“Fundamental Rights. Journal of anthropological, historical and juridical studies” is a scientific journal peer-reviewed which is inspired by the ethical code of publication issued by COPE: Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors.
It is necessary that all the involved parts – authors, direction committee, writers and referee – must know and agree with each other’s about the following ethical requirements.
Direction committee and writers’ duties
Decisions about publication
The direction committee of “Fundamental Rights” is responsible for the decision made about publishing or not the proposed articles. The direction committee can consult the referees to make this decision.
Correctness
The direction committee evaluates the proposed articles for the publication on the bases of the scientific contents, without discrimination of authors’ race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnical origin, citizenship, political orientation.
Confidentiality, conflict of interest and disclosure
The direction committee, the writers and the other members of the staff commit not to reveal information about the proposed articles to people different from the author, the referees and the editor or printer and they also commit not to use in their own researches contents which are related to the proposed article, which is to be published, without author’s written authorisation.
Double blind peer-review
The direction committee entrusts two referees with the anonymous evaluation of the proposed articles in order to have an evaluation about the pertinence or not of the contribution of the publication. The referees are external both to the direction committee and the editor staff.
Referees’ duties
Contribution to the editorship’s decision
The peer-review is a procedure which helps the direction committee to accomplish to its own evaluation activity of the proposed articles and which allows even the author to improve his or her contribution.
Respect of the times
The referee who will think not to be adequate to the proposed task or who will think not to be able to accomplish the reading within the required times must communicate it to the direction committee immediately.
Objectiveness
The peer- review must be conducted with objectiveness. Every personal judgement on the author is inappropriate. The referees must motivate their judgement adequately.
Indication of texts
The referee commits s/he will precisely indicate the bibliographical details of the fundamentals works if the author omits them in the proposed article. In addition, the referee must inform the direction committee about possible similarities or overlaps contained both in the text received to be read and in other works which s/he knows.
Conflict of interest and disclosure
Reserved information or indications obtained during the peer-review process must be considered confidential and they must not be used for personal purposes. The referee must not accept the reading of articles for which may exist a conflict of interest given by previous collaboration or competition relationships with the author or his/her home institution. Every text, which has been assigned for reading, must be considered reserved. Therefore, these texts must not be discussed with other people, unless explicit authorisation has been granted by the direction committee.
Authors’ duties
The authors must present the publication proposal related to an original work in each of its parts and punctually to quote every text used applying the editorial criteria of the journal.
The author commits not to propose published or publishing works in other journals, or other volumes, to the “Fundamental Rights” journal, unless explicit consent of the direction committee. The possible publication of a contribution, which has been already published on “Fundamental Rights”, in other journals or volumes will have to be preliminarily authorised by the direction committee.
The authors must guarantee that their contribution is original and unpublished, committing not to propose the same contribution to more than one journal at time and not to publish articles that describe the same research in more than one journal or volume.
Authorship of the work.
The authorship must be indicated in clear and precise way. All the people, who have given a concrete and significant contribution in order to create and complete the article, must be indicated as “co-authors”. The people who have given significant contributions to the research at the bases of the article must be explicitly indicated too. In cases in which the articles have been written by different authors, the parts developed by each author must be indicated in a clear and unequivocal way.
Integration in the article and typographical errors
The direction committee, even on the bases of referees’ anonymous evaluations, may require the author to correct or integrate his/her own article. When the direction committee considers it appropriate, anonymous evaluation will be send to the author. The author has the right to express his/her own observations or objections concerning both referees’ evaluations and direction committee’s correction or integration requests, the direction committee will decide about them. In order to preserve the homogeneity of the journal publication, the direction committee may make only editorial modifications after the first correction of the draft.
When the author finds a typographical error or a relevant mistake, s/he will immediately inform the direction committee, giving all the necessary indication in order to correct the text. If the warning comes from the direction committee or editor staff, the author will provide for, unless different agreement with the Direction committee.
Conflict of interest
The authors must indicate all the sources of financial support at the bases of the project of research on which their contribution is based as well as the eventual financial or general interest conflicts that may influence the results or the readings attributed to their contribution.