About the Journal

PHONICA, an annual journal founded in 2005 (ISSN 1699-8774 online), is a double-blind peer-reviewed, open-access, and e-format scientific publication from the Applied Phonetics Laboratory at the University of Barcelona’s Faculty of Education.

Focus , Objective, Mission and Scope

PHONICA creates a space for exchange among different research fields concerning sound, voice and speech. It also aims to serve as a platform for the exchange of theoretical approaches, original research findings and innovation proposals, which, given their interdisciplinary nature and scientific orientation, address a specialised public, such as linguists, language teachers, teachers, speech therapists and professionals linked to philology, speech processing engineering, pedagogy or psychology.

Its mission is to promote research, reflection, innovation and the transfer of scientific knowledge to the professional education scientific community or those interested in sound, voice and speech.

PHONICA is a place for original and significant manuscripts that deal with sound, voice and speech from different research fields such as phonetics, speech therapy, speech clinics, language training, audiovisual communication, applied semiotics and signal processing, among others. It is therefore a broad and complex publication for its diversity; one devoted to applied phonetics.

Publication Frequency and Section Policies

Articles are published as they are approved and are included in an annual volume in December.

Each volume can be made up of a collection of various articles on speech, voice and sound, or a monographic section, proposed to the journal and approved by the Editorial Board, followed by a miscellaneous section, in which research articles that are not part of the monograph are published. This monographic section consists of the title of the issue, a presentation text, written by the person or persons coordinating the issue and a collection of research articles that address the topic.

All submissions received by the journal, whether they are part of the articles, miscellaneous, or monographic sections, will follow the external double-blind peer review process; however, the presentation text of the monograph will only be considered by the Editorial Board.

Editorial Process and Peer Review Process

The review period and notification of the editorial decision take between 3 to 7 months.

Review Process:

-    Following confirmation of receipt of the manuscript to be reviewed, the Editorial Board will consider and verify that it adapts to the editorial policy. If it fails to meet requirements, the Board may reject it without sending it for review, and the author will be notified in writing, justifying the reasons for the decision within less than ten days.

- Manuscripts accepted by the Editorial Board will be reviewed by two independent experts on the subject who are external to both the editorial team and the author’s affiliated institution. Within a maximum period of one month, they must accept the revision of the paper and complete their review report based on a form specifically designed for this purpose. In the event of contradictory evaluations, the Editorial Board will decide whether or not to request the opinion of a third external reviewer. Exceptionally, if the specificity of the subject so requires, one of the reviewers (and only one) may be a member of the institution or the editorial team, after verifying that there is no conflict of interest between the author and the reviewer.

- The reviewers will be renowned researchers who specialise in the subject matter. The anonymity of the authors of the manuscript and the reviewers will be preserved (double-blind peer-review). The journal will publish the names and affiliations of the external reviewers who have collaborated in previous volumes after obtaining their authorisation.

- Based on the review reports, the Editorial Board will decide whether to directly publish the manuscript, return it to the author for revision or reject it. Authors will be notified in writing of the decision and if their manuscript has been rejected the reasons will be stated and the review reports will be attached.

- A maximum of 21 days will be given to the author to make improvements to the manuscript and to submit the new version with any changes marked in colour. The manuscript may be accompanied by a document containing any comments and observations considered appropriate. PHONICA’s Editorial Board will decide if the changes introduced are suitable and will accept the manuscript for publication or return it to the reviewers for a second review. If a second revision of the text is requested, the process will be repeated.

- Once PHONICA’s Editorial Board accepts the text for publication, the author will be notified and the text will be returned to them. They will have two weeks to make the necessary formal and formatting adjustments to meet the journal’s requirements. At this point, the author will need to complete the Author Contribution Statement and, if applicable, the Sources of Funding and Acknowledgements sections, and then return the paper to the journal.

- The editorial team will carry out the final formal revision of the text within a period of three weeks and, if changes are suggested, it will be sent back to the author for final approval.

