About the Journal

Standpoint and scope

Scripta Mediaevalia is a semestral publication (prints its issues in july and december) that belongs to the Centro de Estudios Filosóficos Medievales that depends from the Instituto de Filosofía de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras from the Universidad Nacional de Cuyo (Mendoza, Argentina), and tries to make known the latest scientific investigations in the medieval thought area.
In this specific field, border researchers study, whose main subject is the confluence of disciplines such as philosophy, history, theology, literature and some others. These contributions are far from being vague, they achieve a holistic and, specially, realistic view of The Middle Ages, period in wich the disciplinary divisions, that came with Modernity and now seem to be insuperables, did not exist.

Scripta Mediaevalia publishes articles, reviews and notes refered to the historical-philosophical area and also other specialities related to the medieval culture.

Peer review process

Evaluation, selection and publication

The contributions are considered under a double-blind peer review, specialized on each subject, who will dictate their resolution discreetly, about the scientific quality of the writing. Reviewers are unaware of the identity of the authors, and authors are also unaware of the identity of reviewers. In case there is one dictation positive and other negative, a third judge will be consulted. The referees must be external (national or foreigners) to Scripta Mediaevalia. In any case, specialists on the evaluated topic will be given priority. The referees will dictaminate about the scientific quality of the work in the term of two months maximum, by writing and discreetly.

The authors will be notified about the decision and will be told to change something if necessary, in the term of three months. In case of being declined, the author will receive a note with the reasons specified by the arbitrors.

Scripta Mediaevalia will attend the author’s claims. In case of being important modifications, the Editorial Committee will determinate if the introduced by the author are enough for its publication.

The statistics of article’s acceptance during the years 2016-2017 were: 31 articles received, 20 accepted (64%), 11 rejected (36%) and 10 (50%) required to be improved.

The statistics of article's acceptance during the years 2018-2019 were: 47 articles received, 18 rejected (40%) and 28 accepted (60%), from these 19 (70%) were required to be improved.

Publication Ethics

Ethical Code

This code is based in the transparency and good practices in academic publications of the COPE -Committee on Publication Ethics: http://publicationethics.org/-. It is directed to editors and authors.

1. Editors

- Publication decision: the editors will guarantee the selection of the most qualified experts to get a critical assesment of the work, with the less narrowness possible.

- Honesty: the editors evaluate the articles for publication only based on its contents, according to the editorial policy of the review.

- Confidentiality: all the editorial board is committed to not revealing information related to the articles recived for publication with other people except authors, referees and editors. Anonymity is practiced to preserve the intelectual integrity of the hole process.

- Conflict of interests and disclosure: publishers commit not to use in their research content of the articles sent for publication without the written consent of the author.

- Time of the editorial process: The editorial team undertakes to communicate on time the reception, evaluation and decision, correction or rejection of the works received in no more than 180 days.

2. Reviewers

- Contribution to the editorial decision: The people engaged in the evaluation of the works received must make a critical, constructive and unbiased review, in order to guarantee the scientific and literary quality in their area of knowledge.

- Time management: The reviewers commit to evaluate the works in the shortest time possible to observe the delivery deadlines, since in Scripta Mediaevalia works time must be optimized to ameliorate the editorial management. The reviewer who does not feel competent in the subject to review or who can not finish the evaluation in the scheduled time will notify the publishers immediately.

- Objectivity: The review will be as objective as possible, without mediating personal opinions about the authors. All assessments must be justified in a report. This report should be as exhaustive as possible so as to enable the authors to clearly understand the suggested modifications or corrections or, in case the work is rejected, to understand the reasons for that decision. Likewise, if there is any conflict of interest, the review of the work must be rejected.

- Confidentiality: Manuscripts are distributed anonymously. However, each manuscript assigned must be considered confidential. Therefore, these texts should not be discussed with other people without the express consent of the authors or publishers.

- Visualization of the text or Bibliographic references: The authors commit to indicate precisely the bibliographical references of fundamental works possibly forgotten by the author. The reviewer should also inform the editors of any similarity or overlap of the manuscript with other published works.

- Conflict of interest and disclosure: Confidential information or information obtained during the peer review process should be considered confidential and can not be used for personal purposes. Reviewers will review a manuscript only if there are no conflicts of interest.

