About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Compàs d’amalgama is a journal directed to an academic and specilized audience and published by Edicions de la Universitat de Barcelona. All papers published in the journal are original works, and articles or reviews that have been published elsewhere are not accepted for inclusion.

The focus of the journal is contemporaneity, and it seeks to participate in active cultural debate through both general dissemination and in the more academic sphere. With this in mind, each issue is divided into an informative space open to papers on recent developments and timely reflections, and another space in the form of a monographic dossier, oriented toward research and its results.

The informative space is organized in different sections, each coordinated by a director in charge of submitting proposals to the editorial board.

The monographic dossier is coordinated by a specialist, who is tasked with finding – directly or through a call for papers – experts in the chosen topic considered capable of delivering a written contribution to the advancement of knowledge in their specific subject. These original texts are then evaluated through a peer review process.

The journal is published biannually, in April and in September, both in print and electronic format.

There is no charge for the submission of papers or publication fees, and the sale price of the print issue is intended solely to cover the cost of publication. Papers are published under Creative Commons licenses, and the digital version is open access within the RCUB (website of scientific journals of the University of Barcelona).

Expert Review Process

The monographic dossier is coordinated by a specialist, who is tasked with finding – directly or through a call for papers – experts in the chosen topic considered capable of delivering a written contribution to the advancement of knowledge in their specific subject. The peerreviewers will be chosen from scholar outside the editorial office. All papers submitted for the dossier undergo a double-blind peer review, carried out by recognized scholars and professionals. To be part of the group of reviewers, it is essential to have obtained a doctorate degree.

Motivated communication with the authors

The directors and, exceptionally, the coordinator (as long as s/he does not partecipate en the dossier) are responsible for selecting and inviting the reviewers, who are provided with the ethical guidelines, the review protocol, and the paper to review while their anonymity is maintained. Reviewers have four options in the evaluation of papers:

       a) Accepted.

       b) Accepted with minor changes.

       c) Accepted with significant changes (the new version 

           will also require a review).

       d) Rejected (the article cannot be resubmitted).

In the event of a disagreement, the editorial board will refer the paper to a third reviewer. If the text is accepted with changes, the editors will communicate this to the author(s) and indicate the deadline by which time the revised paper must be delivered. If the text is rejected, the reasons will be communicated. 

It is the directors’ responsibility to guarantee anonymity throughout the process. Manuscripts that do not meet any formal or qualitative requirements due to their academic content or incongruence with the topics of interest set by the journal’s editorial policy may be rejected by the editorial board. Similarly, the editors may ask authors to make adjustments to a text before submitting it to the peer review process.

Code of Ethics

Compàs d’amalgama best practice statement

The editorial board of the Compàs d’amalgama journal is committed to following the best practice guidelines set out in the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (COPE), in order to guarantee the quality, rigour and reliability of the material published, and to preserve the ethical values on which research activity and its dissemination are based: freedom of expression, intellectual honesty, transparency, impartiality and independence, and respect for readers and all agents involved in the publication of the journal. To achieve these objectives, the board is attentive to suggestions for improving the processes of selection, review, and editing of material, as well as to criticisms, and has the full intention of carrying out rectifications and corrections whenever necessary.

Included below is information on the process of review and acceptance of papers, and the codes of conduct that apply, on the responsibilities of editors, reviewers and authors, and on copyright.

 

 

