P.A. PERSONA E AMMINISTRAZIONE
Legal Research on Public Administration and Economics
RULES ON SUBMISSION OF CONTRIBUTIONS AND ON THE PEER REVIEW PROCEDURE
- Authors shall register on the Journal’s website (to obtain username and password for login). After registering, to submit the contribution, please click “Online Submissions” and then “New Submission” - please refer to Section “About the Journal” -, except the cases in which such submission has been urged by the Journal’s bodies.
- Editorial Board will have a preliminary assessment on compliance to Journal’s editorial rules (included obligations of both authors and referees, author anonymity protection, acceptance of referees’ recommendations, if any, and so on).
- Authors have to upload on the Journal’s website three separate documents as follows:
A) complete text of the article, in compliance with the criteria set forth in the “EDITORIAL RULES” published on the Journal’s website; this text will remain confidential during the entire double blind peer review procedure (the «Full Paper»). Author shall attach Full Paper at submission procedure step 2 (“Upload submission”). For sake of transparency, author shall disclose - in the first foot note - grants assisting research and/or paper and relationships with contributors or institutions granting benefits of any sort and the theories or argument in the paper.
B) Anonymized text, to be submitted to double blind peer review. Author shall anonymize the paper by eliminating all reference or information which may help to identify them (the «Anonymized Paper»). Anonymized Paper shall be attached in step 4 of the submission procedure (“Upload supplementary files”) available on the Journal’s website. In particular, authors:
(i) shall remove their name, surname, email address, affiliation to University or other institution and Academic qualification;
(ii) referring to author’s published works, authors shall use impersonal forms (please do not use “as I said elsewhere”, “we have already pointed out elsewhere”, or any equivalent wording, such as “as I maintained elsewhere”);
(iii) shall eliminate from footnotes and bibliography any references to their own work, by replacing them with the wording “Anonymous XXXXXX – details omitted for the double blind peer review”;
(iv) shall eliminate all reference, if any, to grants, funds or other contributions received and existing with contributor or institutions; (v) shall eliminate any acknowledgements.
C) Statement of Commitment1, by completing the form (available on the Journal’s website: please refer to section “About the Journal”, subsection “Submissions”) in step 4 of the submission procedure (“Upload supplementary files”). - In case of non-compliance with the Journal’s EDITORIAL RULES, lack or incompleteness of one or more documents to be attached, Editorial Board will communicate to applicant non-compliance, inviting the author to submit the text and/or the Statement of Commitment amended or redrafted.
- Editorial Board, in case of inconsistence of the paper submitted with the Journal’s subject-matter, will communicate to the authors that their contribution is not eligible for publication.
- Once the preliminary assessment of the Editorial Board has been successfully completed, paper will be submitted to double blind peer review. Exceptions by double blind peer review may be made, under Editorial Board’s discretionary assessment for:
(i) short opinions or concise comments to be published in the form of an editorial, open letter, review or report or case law, to be published in Section “Opinions and Reviews” of the Journal;
(ii) contributions of eminent scholar with worldwide acknowledged prestige;
(iii) new publication or translation of papers already published on other journals or by other editors whose prestige is worldwide acknowledged (provided that the authors have obtained consent and authorization by Editor if requested, or they have declared that the re-publication or the translation on the Journal “P.A.” of the contribution previously published does not infringe any existing copyright or other third party right: see Statement of Commitment).
In the above mentioned hypotheses ii) and iii) Editorial Board will insert as the first footnote of the text the following words: “article published without any peer review requirement”. - Once preliminary assessment took place, Editorial Board will identify two referees, under the following principles:
i) expertise with the issues covered in the text; ; (ii) knowledge of the language of the paper; (iii) adequacy of time to devote to peer review; (iv) lack of conflicts of interest. By accepting the assignment the referee confirms at the same time meeting the requirements listed from (i) to (iii): with regard to (iv), should a referee, after receiving the anonymous paper to be assessed, detect any situations that may jeopardize his/her objectivity, he/she is bound to promptly communicate them to the Editorial Board, that shall replace that referee with another one. Referees are chosen by the Editorial Board preferentially between Journal’s Advisory and Peer Review Board. Editorial Board will ensure duly rotation referees’ indication. In exceptional cases, for the satisfaction of the requirements sub (i), (ii), (iii) and (iv), the Editorial Board may also avail itself of external referees. All referees shall be bound to the utmost confidentiality, not to disclose the contribution submitted to them entirely or in part, not to unduly use the latter for purposes other than those relating to the peer review and to guarantee that their assessments will remain strictly confidential and will not be disclosed to any third parties. - The peer review is double blind, i.e. author and referees will remain anonymous. Referees, after examining the contribution, shall fill-in the peer review form submitted to them and disposable in Journal website. Referees shall give their assessment within the terms assigned by Editorial Board (and in any case no later than 30 days). Both the list of referees and the peer review forms received will be saved.
