BIBLIOTHECA DANTESCA: JOURNAL OF DANTE STUDIES

ETHICS AND MALPRACTICE STATEMENT

Definitions
Editorial Board: The aggregate of Director-In-Chief, Directors, Editor-In-Chief, Editors, and Co-Editors of Bibliotheca Dantesca.
Scientific Board: The board of external (i.e., non-UPenn) scholars that guarantees for the high-quality standards of Bibliotheca Dantesca’s publications.
Referees, or Reviewers: The external (i.e., non UPenn) scholars who are asked by the Editorial Board to provide an anonymous, impartial evaluation of a paper submitted to Bibliotheca Dantesca.
Author(s): The person(s) submitting a manuscript paper to Bibliotheca Dantesca for consideration.
Readers: The audience of Bibliotheca Dantesca.

Publication and Authorship
Bibliotheca Dantesca [henceforth: “the Journal”] expects authors to observe the highest standards in publication ethics (concerning plagiarism, misappropriation of others’ works, etc.). As a reminder, the Editorial Board recalls that it is not good practice to publish the same contribution in more than one journal or volume. Therefore, it is strongly recommended not to submit the same paper to more than one journal at the same time. Once submitted, the author will be acknowledged of the paper reception by e-mail. The first phase of the editorial process will evaluate quality and interest of the proposed contribution in consideration of the editorial scope of the Journal. Negative evaluation of this requirement will lead to the exclusion of the manuscript, which will be promptly communicated to the author.

All articles accepted for publications will appear in the upcoming issue of the Journal, which is published once a year in December. The Journal is committed to safeguarding all rights associated with authorship and intellectual property. Each piece published in the Journal (no matter which Section it belongs to) will be assigned a DOI, which identifies each individual article uniquely and persistently. All articles, as well as each Journal's issue as a whole, display the exact date of publication, in order to make sure that no content is added, removed, or edited after publication. Authors automatically retain copyright to their work. No fee is charged to publish with the Journal.

Authors' Responsibilities
Submitted papers will undergo a process of double-blind peer review (Articles) or single-blind peer review (Notes), evaluating the author’s contribution to the field and the authenticity of the proposed data. Authors are expected to meaningfully contribute, with their submission, to the scholarly debate on the selected topic. Authors are also urged to provide any correction to the submitted paper as soon as possible.

Peer-review and Reviewers' Responsibilities
The Editorial Board of the Journal will assure an objective peer-review process, avoiding any possible conflict of interest. In this sense, the Journal confirms that reviewed articles will be treated confidentially. Papers must be submitted anonymously in order to undergo the blind peer-review process. At least one scholar among the most eminent experts in the field will review the manuscript. Typically, peer reviewers will not be members of the Editorial Board or the Scientific Board, although members of the Scientific Board may be occasionally consulted. The Editorial Board will choose the Referees in consideration of scientific merits and professional experience. Reviewers are required to disclose any potential competing interests before agreeing to review a submission. Reviewers will submit a detailed report on the quality, interest, and potential impact of the manuscript, which will be carefully considered by the Editorial Board while assessing the manuscript submission. In case of disagreement between the two reports, the manuscript will be submitted to a third Referee. Acceptation and refusal of the manuscript, as well as suggested or required modifications, will be promptly communicated to the author. Inclusion of required modification into the manuscript is conditional to its final acceptation. If considered necessary by the Editorial Board, the new version of the manuscript will undergo a further peer-review process before being eventually accepted (or rejected). Authors will be kept informed throughout the editorial process. Once the paper is accepted, the peer-reviewed and revised version of the manuscript will be uploaded to UPenn’s Manifold platform. The Journal will send to the author the article proofs, which must be corrected and returned within 15 (fifteen) calendar days.

The Journal is committed to guarantee that each submission is given careful, non-biased, and well-thought-out examination by the external Referees. This is achieved by making sure that external referees are renowned experts in the field within which the topic of the submission falls, that they are committed to the task of providing a fair and attentive judgement, and that no competing interests of any sort exist between the Referee/s and the submission under exam. In addition, the Journal’s Editorial Board will carefully assess all reports coming from peer-review readers to make sure that all standards of quality, integrity, and fair judgement have been met. If the editors find that these standards have not been satisfied adequately (e.g., the report makes it clear that the external reader has not performed a close scrutiny of the submission, or that he/she has been unjustly dismissive of it, or that he/she does not ground his/her assessments on solid and unbiased evidence), they will ask the external Reviewer/s to provide a new report, or they will ask a new Reviewer to provide one. Authors will always be kept informed about all steps of the review process. Authors also have the right to appeal against editorial decisions if they find that their submission has not been given adequate and fair assessment. If this happens, authors will need to refer to the Journal’s Editorial Board directly by emailing to bibliothecadantesca@sas.upenn.edu. One or more members of the staff will carefully review the submission along with all peer-review reports produced to make sure that all the above-mentioned standards are met. They will be in close touch with the author to provide explanations and clarifications about the review process and the specific content of each peer-review report, and they will be willing to have the submission undergo a new peer-review process if circumstances require to do so.

