About the Journal
Focus and Scope
Italian Labour Law e-Journal is an open-access peer-reviewed Journal aiming at the advancement of comparative studies on current labour law topics.
The journal is published in English on a biannual basis. Each issue includes a main section dedicated to a specific theme, and a miscellaneous reserved to spontaneous submissions.
Italian Labour Law e-Journal is a scientific journal recognized by ANVUR (Italian National Agency for Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes) for disciplinary area 12 (Law Studies, including Labour Law). It has also achieved the “Class A” rating for all the recruitment fields of the same area.
Peer Review Process
The peer review process is aimed to verify that each contribution for which publication is requested, corresponds to the Journal’s qualitative parameters of originality, methodological correctness and scientific validity; that it complies with the relevant ethical standards and that it is of interest for the Journal’s objectives.
Each contribution proposed for publication must satisfy the requirements of scientific interest, originality, methodological correctness and scientific validity adopted by the Journal. The contribution must also comply with the Code of Conduct adopted by the Journal.
For each proposed contribution the Editorial Team will carry out a preliminary evaluation in order to verify the originality of the work, its respect of the Journal’s editorial guidelines and its interest with regard to the Journal’s objectives.
For each contribution that has passed the preliminary evaluation by the Editorial Team, the Editor-in-chief will identify two referees. The choice of the referees shall be based on their scientific competence and on the absence of situations of incompatibility or conflict of interest with respect to the Author(s)’ contribution subject to peer review.
The referee to whom the contribution is submitted must confirm his/her availability to fulfill the proposed task no later than five days after receiving the invitation.
The peer review follows a “double blind” process which guarantees anonymity of the Author(s) in respect to the Referees and of the Referees in respect to the Author(s).
The referee is required to maintain confidentiality with respect to the contributions submitted to his examination. To guarantee an impartial judgment, the referee should promptly report any personal situations of conflict of interest or incompatibility.
The peer review is carried out by filling in a questionnaire, in which the referee expresses a judgment with respect to the formal as well as the substantive aspects of the contribution subject to the procedure.
The Referee commits him/herself to complete the peer review and to send the completed questionnaire to the Editorial Team within twenty days following the receipt of the peer review proposal.
As required by the Code of Conduct, the Referee should report the existence of any case of plagiarism or the lack of minimum requirements of interest, originality, methodological correctness and scientific validity which may have not been recognized by the Editorial Team during the preliminary screening.
The peer review can lead to the following outcomes:
- Accept Submission (with no revisions);
- Revisions Required: acceptance with minor revisions;
- Resubmit for Review: major revisions are required before evaluating the acceptance of the manuscript;
- Decline Submission.
In case the opinions expressed by two Referees are discordant, the final decision should be taken by the Editor-in-chief.
In the event that no revisions are required, the contribution will be published in the Journal.
In case of acceptance with minimal revisions, the adequacy of the changes made by the Author(s) will be evaluated by the Editorial Team.
In case of acceptance with significant revisions, the suitability of the corrections made by the Author(s) will be evaluated by the Referees, who have previously carried out the peer review, on condition he/she has agreed to be available for this.
In case of rejection, the contribution will not be published in the Journal.
The Author(s) has the right to contact the Editorial Team to request clarification concerning the Referees’ comments. In any case the Editorial Team’s decisions remain final.
Publication Frequency
The Journal publishes two issues per year.
Open Access Policy
This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.
It releases its articles under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This license allows anyone to download, reuse, re-print, modify, distribute and/or copy the contributions. The works must be properly attributed to its author(s). It is not necessary to ask further permissions both to author(s) or journal board, although you are kindly requested to inform the journal for every reuse of the papers.
Authors who publish on this journal maintain the copyrights.
The journal has neither article processing charges nor submission processing fees.
Code of Conduct
The following statement is inspired by COPE Code of Conduct:
http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors.pdf
Editorial Team
The Editorial Team ensures the conformity of the published materials to the thematic focus of the Journal and of its sections, and pursues the alignment to the highest qualitative scientific standards of the research community the Journal aims to serve.
To this end, the Editorial Team is responsible for the correct implementation of a fair, transparent, rigorous and timely peer review of the manuscripts submitted for publication, carried out by qualified and impartial Reviewers external to the Editorial Team. It undertakes to resort to the best practices in the field, including the use of dedicated software, to identify and prevent plagiarism, self-plagiarism, conflict of interest and other forms of academic and research misconduct. It also protects the peer reviewers’ identity throughout the whole editorial process and afterwards.
A double-blind peer-review protocol is adopted to ensure that manuscripts submitted to the Journal remain confidential while under review. The peer review process is analytically described and published on the Journal’s web site and will be periodically reviewed in pursuit of its continuous improvement. The Editorial Team is prepared to justify any important deviation from the described process.
The Reviewers for any manuscript will be selected on the sole grounds of their scientific expertise in the peculiar subject covered by the manuscript, provided the absence of any competing interest in the specific case. The choice of Reviewers will strive to reflect the breadth of the scientific community.