The assessment criteria used for the review of any manuscripts submitted, which are included in the form and instructions sent to external reviewers, are the following:

  • Originality and innovation
  • Academic and scientific interest
  • Structure and contents of the manuscript suitable for a scientific publication
  • Title, abstract and keywords reflected in the manuscript
  • Precise formulation of the objectives
  • Adequacy of the methodology and rigour in data analysis
  • Clear presentation of results
  • Interpretation and conclusions sufficient and coherent with the proposed objectives
  • Relevance of the sources and bibliography
  • Linguistic accuracy and quality of the writing
  • Compliance with the format and length of the manuscript

Open Access Policy

PHONICA provides immediate and free access to the full text of articles, following open access principles, according to which anyone can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link to the full text of articles, use them in indexing and data processing applications, among other legitimate purposes. Authorship must be properly acknowledged. The purpose of all this is to make research freely available to the public and to promote the global exchange of knowledge.

PHONICA does not charge users a fee to read, download or print the contents published in the journal nor does it charge authors to submit, review, edit and publish their contributions.

Licenses 

All contents included in PHONICA are subject to the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which allows the work to be shared with third parties, provided that they acknowledge its authorship, initial publication in this journal and the terms of the license.

Repository Publication Policy

The published version of contributions in PHONICA may be deposited and disseminated by any institutional, subject-specific and/or multidisciplinary repository. Information about the publication in the journal and the corresponding link must be included in the repository.
The journal allows the deposit and dissemination of article preprints but recommends that the published version be linked.

Authorship Policy

The journal uses the persistent digital identifier ORCID as a system for authorship standardisation.

In the case of an article with more than one author, all are responsible for deciding the order in which they want their names to appear in the article. All authors of the article must have made substantial contributions to the work presented, including its conception, data collection and interpretation of results, as well as in the writing, presentation of the work and revisions.

As of volume 21, published in 2025, authors must specify their contributions to the article submitted following the CRediT nomenclature. This information must be added to the article after the review process, in the section titled Author Contribution Statement.

Policy on Research Funding and Acknowledgments

Authors must specify where the funding for their research came from, mentioning the private or public entity responsible and the identification code for this funding, when available. This information should be included once the review process has concluded under the Sources of Funding section, which will come after the article text. It is information that will be included in the article’s metadata.

Contributions from statistical technicians, translators, IT specialists, or other professionals, if applicable, will also be included in the Acknowledgments section, which comes before the References section.

Declaration of publishing ethics and best practices

PHONICA 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.

  • 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, quality, 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.

Reviewers may not share, distribute or use the information included in papers submitted for review without the permission of the Editorial Committee and the authors.

Policy on Plagiarism

In the event of suspected plagiarism, PHONICA will follow the Guidelines on Good Publication Practice developed by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) (http://publicationethics.org/resources/flowcharts).

To detect possible issues, when a manuscript is submitted to the journal, it will be checked using URKUND before being considered for peer review. 

In the event of possible plagiarism in a manuscript submitted to this journal or already published:

  • The person who has notified the journal of the situation will be informed of the process followed. 
  • PHONICA's Editorial Committee will meet and assess the severity of the plagiarism.  
  • If it is considered that there is plagiarism, documentary evidence will be sent to the author of the manuscript and they will be asked for explanations. 

If those responsible for the journal consider that there is plagiarism: 

  1. Both the editor of the journal in which the original plagiarised manuscript was published and its author(s) will be informed.
  2. If the manuscript has already been published by PHONICA, it will be removed from the journal’s website and a withdrawal notice will be published.
  3. PHONICA will not publish any manuscripts by authors involved in the plagiarism for a period of 5 years.

Archives in LOCKSS 

This journal uses the LOCKSS system to create an automatic archive system shared by the collaborating libraries, which create permanent journal files for conservation and restoration: https://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/phonica/gateway/lockss

Interoperability protocol

Phonica  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=phonica