3. Authors

- Originality and plagiarism: All works submitted for publication must be unpublished, that is, authors of manuscripts sent to "Communicate" assure that the work is original, that it does not contain parts of other authors or other fragments of works already published by the authors. They also confirm the veracity of the data and the results presented in the work, that they are original and that there is no plagiarism, no distortion or manipulation of the empirical data when they are used or the sources used to corroborate the hypotheses or conjectures.

- Commitment to exclusivity. Papers sent to Scripta Mediaevalia may not have been submitted simultaneously to another journal for selection. Likewise, they can not contain, even partially, results already published in other articles.

- List of sources: The author must always provide the correct indication of the sources and contributions mentioned in the article.

- Authorship: In the articles in which more than one person has contributed, the authorship should be ranked according to the responsibility and implication in their elaboration. Also, the inclusion of all persons who have made significant scientific and intellectual contributions in the development of the research and in the writing of the article must be guaranteed.

- Access and retention: The publishing team may require the authors or the data or sources on which the research is based, and may retain them for a reasonable time after publication, with the possibility of making them accessible to the publisher. In any case, for this purpose, all data must be thoroughly anonymised.

- Conflict of interest and disclosure: All authors are required to declare explicitly that there are no conflicts of interest that may have influenced the results obtained or the interpretations proposed. Authors must also indicate any agency and/or project funding from which the research article arises.

- Errors in published articles: any relevant errors or inaccuracies should be communicated to the editorial team so that they can make the necessary corrections.

- Responsibility: all authors accept responsibility for what has been written, which should be supported by a thorough analysis of the most current and relevant scientific literature on the subject, and its discussion.

Malpractice Statement

Regarding good practices for the strengthening of ethics in scientific publication, the editorial process, after compliance with the required formal aspects, ensures that all authors review and verifiably accept responsibility for the content and record the contribution of each one at the end of the manuscript. Verification may be by signature or digital confirmation, including whether there is a conflict of interest, which should be explicit in the publication.

When there is a question about authorship, the corresponding author and, if necessary, all authors will be contacted first. In case of an impasse, the authors' affiliation or funding institutions involved in the development of the research will be contacted.

Regarding the subjects involved in the research, the editorial process requires that the authors present background information, such as the opinion of the corresponding ethics committee, authorization of the persons involved, clinical trial records, among others. When there are doubts or questions, the editor-in-chief will contact the corresponding author and, if necessary, all the authors, requesting the completeness of the data.

To promote the predominance of originality of the texts, the journal adopts programs to verify duplication with already published texts. The journal informs the authors of the program in use in the process of submission of articles.

When there is doubt or question, the editor-in-chief will contact the corresponding author and, if necessary, all authors, and if duplication is demonstrated, the authors' affiliation or funding institutions involved in the development of the research will be contacted.

When there is doubt in the inclusion of citations and their references, the cited document will be verified or requested to be sent. When there are doubts or questions, the editor-in-chief should contact the corresponding author and, if necessary, all authors.

When in the evaluation process, editors or reviewers identify excessive self-citation of authors and/or the journal, the corresponding author and, if necessary, all authors will be contacted for clarification to support the decision making.

Editors and reviewers should privilege impartiality, integrity and confidentiality in their evaluation, prioritizing constructive criticism and the deadline agreed with the journal. When there is doubt or questioning, the editor-in-chief should contact the corresponding editor and/or reviewers.

Fabrication or falsification of data and images are serious misconduct. The evaluation process is a criterion in identifying such misconduct. And if there are doubts, the authors will be asked to verify the methodology and results. In the case of finding misconduct, the authors' affiliation or financing institutions involved in the development of the research will be informed.

The journal will inform in the instructions to the authors how to receive communication of suspicions of misconduct.

In cases of doubts or questions considered above, the journal will follow the COPE flow charts for identification and guidance on misconduct. Eventually, when there is a challenge to the journal's decision, a committee of members of the editorial staff and external to the journal will be constituted.

About retractions and errata

The article already published in which misconduct was identified will remain indexed in the Scripta Mediaevalia database in the retracted condition. The retraction documents the reason for the retraction duly referenced, by means of a communication from the author or editor or other authorized agent, and published in the same journal. The retraction may be partial when the misconduct applies to a specific part of the article, without compromising the published research as a whole. The article may not be "unpublished".

Cases of errors or mistakes, regardless of the nature or origin, which do not constitute misconduct, are corrected by means of errata.

The journal will publish errata, corrections or retractions as soon as possible.

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