Editorial Responsibilities
The Journal’s Editorial Board, after consulting with the members of the Scientific Board, a) assume complete responsibility and authority to reject or accept an article, b) confirm that they have no conflict of interests with respect to articles they reject/accept, c) will only accept a paper when they are reasonably certain of its authenticity. If errors are found, the members of the Editorial Board will promote publication of correction or retraction, preserving the anonymity of Reviewers.

The Editorial Board’s decision to accept or reject a paper for publication will be based exclusively on the paper’s importance, originality and clarity, and the study’s validity and its relevance to the remit of the Journal. Editors will never reverse decision to accept a submission unless serious problems are identified with the submission (e.g., plagiarism, misconduct, etc.).

The Editorial Board is committed to provide new members of the Scientific Board with guidelines on everything that is expected of them and to keep existing members updated on new policies and developments. The Editorial Board of the Journal consult all Scientific Board’s members at least once a year to gauge their opinions about the running of the Journal, to inform them of any change to Journal policies, and to identify future challenges.

Relations with Readers
Readers will always be informed about who has funded research or other scholarly work and whether the funders had any role in the research and its publication and, if so, what this was. In order to champion transparency, the Journal also ensures that non-peer-review sections are clearly identified. As a general rule, “Articles” undergo peer-review process by two anonymous external experts, “Notes” are peer-reviewed by one anonymous external expert, while “Reports”, “Interviews”, and “Book Reviews” are not peer-reviewed, although they undergo careful revision by one or more members of the Journal’s Editorial Board to ensure that all necessary standards of quality, integrity, and ethical conduct are adequately met.

Duplicate or Redundant Publication
According to COPE’s definition, duplicate or redundant publication (often labeled as “self-plagiarism”) occurs when a work, or substantial parts of a work, is published more than once by the author(s) of the work without appropriate cross-referencing or justification for the overlap. This can be in the same or a different language. In matters of duplicate or redundant publication, Bibliotheca Dantesca adheres to the guidelines established by Cambridge University Press, in that the Journal does not support overlap between publications, unless a) it is felt that editorially this will strengthen the academic discourse; b) we have clear approval from the original publication; c) we include citation of the original source.

We also expect our Readers, Reviewers, Editorial Board’s and Scientific Board’s members to bring any suspicions of duplicate or redundant publication to our attention, either by contacting the relevant editor or by emailing to bibliothecadantesca@sas.upenn.edu.

Fraudulent Research and Research Misconduct
In the event of fraudulent research or research misconduct by one of our authors, our prime concern will be the integrity of the content published. We will work with the relevant Scientific Board’s, Editorial Board’s members, and other appropriate institutions to inquire. Any publication found to include fraudulent results will be retracted, or an appropriate correction or expression of concern will be published (see the next paragraph).

Retractions, Corrections, and Expressions of Concern
We consider retractions, corrections, or expressions of concern in line with COPE’s Retraction Guidelines. If an author is found to have made an error, the Journal will issue a corrigendum. If the Journal is found to have made an error, we will issue an erratum. Retractions are usually reserved for articles that are so seriously flawed that their findings or conclusions should not be relied upon, or that contain substantial plagiarism.

Transparency and Integrity of Record
The Journal supports transparency and openness around any material associated with research. All contents published by the journal are made available in open access. All contents are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). We also maintain a record of the existence of everything we publish with information (metadata) describing each publication.

Ethics Issues
Publishing ethics will be monitored and safeguarded by the Journal’s Editorial Board on the basis of a use of guidelines for retracting articles, and a maintenance of the integrity of the academic record. The Journal always will be willing to publish corrections, clarifications, retractions, and apologies when needed, on the basis that neither plagiarism nor fraudulent data will be published. The Editorial Board’s members of the Journal encourage and are willing to consider cogent criticisms of work published in the Journal. If such a circumstance arises, Authors of criticized material will be given the opportunity to respond.

In all cases of complaints and criticisms, the Journal will be committed to comply with the COPE flowchart on complaints.

Privacy
Privacy of authors and reviewers is crucial to the Journal. This privacy statement provides information about the personal information that Bibliotheca Dantesca collects, and the ways in which the Journal uses that personal information. Bibliotheca Dantesca may collect and use personal information that is necessary for the processing and publication of manuscripts submitted to us. This information may include names, affiliation and contact details, including postal address, emails, phone numbers and fax numbers.

Any personal information received by the Journal will only be used to:

process and publish submitted manuscripts;
communicate with authors and reviewers;
manage the Journal’s website.

Following the recent GDPR European regulation, Bibliotheca Dantesca will never disclose personal information without consent from the Author or Reviewer. The Editorial Board will take reasonable technical and organizational precautions to prevent the loss, misuse or alteration of your personal information.

If you have any questions about our privacy policy and treatment of personal information, please send an email to bibliothecadantesca@sas.upenn.edu.

Giacomo Berchi, “Lo discorrer di Dio sovra quest’acque”: Dante, Ulysses, and the Creation of the World (Par. 29.17-21)