Code of ethics
Instituta. is a half-yearly scientific journal published by Biblion Edizioni (Milan, Italy). All parties involved share the following code of ethics for publications, based on the guidelines of COPE, Committee on Publication Ethics.
Duties of the Publisher
The publisher provides the journal with the resources for the publication of each issue.
The relationship between the Editors-in-Chief, the Scientific Committee, the Editorial Board and the editorial staff is based on the principle of editorial independence.
Duties of the Editors-in-Chief and the Editorial Board
The Editors-in-Chief and the Editorial Board are solely responsible for the decision to publish articles submitted to the journal. They are bound by the journal's guidelines. They are also bound by the legal provisions in force concerning defamation, copyright infringement and plagiarism.
The Editors-in-Chief and the Editorial Board submit publication proposals to a double anonymous evaluation procedure involving two reviewers (at least one of them must be external to the Scientific Committee and the Editorial Board). Authors are always given the opportunity to respond to any criticism received. The decision to publish a contribution in which any changes requested by the anonymous reviewers were made is up to the Editors-in-Chief and the Editorial Board, whose evaluation must be based exclusively on the scientific content, without preclusion of any theoretical school of reference and without discrimination of ethnicity, citizenship, sexual orientation, religious belief, political affiliation of the Authors.
It is also their duty to publish corrections, clarifications, and retractions if errors, inaccuracies, conflicts of interest or cases of plagiarism are detected in a published article.
The Editors-in-Chief and the Editorial Board may not disclose information about texts submitted for review to the journal to anyone other than the Author, Reviewer, and potential Reviewer.
Duties of the Scientific Committee
The Scientific Committee has the task of proposing and advising on the topics to be covered in the Journal, on the editorial line, on conferences and meetings in order to develop the topics proposed in the Journal.
Authors' duties
When submitting a proposal for publication, the Authors must comply with the Editorial Standards published on the Journal's website.
Authors must guarantee the originality of their work; they must correctly indicate all the sources and all the studies used; they must adequately cite the work and/or the words of other Authors.
The authorship of the work must be correctly attributed, indicating all those who have made a significant contribution to the research in its various phases: conception, organization, realization, re-elaboration, drafting.
Authors must indicate in their article any sources of funding for the research and/or the project that led to the writing of the article.
A text under evaluation must not be submitted by the Author to other journals for publication.
Authors must promptly notify the Editors-in-Chief of the journal of any errors or significant inaccuracies they may have found after submitting the proposal, in order to withdraw the text or make the necessary corrections.
Duties of the Reviewers
The selected Reviewers express their opinion on the article they received anonymously from the editorial staff, providing any suggestions that may help the Authors to improve their text.
Reviewers who, for reasons of time or competence, cannot carry out the work on the assigned text must promptly inform the editorial office of their decision to abandon the review process.
Reviewers are bound to confidentiality and therefore may not discuss the texts received for evaluation with other people without the express permission of the Editors-in-Chief. In any case, all confidential information or indications obtained during the review process must be considered confidential and may not be used for any other purpose.
Reviewers must express their judgement on the text objectively, clearly and in an adequately motivated form, according to a grid provided by the editorial office. Criticizing or offending an author personally is not permitted.
Reviewers must inform the editorial team of any substantial similarities or overlaps between the article under review and any other published document of which they are aware.