- Referees shall ground their assessment on the following criteria:
(1) clarity in the identification of the theoretical targets that the contribution aims to reach and in the conclusions; clarity of exposition;
(2) originality, innovation and critical approach (problem-based and, in any case, not merely descriptive); contribution to a better understanding of the issues dealt with;
(3) consistency in the methodology adopted and coherence with arguments adduced;
(4) consistency and coherence of internal structure and in the parts of the paper;
(5) adequate overview on different ideas on the issues addressed in the paper and different schools of thought or case law; appropriateness of references. - Referees shall give the assessment by filling-in the peer review form. Should the peer review procedure have been performed, paper may be:
(a) accepted;
(b) accepted under minor revisions;
(c) return to the author with the indication of major revisions;
(d) unaccepted.
The peer review form includes comments by the referee briefly showing reasons of the appraisal issued, according to all assessment criteria and suggested revisions to be made for author use.
In case (a) for both referees, Editorial Board will merely communicate to the author result of the double blind peer review, with the consequent admission to publication. In case (d) for both referees, Editorial Board will merely communicate to the author refusal of publication.
In cases (a) vs. (b), or (b) for both referees, Editorial Board will communicate to the author, besides the successful result of the double blind peer review, the minor revisions to be made as indicated by one or both anonymous referees and will verify that such revisions are then made, under penalty of non-publication of the contribution.
In case (c) for both referees, the Editorial Board will communicate to the author the major revisions to be made as suggested by the anonymous referees; once the authors have carried out such revision, they shall present their contribution in mark-up version; each referee who had required major revisions shall issue, in short time (and in any case no later than 10 days), his/her definitive statement on the paper exclusively in terms of acceptancy or unacceptability of the paper.
In case of different assessments of the two referees, i.e. in case one opts for the acceptability [within the meaning of (a) or (b)] and one for the return or the unacceptability [within the meaning of (c) or (d)], the publication of the contribution with or without revisions shall be subordinated to a final assessment that shall be unanimously issued by all the members of the Editorial Board.
1 Please refer to Statement of Commitment.
Statement of Commitment include, besides the authors’ personal data (name, surname, academic qualification, job or professional position, public or private entity to which they belong, email and phone numbers), a statement undersigned by the principal author by which all the authors expressly guarantee as follows: (a) that they have drawn up an original contribution and, should they have had recourse to research results, portions of texts or original concepts of other authors, that they have duly indicated or mentioned them; (b) that they confirm the authorship of their work by precisely indicating all the co-authors, if any, and whether other people have significantly taken part in some steps of the research results to be published, by expressly acknowledging their contribution; in the event of co-written papers, the author sending the text to the P.A. Journal is bound to declare that he/she has obtained the prior approval of all the co-authors with regard to the version of the submitted contribution and their consent to its publication on the Journal; (c) that they have never published elsewhere, in other journals or by other editors, the contribution presented to the “P.A.” Journal in its final form; or, in alternative, that they have obtained the prior consent and authorization of the previous editor/journal to the re-publication or the translation on the Journal “P.A.” of the contribution previously published; or, in alternative, that even though they have previously published the same contribution elsewhere, the re-publication or the translation on the Journal “P.A.” of the contribution previously published does not infringe any existing copyright or other third party right; (d) that they undertake not to send the contribution to other journals or editors at the same time, once it has been presented to the P. A. Journal, during the entire stage of assessment and peer review and until its completion; (e) that they have to prior inform the Journal’s Editorial Board of any future intention of theirs to publish their contribution on another journal or with another editor in the same language and in a text essentially identical to the one previously published on the P. A. Journal.