About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Matèria. Revista internacional d'Art mainly gathers research and new contributions by art history specialists within a wide range of issues of history and theory of art, including performing arts, music and cinema.

The journal aims to position itself as a reference for reflection and debate, in which art is the central axis to generate innovative and current thesis.

Matèria. Revista internacional d’Art combines the publication of miscellaneous issues (as in the case of the last numbers 8 (2014), 9 (2015) and 12 (2017), with monographic issues, such as number 10-11 (2016) entitled «Bosch al país de l’art» - dedicated to Bosch on the 500th anniversary of his death.

The journal has an international scope and is adressed to the scientific and academic community, including all Arts professionals and related fields.

Peer Review Process

Papers sent to "Articles" section are subject to a review processcarried out by a minimum of two referees who are considered to be experts in the subject matter addressed by the article or note. The process takes account of broad fields of chronological expertise (e.g. ancient art and medieval art), as well as other relevant areas of specialization within these fields (e.g. painting and sculpture), including theoretical, historiographical and methodological aspects. The objective is to offer the scientific community rigorous, high-quality, relevant content in the field of the Arts,Art History and Art Theory. Usually, papers evaluation process takes about four months, but in some cases, it can be extended further based on the recommendations from the article reviews.

The review process consists of a number of stages. When an article is received, the Editorial Committee performs a preliminary review in order to outright reject papers that clearly fail to comply with the journal’s editorial policy and objectives. 

If an article is accepted, it is submitted for evaluation by a minimum of two experts external to the Editorial Commitee. The journal uses double-blindpeer review. The experts may accept or reject the article and, if appropriate, make suggestions as to how the author may revise and improve the article with a view to drafting a new version. The peer review process is performed based on the criteria outlined below. 

Based on the reviewers’ recommendations, the Editorial Committee decides whether to accept the article for publication, return it to the author with suggested revisions or reject the article. It may also decide to request a third opinion if deemed strictly necessary. 

Papers sent to "Reviews" section are subject to a review conducted by the Editorial Committee.

Receipt of originals does not imply any commitment regarding their publication by the journal. 

The journal confirms the receipt of articles and notifies authors of the results of the review process at the earliest opportunity. If an article is rejected, it also informs the author of the reasons for this. 

REQUIREMENTS OF ARTICLES SUBMITTED FOR PUBLICATION AND EVALUATION CRITERIA

The criteria for accepting an original work are based on quality standards and how well the content of the article is aligned with the journal’s research objectives.

Fundamental aspects to consider therefore include the originality of the work, its quality as an unpublished research text, and whether it proposes new ways of interpreting the various topics or significantly re-examines the problem or subject in question.

The journal accepts articles that propose new lines of research based on a thorough understanding of the subject matter, but it also welcomes more specific studies that offer wide-ranging documentary and interpretative analysis within the broad methodological framework used to interpret the arts in general.

Work that is published must present the following general characteristics:

1. The work must constitute unpublished, up-to-date research.

2. The work must be written in either Catalan, Spanish, Galician, French, Italian, Portuguese or English.

3. The work must show methodological consistency.

4. The subject matter must be relevant within the specific field and the work should contribute new ideas, issues or perspectives.

5. The language must be accurate and the work should be well written.

 The evaluation criteria used are as follows:

• The subject matter must be relevant, in line with the journal’s content.

• The contribution must be originaland significant.

• Interpretations and conclusions must be coherent with the data and the objectives set out.

• The title must clearly reflect the content.

• The abstract must provide sufficient information.

• Keywords must be appropriate.

• The wording must be clear and accurate.

• Bibliographical references must be appropriate and up-to-date.

• The figures selected must adequately illustrate the article’s content.

• The structure of the article must be appropriate.

Publication Frequency

Articles are published in a yearly issue. Issues close once a year (usually in December) and may be miscellaneous or monographic in nature.

Originals are accepted at any time, but the call for papers is stepped up two to three months after publication of the previous issue.

Open Access Policy

Once an issue is published, Matèria. Revista internacional d'Art will provide free online access.
Authors can post a copy of their articles in his/their website and in an Institutional or subject repository providing acknowledgment is given to the original source, including DOI's link.

Digital Preservation Policy

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 Matèria: https://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/materia/gateway/lockss 

Interoperability protocol

Matèria. Revista internacional d'Art 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=materia

Declaration of publishing ethics and best practices

Matèria. Revista internacional d'Art subscribe the Declaration of publishing ethics and best practices for scientific journals published by the University of Barcelona.

The University of Barcelona promotes the open access publication of digital journals and endeavours to guarantee quality and conscientiousness in the transfer of scientific knowledge. The University is committed to ensuring that the articles it publishes and the publishing process itself observe the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). It is therefore essential that all of the stakeholders in this process—journal editors, reviewers, technical editors and authors—know and act according to the Code.

• Journal editors should :

- ensure that the decision to publish is not dependent on the author’s race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnic origin, country of origin, citizenship or political persuasion;

- publish regular updates on the responsibilities of authors, submission requirements, the arbitration system used to select the articles and the evaluation criteria to be applied by reviewers;

publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed and not make use of any article received for UB-specific research assignments without the author’s consent;

- guarantee confidentiality during the review process, meaning (a) the anonymity of reviewers and authors and the confidentiality of the content of the articles, the reports submitted by reviewers and any other type of correspondence with or between the editorial, consultant and scientific committees and (b) confidentiality in the correspondence between the author and the journal committees or reviewers when the author wishes to clarify, change or complain about some aspect of the article;

- make certain that the integrity of articles already published is respected;

- act swiftly to eliminate from the journal or refuse to publish any article that has been found to plagiarise information from other sources (through the plagiarism detection tool Urkund).

• Authors should

- understand that they are responsible for all submitted content;

- notify the journal editors of any errors in their published articles so that the appropriate corrections can be made;.

- guarantee that the article and associated materials are original and do not infringe on the rights of third-party authors and, when there are co-authors, guarantee that the consent of all the authors is obtained before the article goes to press.

• Reviewers and technical editors should

- apply revisions that are objective, informed, critical, constructive and unbiased, where acceptance or rejection is based only on the work’s relevance, originality, interest to the public in question and compliance with the style and content regulations in the evaluation criteria;

- meet deadlines when this is possible and promptly inform the journal editor when it is not;

- avoid sharing, spreading or reproducing any information from articles still under review without permission from the corresponding journal editors or authors.

Without article processing charges

The journal Matèria. Revista internacional d'Art does not have either article submission charges or article processing charges (APCs).

Journal History