About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Sociologica – International Journal for Sociological Debate is a peer-reviewed journal published three times a year. The journal publishes theoretical, methodological and empirical articles providing original and rigorous contributions to the sociological current debate. Founded in 2007, Sociologica is one of the first international journals of sociology published solely online. We are indexed in Scopus and Web of Science.

The journal aims at:

  • debating sociologically relevant issues in an open way;
  • promoting sound intellectual exchange between different approaches within the social sciences, between different theoretical and methodological traditions and between different generations of scholars;
  • exploiting the potential of digital communication to advance active scientific exchange.

Indexing and Abstracting

The Journal is indexed in the following databases and search engines:

Peer Review Process

The review process consist of a double blind peer review. This means that the reviewers and the authors don’t know each other’s identity. To facilitate this, the authors need to ensure that manuscripts submitted on the Sociologica platform are prepared in a way that does not reveal their identity.

The editors will assess whether the submission is eligible for review. As part of the initial quality assessment, each article will undergo plagiarism detection through iThenticate. After this formal assessment, if positive, the submission will be sent to two external referees, who are chosen on the base of their expertise and knowledge on the selected paper topics.

Based on the review reports the editors will make one of the following decisions:

  1. The submission is rejected. In this case, a written explanation will be provided.

  2. The submission is rejected in its current state. In this case, the author will have the opportunity to re-submit the paper, taking into account the comments of the referees and the editor. When the submission is rejected in its current state (B) and the author wants to improve the paper, the editor assigned to that paper will support the author.

  3. The submission is accepted.

The whole review process will take not more than six months. Editorials, Comments on Essays, Interviews, Flashback, and Book Reviews will not be peer-reviewed.

Publication Frequency

Sociologica publishes three issues a year.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

It releases its articles under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This license allows anyone to download, reuse, re-print, modify, distribute and/or copy the contributions. The works must be properly attributed to its author(s). It is not necessary to ask further permissions both to author(s) or journal board, although you are kindly requested to inform the journal for every reuse of the papers.

Authors who publish on this journal maintain the copyrights.

Authors are welcome to post pre-submission versions, the original submitted version of the manuscript (preprint) and the final draft post-refereeing (postprint) on a personal website, a collaborative wiki, departmental website, social media websites, institutional repository or non-commercial subject-based repositories.

The journal has neither article processing charges nor submission processing fees.

Publication Ethics and Malpractice Statement

Sociologica is an open access and peer review journal, published three times a year, that publishes theoretical, methodological and empirical articles to foster international the sociological debate. The Journal serves to further academic discussions irrespective of their nature – whether religious, gender-based, environmental, ethical, political or other potentially or topically contentious subjects.

The act of publishing involves many parties, each of which plays an important role in achieving the rigor, consistency, adequacy and depth expected by a scientific article. It therefore follows that the author(s), Sociologica’s Editorial Board and the peer-reviewers, have responsibilities to meet expected ethical standards at all stages in their involvement from submission to publication of an article.

Sociologica is committed to meeting and upholding standards of ethical behaviour at all stages of the publication process. We follow closely the associations related to publishing bodies such as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE – publicationethics.org), that set standards and provide guidelines for best practices in order to meet these requirements. In cases where these guidelines are breached — or appear to be so — Sociologica will consult the Core Practices of COPE (https://publicationethics.org/core-practices) and act accordingly.

Below is a summary of our key expectations of Editors-in-Chief, the Editorial Board, peer-reviewers and authors.

1. Ethical expectations and procedures to ensure them

Editors’ responsibilities

  • To act in a balanced, objective and fair way while carrying out their expected duties, without discrimination on grounds of gender, sexual orientation, religious or political beliefs, ethnic or geographical origin of the authors, thus evaluating manuscripts only for their intellectual content.

  • Sociologica’s Editors-in-Chief takes care that each article undergoes the proper peer-review process. The members of the Editorial Board support the work of peer-review and are committed to maintain the confidentiality of the process.

  • As for “Essays,” which are “original research articles,” once a manuscript is submitted to be published as an “essay,” it undergoes a first assessment carried out by the Editors-in-Chief together with the Managing Editor. They assess its relevance for and its consistency with the journal’s framework, aims and mission as well as its compliance with research articles’ standards provided by sufficient originality and by having a clear empirical ground. Essays that pass this first assessment are then addressed to three peer-reviewers, to ensure our journal standards and consistency. The review process is carried out through a double-blind procedure. Peer-reviewers have to fill a form that is available through the web platform of the journal.

  • As for “Symposia,” which could include both “original research articles” and “review articles,” they are usually part of thematic sections edited by internal of guest editors. “Symposia” undergo a double-blind peer-review involving two external reviews and in this case too peer-reviewers have to fill a form that is available through the web platform of the journal.

  • As for “Focus,” which could include both “original research articles” and “review articles,” they undergo a double-blind peer-review involving two external reviews and in this case too peer-reviewers have to fill a form that is available through the web platform of the journal.

  • As for other kinds of articles, which can be submitted to or requested by the Editorial Board as, for instance, “Flashback,” “Interviews,” “Book Reviews” the peer-review process is mainly carried out by the Editorial Board itself.

  • To assume the full responsibility of the publication decision for submitted and requested manuscripts.

  • To handle submissions for sponsored supplements or special issues in the same way as other submissions, so that articles are considered and accepted solely on their academic merit and without commercial influence.

  • To adopt and follow reasonable procedures in the event of complaints of an ethical or conflict nature. To give authors a reasonable opportunity to respond to any complaints. All complaints should be investigated no matter when the original publication was approved. Documentation associated with any such complaints should be retained.

