About the Journal
Focus and scope
Studia Humanitatis Journal (SHJ) is an international, periodical, interdisciplinary scientific journal, focused on the broad spectrum of the humanities and social sciences. It is published with the support of the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (URJC, Madrid, Spain). It publishes two regular issues (january and july) in the digital support Open Journal System (OJS) and accepts texts in Spanish and English for evaluation through the anonymous peer review system. It is governed by the highest standards of editorial quality and its open access, meaning that, it does not charge any kind of fee to authors or readers, providing free, immediate, unrestricted, and permanent access to all its content.
Studia Humanitatis Journal welcomes contributions on humanistic and social sciences topics, both in basic and applied science, that stand out for the originality and innovative nature of their themes or approaches, as well as for their exactitude and methodological coherence. Works that involve interdisciplinary or transversal approaches to emerging issues in the context of the digital society will be particularly valued. Those works that can serve to generate critical knowledge that, directly or indirectly, can be applied to the improvement of the material, physical, aesthetic, ethical, or moral well-being of human beings, or that can serve to know or propose forms of social organization that promote respect for human dignity, the free development of personality, individual autonomy, as well as understanding between social groups and general prosperity in an environment of sustainable development, will be particularly appreciated.
In addition to postulating itself as a space for the diffusion and contrast of research results within the scientific community, Studia Humanitatis Journal is also a means for the dissemination or transfer of scientific knowledge to society, through specific variable sections.
Always trying to guarantee the highest formal and substantial quality of the contributions, it seeks to support collaboration between researchers and professionals in the international context of their specialties, as well as to allow those researchers who, while demonstrating high competence, are new, less known or belong to underrepresented groups that develop their careers in unfavorable circumstances for reasons beyond their control and personal effort.
Guided by the principles of the humanistic tradition that emerged during the Renaissance (as its name suggests), Studia Humanitatis Journal is, however, aimed at understanding the contemporary world (including its artistic and moral manifestations) in the context of globalization and the digitalization of social relations, considering that today's world is the dynamic result of a complex and varied historical and artistic heritage that needs to be examined.
Preferred contents and areas of knowledge
Studia Humanitatis Journal publishes research articles (theoretical or empirical), as well as bibliographical reviews and critiques, state of knowledge, debates, informative articles, critical exposition of artistic works, and interviews with scientists who have made relevant contributions to a field of knowledge or scientific practice.
Contributions from academics, researchers, or professionals of any nationality will be considered for review on any topic developed from any of the following preferred humanistic, artistic, and social areas, or that may have a subject or content of interest to them: regional geographical analysis, social anthropology, art, visual and performing arts, historiographic sciences, and techniques, didactics of language and literature, physical education and sports, moral philosophy, contemporary history, history of art, Spanish language and literature, sociology. These are the areas that make up the Department of Humanities of the URJC, and on which the editorial team has a large number of recognized experts.
Frequency of publication
Studia Humanitatis Journal publishes two regular issues each year (january and july). Also, annual volumes may include a variable number of special issues (monographs).
Blind peer evaluation process
The texts received are submitted to the double-blind peer review system, following criteria of excellence and inclusive, anonymous, and competent evaluation procedures, which are detailed in the web site's section called "guidelines for authors".
Authors will receive an immediate notification of the receipt of their submission and will have free access to the website to know the status of their text throughout the evaluation process. The editorial team also undertakes to inform the authors of the main decisions taken during this process. The decision about a text publication will be taken in the shortest possible time and, in any case, it will not exceed five months.
Only those texts that comply with the journal's editorial policy and standards will be sent for review, after the first phase of prior review by the editorial team. In case of controversy, a second-round will be carried out with new evaluators, or the competent members of the editorial board will be consulted. Authors, editors, and reviewers are committed to a rigorous policy of good practices, in accordance with the Code of Ethics of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), available at https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines.
The editorial team reserves the right to request substantial improvements in the texts and, in any case, will make the final decision on whether or not to publish the originals evaluated by the blind peer review system.
Publication fees
Studia Humanitatis Journal does not charge any fees to authors or readers, but it is financed through its resources or those derived from the activity of the management team with the support of the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. It may also be financed through collaboration agreements that may be established with institutions, organizations, groups, and public or private non-profit research projects, as well as through participation in public calls for papers or through the organization of conferences and other similar scientific activities.
Open access policy
Studia Humanitatis Journal provides immediate and permanent open access to all its content, based on the principle that offering the public, specialized or not, free access to research helps to increase the global exchange of knowledge within the scientific community and between the scientific community and society as a whole. This policy corresponds to Plan S of the "cOAlition S" consortium, supported by the European Research Council (ERC) and made up of the Science Europe association together with the main national research agencies of more than a dozen countries. This initiative foresees the obligation to publish in open access all scientific works that are or are expected to be, supported by public grants.
