Professional standards and ethical policies
a) Palaeohispanica’s editorial board
Details concerning the journal’s internal organization can be found at this website.
b) Authors’ responsibilities
As an implicit condition for publishing in Palaeohispanica, authors are expected to adhere to all the ethical and professional principles that are shared across all research fields and academic publications. By submitting a contribution for peer review, potential authors guarantee that their work is original, that it constitutes a significant contribution to its research field and has not been published elsewhere.
All submitted manuscripts ought to contain bibliographic references at the end of the paper as well as an indication of how the research that culminated in the article was funded.
Likewise, authors must agree to incorporate any relevant changes that peer reviewers suggest as well as to include any recommendations that the editorial committee includes in the manuscript’s proofs at the end of the editorial process.
The journal expects its authors, reviewers, editors and staff members to all conduct themselves professionally by treating others with respect and civility. Should any sort of untoward situation arise, such as (self) plagiarism, conflicts of interest or aggressive behaviour on the author’s part, the following actions will be taken:
- Plagiarism and the republication of articles
Plagiarism is defined as the reproduction of a text or other materials found in different publications without the original source being adequately cited. Accordingly, material can still be plagiarized even when it has been tweaked or paraphrased. Plagiarism constitutes a serious ethical violation; furthermore, there can be legal ramifications for violating an author’s rights in cases where the reproduced material has been previously published. Authors who want to cite published work must do so by including complete references to the original materials and by including any quotations within quotation marks. Graphs and images can only be reproduced with the express permission of the original author and must include a citation below said image or graphic according to the rules laid out on the journal’s website. If a peer reviewer or the editorial board detects any instance of plagiarism (whether of one’s own or another’s work), the manuscript will automatically be disqualified.
- Conflicts of interest
In most instances an individual who works at the same institution as an author or one of the co-authors is automatically barred from evaluating a potential contribution. The journal’s editors must always be aware of possible conflicts of interest and are required to recuse themselves from any decision-making process, whenever there is even the appearance of a possible conflict of interest.
c) The peer-review process
Palaeohispanica employs peers to evaluate externally all contributions, with this being understood as obtaining the opinion of an established expert over the merits of every potential contribution. In addition to completing the relevant form, reviewers are expected to suggest any pertinent bibliography that was not included in the original version of the manuscript.
Furthermore, the peer-review process is double blind, meaning that both authors’ anonymity as well as the reviewers’ impartiality and independence are guaranteed. Reader reviews will be treated with the utmost confidentiality. As is the case with all respectable research journals, the editors of Palaeohispanicawill not share with a third party the identity of a peer reviewer, the contents of his or her review or any correspondence resulting from the review process. Likewise, reviewers are required to adhere to the same strict standard of confidentiality: neither manuscripts nor the contents of any correspondence between an author and the editors can be shared with a third party without the written and express consent of the journal’s editors.
While strictly speaking authors are not held to the same standards (they can, for instance, solicit advice from co-authors and colleagues as they revise and amend a manuscript in accordance with the recommendations found in a reviewer’s report), the public airing of a reviewer’s report or of the correspondence with the editorial team constitutes untoward behavior. Any author who acts in such a way will automatically forfeit his or her right to the journal’s confidentiality.
- Aggressive behaviour
Should the editorial committee be made aware of any untoward behaviour on the author’s part towards external reviewers, other authors or the journal’s editors/staff, that author’s submission will immediately be withdrawn from the consideration process.
All participants in the publication process, including editors, authors, peer reviewers, and member’s of the journal’s staff are expected to meet basic standards of professional courtesy and to respect the fundamental rules and guidelines concerning the peer-review and publication processes. Under any circumstance, personal attacks and verbal assault (whether expressed orally or through writing) are completely unacceptable. Accordingly, the journal reserves the right to reject the contribution of any author who repeatedly violates these principles or refuses to cooperate with the editors and reviewers during the normal evaluation and publication processes.
d) Editorial ethics
The editorial team at Palaeohispanica will bring an end to any dishonest research practice by submitting every proposal to a careful review process that will begin before the selection of possible peer reviewers. Should anything questionable be detected, an author will be asked to provide relevant explanations and then be told to review his/her text so as to meet the journal’s quality standards. If an author does not make the requested changes, the manuscript will not be submitted for double-blind peer review and, accordingly, will not be published. The editorial board is always available to discuss and debate with authors any misunderstanding that could have given rise to such a situation.
e) Copyright and journal access
Journal content falls under the protection of licence Creative Commons CC BY-NC-SA. Access the all journal content is open and free of charge.
f) Journal archive
Given that the Institución Fernando el Católico is an established and important publishing house, it is extremely unlikely that access to the journal’s contents could be compromised in anyway within the foreseeable future. The contents of Palaeohispanica will be stored in IFC’s servers even if the journal ceases to be published.
g) Ownership and management of the journal
The journal Palaeohispanica is edited and run by the institution «Fernando el Católico», an independent entity of the Excelentísima Diputación de Zaragoza.