research work without the consent of their authors.

- Guarantee the confidentiality of the evaluation process, which encompasses the anonymity of the evaluators and the authors, the content evaluated, the report issued by the evaluators, and any other communication that the committees make (editorial, adviser and scientist) . Likewise, it will maintain the confidentiality before possible clarifications, claims or complaints that an author wishes to send to the committees of the Ar@cne or the evaluators of the article.

- Declare their commitment to respect and the integrity of the work that have already been published.

- Especially strict about plagiarism: the texts that are identified as plagia will be eliminated from the magazine or will not be published. The magazine will act, in these cases, as quickly as possible.

Interoperability protocol

Ar@cne uses the Dublin Core protocol for your metadata labels. The interoperability protocol used is the Open Archives Initiative (OAI).

The link is https://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/aracne/oai

Plagiarism detection

Ar@cne adopts systems to detect plagiarism, using Internet search engines and free softwares such as Plagium y Plagiarism detector. It also has the possibility of using Urkund software, which the University of Barcelona has made available to its journals.

If a case or indication of plagiarism, covert repeated publications, fraudulent material, undue behaviors, evil practices, etc., will be adopted, even, to eliminate work already published.

Digital Preservation Policy

Ar@cne develops various processes with the purpose of guaranteeing the permanent accessibility of the digital objects that contains in its own servers, such as the LOCKSS System and the use of backup copies, digital preservation metadata and DOI.

In addition, the content of Ar@cne is replicated in the institutional repository of the University of Barcelona <https://revistes.ub.edu> and in the cooperative repository of scientific journals RACO (Revistas Catalanas con Acceso Abierto) <https://www.raco.cat/index.php/Aracne>.

Sponsors

• Universidad de Barcelona

History of Ar@cne

Ar@cne started in 1997, a date on which it was still necessary to show the possibilities offered the Internet for social sciences and humanities.

The generalization of the Internet has made all researchers and teachers aware of the possibilities offered by this means.

In the last ten years Ar@cne has become one of the few international electronic journals dedicated to the assessment of the information that accumulates on the Internet, criticism of it and the manipulations that may exist in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).