Review and acceptance of papers

  1. Each issue of Compàs d’amalgama has two parts: firstly, sections comprising articles on a range of themes (literature, art, thought, pedagogy, science, and urbanism), each of which is supervised by one or more coordinators; and secondly, a monographic dossier, including papers of a more academic nature that deal with a particular topic, which is specific to each issue. Review and acceptance of contributions to the sections is carried out by the two directors and their respective specialists; papers submitted to the monographic dossier are, additionally, subject to a double-blind external review according to the criteria detailed in the editorial policy statement.
  2. The criteria by which reviewers determine the acceptance of papers submitted are scientific quality and relevance, originality, intellectual independence, and suitability to the thematic scope of the journal.
  3. The journal undertakes to guarantee the anonymity of the authors of papers submitted and of the reviewers, as well as the confidentiality of communications regarding doubts, queries or clarifications that may arise during the review process or in the communication of the result.
  4. Compàs d’amalgama strives to ensure the originality of material submitted and  filters text through the URKUND system. Furthermore, in the event that any case of partial or total plagiarism in a published text is detected, it will take the following measures: the article will be removed, the author will be denied the possibility of publishing again in the future, and the action will be condemned in an official statement issued by the journal’s editorial board. Authors who publish their contributions in Compàs d’amalgama assume responsibility for their own work.
  5. Authors are also responsible for obtaining permission to partially reproduce material from other publications (e.g., text, tables, or figures), as well as for correctly citing the source. If any kind of financial or economic support has been received to prepare the work for publication, permission must be obtained from the corresponding institution.
  6. In order to meet the requirements of independence of material received, the journal asks authors to declare any commercial factors that could lead to a conflict of interest.

 

Responsibilities of the actors involved

 

The responsibilities of the publishers are as follows:

 

  • Act with objectivity and impartiality, without discriminating against authors on the grounds of gender, sexual orientation, religious or political beliefs, or ethnic or geographical origin.
  • Treat sponsored contributions to supplements or special issues according to the same criteria as in all other cases, i.e., on the basis of academic merit and without any commercial influence.
  • Be open to suggestions and criticisms, providing reasonable procedures for dealing with potential claims related to ethics or conflicts, and giving authors the opportunity to respond to these. All claims must be investigated regardless of when the article has been approved for publication, and all associated documentation kept on file.

 

The responsibilities of the reviewers are as follows:

  • Contribute to expediting the review process of papers, and to improving their quality by providing objective and relevant comments.
  • Maintain the confidentiality of any information provided by the editor or author.
  • Not retain or copy any manuscript.
  • Alert the editor to any published or other submitted content that is substantially similar to the text under review.
  • Monitor possible conflicts of interest (financial, institutional, between collaborators, through other relationships between the reviewer and the author), alert the editor and, where necessary, decline to intervene in the review process.

 

The responsibilities of the authors are as follows:

  • Keep detailed records of data related to a submitted manuscript and provide access to this data upon reasonable request. Store the data in a suitable place where it can be shared and used by third parties, with permission.
  • Confirm that a submitted original is not under review for another publication. If parts of the content overlap with other published or submitted work, note and cite this, and additionally provide a copy to the editor.
  • Confirm the originality of a submitted work and acknowledge and cite content reproduced from other sources. Obtain permission to reproduce any content from other sources.
  • Declare any potential conflicts of interest (e.g., where the author has a competing interest – real or apparent – that is considered likely to exert undue influence on their role at any point in the publication process).
  • Notify the editor of the journal immediately of any significant error detected in a published work. Cooperate with the editor to publish an erratum or addendum, or make a retraction where deemed necessary. 

 

 

Copyright

Authors who publish in this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Copiright belongs to the journal. Authors grant the journal the right of first publication, with the work simultaneously available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Spain (CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 ES) license, which allows the work to be shared with third parties, provided they acknowledge authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. Authors are free to make additional independent arrangements for non-exclusive distribution of the version of the work published in the journal (such as publication in an institutional repository), provided that initial publication in this journal is acknowledged.

 

Archiving and Digital Preservation

This journal utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. LOCKSS publisher manifest of REIRE: htpps://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/compas-amalgama/gateway/lockss

Interoperability protocol

REIRE implements OAI-PMH protocol (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting), a low-barrier mechanism for repository interoperability that expose Dublin Core structured metadata. OAI 2.0 Request: https://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/index/oai?verb=ListRecords&metadataPrefix=oai_dc&set=compas-amalgama

 

History of the Journal

Compàs d’amalgama was launched in September 2019 with issue no. 0, and aims to be a means of transversal dissemination combining different genres and rhythms of contemporary culture. The journal acts as a kind of kaleidoscope through which to observe the play of diverse literary and artistic manifestations in confluence with philosophical, scientific, and pedagogical thought.

The articles in each issue are organized in various sections and, at the centre of the journal, there is a monographic dossier of an academic nature.