Review

Formazione & insegnamento adopts double-blind peer review, which is a type of anonymous review in which the Reviewers do not know the names and affiliations or other identifying details of the Authors, and vice versa. This is the most common peer review in the humanities and social sciences. In doing so, Formazione & insegnamento stands by the COPE guidelines.

The role of Reviewers

Formazione & insegnamento believes anonymous peer-review is essential to ensure the quality of the scientific output and publication process. Peer Reviewers play an important role, which depends on the trust and the participation of involved parties. It is thus necessary that everybody abides by highest ethical standards. Peer Reviewers are invited to familiarize themselves with the Ethical Statement and Authors Guidelines provided in the journal’s website.

Reviewers are invited to consider the following, when accepting to review a submitted manuscript:

  • They adhere to the aims and scope of the journal.
  • They have no conflict of interest (professional, personal, or financial).
  • They have the necessary expertise to review the manuscript.
  • They have a neutral attitude.

Peer Reviewers commit to meeting the deadlines and to promptly communicate to the Editor any obstacle or hindrance that might cause a delay in the process. If that is the case, the Editor shall decide whether to allow for an extension of the deadline or to forward the manuscript to other Reviewers and relieve the current ones from their duty.

Peer review process, in detail

In order to submit a manuscript ready for peer review, corresponding Authors must ensure it is properly anonymized. Please refer to our section Authors Guidelines.

When the manuscript is ready, the Corresponding Author, on behalf of all Authors, accesses the submission forms in the Submit your manuscript page and uploads the anonymized manuscript.

The manuscript is then subject to a preliminary screening by the Editorial Committee:

  • Does the manuscript match the Amis & Scope of the journal?
  • Does the work match the types of works published by the journal?t
  • Is the manuscript complete?
  • Is it comprehensible?
  • Is it original?
  • Does the manuscript abide by the minimum layout rules and auto-editing, as well as the Author Guidelines?

Once these questions are answered positively, the Editor appoints two Reviewers, who have the duty to assess the manuscript for scientific quality. Editorial rejections are almost always the result of a negative answer to one of the above questions. Other reasons for preliminary rejections are, for example, violation of the ethical guidelines, deontological guidelines, or breach of the journal's policy on conflicts of interest.

Peer review is completed by filling in a peer review form, which includes both a structured and semi-structured assessment (qualitative in nature) of the received manuscript. The form is digitally available, within the review management dashboard of the OJS website.

Formazione & insegnamento asks its Reviewers to assess submitted papers against the following criteria: focus, innovativeness, methodological rigour, literature review, argumentation, style and form, sources and referencing. Moreover, Formazione & insegnamento asks Reviewers to justify their choices by describing the strengths and weaknesses of the paper.

Review forms are embedded in the journal management system and you will be able to interact with them once you log in. However, if you want to know the review questions in advance, please download a copy of the form from here.

Reviewers' comments are summarized with a final judgement:

  • Publishable with no changes
  • Publishable with minor changes
  • Publishable with major changes (re-submit for review).
  • Not publishable

Should Reviewers submit disagreeing reviews, the Editorial Commitee will rule whether they are compatible (e.g., one reivewer asks major changes and the other asks for minor changes) or not. If they are not compatible (publishable vs. unpublishable), the Editorial Committee will assess whether to reject the paper or to forward it to a third Reviewer.

The Editorial team strives to meet Authors' expectations in terms of publication pace. To do so, they carefully plan each issue of the journal and articles are published as soon as possible in the first available issue.

Competing interests

Since Formazione & insegnamento adopts double blind peer review, it commits to reduce all conflicts of interests that may arise from the peer review process. Therefore, reviewers are never chosen from the same institution the Authors belong to. When members of the editorial team of the journal wish to submit an article, they will be excluded from the supervision of the review process concerning that specific submission: this means they will not be able to supervise the allocation of their manuscript to Reviewers.

Reviewers are invited to promptly notify the Editor of any competing interest that might hinder the neutrality of their review.

Timeline

We endeavour to process the manuscripts according to the following schedule:

  • First editorial decision within 30 days
  • Reviews in 60 days
  • Publication (if accepted) within 110 days

In exceptional circumstances, the publication process could take longer (e.g., if reviewers require a re-submission of the written paper).

Controversies

Complaints, controversies, and their resolution process is detailed in the Ethical Statement of the journal (click here).