Copyright, use and reproduction
Studia Humanitatis Journal publishes its texts under the Creative Commons licensing system under the Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-SA 4.0), according to the following terms. This licence allows others to modify, adapt and build upon our work, even for commercial purposes, as long as they properly acknowledge authorship and license their new creations under the same terms. This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open-source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. By way of example, this is the licence used and recommended by Wikipedia and other projects with similar licences. Consequently, the generation of derivative works is allowed as long as authorship is properly acknowledged (author/s and publisher, adding the DOI as an identifier).
Anti-plagiarism policy: declaration and authorship rights
The journal's management team establishes a system of verification of the authenticity and originality of the texts, which includes inquiry to the editorial team's advice, as well as to the external evaluators who have been selected to review the text. To further this goal, Studia Humanitatis Journal will apply for membership in Similarity Check, an initiative launched by Crossref that brings together several publishers to protect the originality of the content they publish. Similarity Check uses iThenticate software to detect matches and similarities between the texts submitted for evaluation and those previously published in other sources. In case of not being included in this initiative, the journal will use the anti-plagiarism procedures and software that are generally applied within the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos.
Authors submitting manuscripts must sign a personal declaration stating that the content of the manuscript is original and unpublished, not previously published in any other medium, nor in the process of review by other publications. Material published in whole or in part previously, or under review by another journal, will only be accepted if the reason for such duplication is stated and the source where the article appeared is provided.
The authors signing the paper must be the same who contributed to its conception, realization, and development, as well as to the collection of data, interpretation of the results, writing, and revision. The contact author of the proposed article must complete a form concerning the authenticity of the work and rights. It must be signed by the co-authors of the paper and will be attached to the original text in the submission process, together with the authors' data and metadata. They must be familiar with the good practice guidelines and sign the acceptance of its clauses.
Ethical commitment and good practices guide
Studia Humanitatis Journal establishes a commitment to ethics and best practices that guarantee the integral management of the edition. This commitment is mandatory for editors, authors, and reviewers, and is established in line with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors, to which express recognition will be requested, and with the recommendations of other internationally recognized codes and guidelines, including the CSIC Good Practice Guide (Madrid, 2016) Version 3.0 (June) and the ethical code of the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos [https://urjc.es/codigoetico]. This commitment to ethics and good practices implies the acceptance and signature, by the authors, of a declaration of conformity.
Quality strategy
Studia Humanitatis Journal assigns each published text a DOI (Digital Object Identifier), which is a way of identifying a digital object regardless of its URL so that if the URL changes, the object continues to have the same identification.
The journal has applied to become a signatory to CROSSREF, an association of over 1,400 publishers representing 4,000 societies and publishers including both commercial and non-profit organizations, whose overall purpose is to promote the cooperative development and use of new and innovative technologies to accelerate and facilitate scholarly research by providing technical and business infrastructure to facilitate reference links via digital object identifiers (in fact, it provides the query service for DOIs).
It is also proposed to sign the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), which aims to stop the practice of correlating the journal's impact factor with the merits of a specific scientist's contributions, as this practice creates biases and inaccuracies in evaluating scientific research. DORA also proposes that the impact factor should not be used as a "measure of the quality of individual research articles or in hiring, promotion or funding decisions".
The quality strategy includes an ethical commitment to good practices that guarantees the comprehensive management of the edition, which will be mandatory for editors, authors, and reviewers, in accordance with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors, to which express recognition will be requested, and the recommendations of the CSIC Good Practice Guide (2016) Version 3.0 (June), as well as other internationally recognized codes and guidelines. This ethical and good practice commitment includes a declaration-form whose signature will be mandatory for authors.
Likewise, quality implies a declaration of privacy of personal data that may be included in the journal's database at any stage of its management.
Also, Studia Humanitatis Journal is published in accordance with the criteria, guidelines, and procedures established by the main bibliographic bases in the Humanities and Social Sciences to be indexed in them.
Finally, Studia Humanitatis Journal establishes criteria and procedures congruent with the sustainable development goals stated in the United Nations 2030 Agenda.
Editorial team
It is composed of a Management Team (director, editor, secretary, section editors, translators, and webmaster), an Editorial Board, an Advisory Board, and a large and variable team of external evaluators. The Management Team is composed of a dozen URJC professors and researchers, while the Editorial and Advisory Boards include renowned academics and professionals representing more than 40 institutions (universities, research centers, art centers) from more than a dozen countries. The boards are reviewed every four years, although, in the event of a member's resignation, he or she may be replaced by another member on a one-time basis/ad hoc basis.
The publication is managed by the Management Team, headed by its Director (Editor in Chief), and assisted by the members of the Editorial Board and the Advisory Board. The management team may request reports (prior or subsequent) from these boards on the relevance of the texts received, or to give an opinion in the event of disagreement between different evaluators. The management team may also ask the members of the boards to suggest external evaluators and improvements (both formal and substantive) to the journal. All this will always be done under the criteria and procedures contained in the code of ethics and the guide to good practices.