Reviewers’ responsibilities

  • To contribute to the decision-making process, and to assist in improving the quality of the published paper by reviewing the manuscript objectively, in a timely manner, and evaluate manuscript only for their intellectual content.

  • To maintain the confidentiality of any information supplied by the editor or author. To not retain or copy the manuscript.

  • To alert the editor to any published or submitted content that is substantially similar to that under review.

  • To be aware of any potential conflicts of interest (financial, institutional, collaborative or other relationships between the reviewer and author) and to alert the editor to these, if necessary withdrawing their services for that manuscript.

Authors’ responsibilities

  • To maintain accurate records of data associated with their submitted manuscript, and to supply or provide access to these data, on reasonable request. Where appropriate and where allowed by employer, funding body and others who might have an interest, to deposit data in a suitable repository or storage location, for sharing and further use by others.

  • To confirm/assert that the manuscript as submitted is not under consideration or accepted for publication elsewhere by filling the submission form available on the journal’s platform at the moment of the submission. Where portions of the content overlap with published or submitted content, to acknowledge and cite those sources. Additionally, to provide the editor with a copy of any submitted manuscript that might contain overlapping or closely related content.

  • To confirm that all the work in the submitted manuscript is original and to acknowledge and cite content reproduced from other sources. To acknowledge the origin of any reproduced content from other sources.

  • To confirm that no authors are omitted from an authorship list of the article, despite qualifying for authorship.

  • Authors should ensure that any studies involving human or animal subjects conform to national, local and institutional laws and requirements (e.g. WMA Declaration of Helsinki, NIH Policy on Use of laboratory Animals, EU Directive on Use of Animals) and confirm that approval has been sought and obtained where appropriate. Authors should obtain express permission from human subjects and respect their privacy.

  • To declare any potential conflicts of interest (e.g. where the author has a competing interest (real or apparent) that could be considered or viewed as exerting an undue influence on his or her duties at any stage during the publication process).

  • To declare all the financial and of other support, by filling the appropriate filed of the submission form.

  • To notify promptly the journal editor if a significant error in their publication is identified. To cooperate with the editor to publish an erratum, addendum, corrigendum notice, or to retract the paper, where this is deemed necessary.

Advisory Board’s responsibility

  • Both the Editorial Board and the Advisory Board on behalf of which it publishes shall ensure that good practice is maintained to the standards outlined above.

2. Procedures for dealing with unethical behaviour

Identification of unethical behaviour

  • Editors will promptly act in case of errors and misconducts, both proven and alleged. In case such as errors in articles or in the publication process, fraudulent publication or plagiarism, duplicate publications, fabricated data, ghost authorship, appropriate steps will be taken, following the recommendations, guidelines and checklists from COPE.

  • Misconduct and unethical behaviour may be identified and brought to the attention of the editor at any time, by anyone.

  • Misconduct and unethical behaviour may include, but need not be limited to, examples as outlined above.

  • Whoever informs the editor of such conduct should provide sufficient information and evidence in order for an investigation to be initiated. All allegations should be taken seriously and treated in the same way, until a successful decision or conclusion is reached.

Investigation

  • An initial decision should be taken by the editor, who should consult with or seek advice from the publisher, if appropriate.

  • Evidence should be gathered, while avoiding spreading any allegations beyond those who need to know.

Minor breaches

  • Minor misconduct might be dealt with without the need to consult more widely. In any event, the author should be given the opportunity to respond to any allegations.

Serious breaches

  • Serious misconduct might require that the employers of the accused be notified. The Editors-in-Chief should make the decision whether or not to involve the employers, either by examining the available evidence themselves or by further consultation with a limited number of experts.

Outcomes (in increasing order of severity; may be applied separately or in conjunction)

  • Informing or educating the author or reviewer where there appears to be a misunderstanding or misapplication of acceptable standards.

  • A more strongly worded letter to the author or reviewer covering the misconduct and as a warning to future behaviour.

  • Publication of a formal notice detailing the misconduct.

  • Publication of an editorial detailing the misconduct.

  • A formal letter to the head of the author’s or reviewer’s department or funding agency.

  • Formal retraction or withdrawal of a publication from the journal, in conjunction with informing the head of the author or reviewer’s department, Abstracting & Indexing services and the readership of the publication.

  • Imposition of a formal embargo on contributions from an individual for a defined period.

  • Reporting the case and outcome to a professional organisation or higher authority for further investigation and action.

Archiving Policy

The University of Bologna has an archival arrangement with the National Central Libraries of Florence and Rome within the national project Magazzini Digitali.
http://www.depositolegale.it/editori-aderenti/

Sponsors

  • Associazione culturale Sociologica

Journal History

Founded in 2007 as Sociologica – Italian Journal of Sociology online, ISSN 1971-8853, the journal has been published by il Mulino until 2017. Starting from 2018 Sociologica is published by the Department of Arts of the University of Bologna, in partnership with «Associazione culturale Sociologica».

In 2018 the journal changed its subtitle to Sociologica – International Journal for Sociological Debate.

Past Editors

2007–2009

Filippo Barbera (University of Turin) — Maurizio Pisati (University of Milan, Bicocca) — Marco Santoro (University of Bologna)

2010–2012

Anna Carola Freschi (University of Bergamo) — Yuri Kazepov (University of Urbino) — Marco Santoro (University of Bologna)

2013–2015

Matteo Bortolini (University of Padova) — Luigi Pellizzoni (University of Trieste) — Marco Santoro (University of Bologna)

2016–2018

Elena Esposito (University of Modena & Reggio Emilia) — Marco Santoro (University of Bologna) — Associate editor David Stark (Columbia University).

Publisher

Department of Arts – DAR
Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna

via Barberia, 4
40123 - Bologna, Italy

in partnership with:

Associazione culturale Sociologica
co-owner of the journal