In case a suspect of misconduct is raised by the Editorial Team or brought to its attention by a Reviewer or other parties, the Editorial Team will take all the appropriate steps to pursue the alleged case, regardless of the fact that the paper has or has not been published, beginning from the request for a detailed clarification from the Author(s).
Submissions from members of the Editorial Team, including the Board of Directors, shall be subject to an enhanced confidentiality peer review protocol to ensure that the manuscripts receive an objective and unbiased evaluation. The circulation of information on the identity of the Author(s)and on the advancement of the editorial process thereof within the team will therefore be kept to a minimum.
The editorial choices will be solely driven by the consideration of the originality, relevance, formal clarity and substantive and methodological validity of the intellectual contents of the submitted manuscripts, without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, political stance of academic affiliation of the Authors.
The Editorial Team will ensure that Authors and Reviewers receive appropriate guidance to understand clearly what is expected from them. For this purpose specific guidelines will be published and regularly updated on the Journal’s web site.
The Editorial Team will provide a timely and motivated response to the requests for clarification and the complaints raised by the Authors in respect to the editorial choices made about their manuscripts.
The Editorial Team will guarantee that articles are published in open access and freely available for all the interested readers. Permanent identification with DOIs guarantees the monitoring and preservation of articles over time.
The Editorial Team will review and update its internal processes periodically in the light of new findings.
Authors
By submitting a manuscript for publication the Authors guarantee the originality of their work, including the fact that it has not been previously published elsewhere, and declare themselves aware of the consequences of plagiarism, self-plagiarism, conflict of interest and other forms of misconduct.
Pre-print publication of a manuscript on SSRN and other on-line platforms for research dissemination is permitted on the condition that the Author clearly acknowledges the Journal as the ultimate destination of the manuscript, providing the detailed references thereof.
In case of co-authored papers, the Authors shall clearly identify which sections, paragraphs or sub-paragraphs must be ascribed to the individual or joint authorship of each Author. In any case, the occurrence of ghost, guest or gift authorships and similar circumstances must be avoided.
In case the Authors received specific funding for the research presented in the manuscript, they shall expressly mention the source of such funding.
Authors should always acknowledge their sources and provide relevant citation details for all publications that have influenced their work.
Authors are required to follow the Author’s Guidelines published by the Journal, therefore ensuring accuracy, completeness and clarity of research reporting, including technical editing.
Reviewers
The Reviewers shall ensure a fair, transparent, rigorous and timely review of the manuscripts submitted to them. They undertake to base their evaluation on the sole grounds of originality, relevance to the remit of the journal (NB risolvere possibile sovrapposizione di competenza con vaglio preliminare interno), formal clarity and substantive and methodological validity of the manuscript.
The Reviewers will disclose any possible kind of competing interest affecting their neutrality before accepting the task, and will operate under a commitment to strict confidentiality.
The Reviewers will cooperate with the Editorial Team to tackle any form of misconduct and conflict of interest on the part of the Author(s). They will bring to the attention of the Editorial Team any suspect of plagiarism, self-plagiarism, redundant publication, potential authorship problem (e.g. ghost, guest or gift authorship), data manipulation, breach of intellectual property or other kind of ethical concern related to the submitted manuscript.
Reviewers should help identifying relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors.
Misconduct
Before triggering the peer review process the Editorial Team will check the originality of each submitted manuscript through a dedicated software (iThenticate).
The Editorial Team will promptly act, either spontaneously or upon input from a Reviewer or a third party, in case of in case of a proven or alleged error or misconduct affecting published or unpublished materials.
Errors, inaccurate or misleading statements will be corrected promptly by means of a notice on the Announcements section of the Journal’s home page.
Appropriate steps will be taken to correct errors or fraudulent behaviors occurred in the publication process or directly affecting the manuscript, following the recommendations, guidelines and flowcharts from COPE. These includes the publication of an erratum (errors from the publication process), corrigendum (errors from the author(s)) or, in the most severe cases, the retraction of the affected work.
Indexing and abstracting
The Journal is indexed in the following databases and search engines:
- ACNP – Italian Catalogue of Serials
- BASE – Bielefeld Academic Search Engine
- DOAJ – Directory of Open Access Journals
- Google Scholar – Academic search engine
- Worldcat – The world’s largest library catalog
Archiving Policy
The University of Bologna has an archival agreement with the National Central Libraries of Florence and Rome within the national project Magazzini Digitali.
http://www.depositolegale.it/editori-aderenti/
Journal History
Founded in 1999 by prof. Franco Carinci, Italian Labour Law e-Journal (ISSN 1561-8048) was the first electronic journal on labour law in Italy. Under Carinci direction the journal published with the following frequency:
1999–2001: from Vol.1 to Vol.3, six issues;
2002: Vol.4, five issues;
2003–2004: Vol.5 and Vol.6, quaterly;
2005–2009: from Vol.7 to Vol.11, annually.
The journal suspended its publications in 2009. Past issues are still available in the former website: http://www.dirittodellavoro.it/public/current/ejournal/index.htm.
In 2019 the Journal resumed publications under the direction of Emanuele Menegatti, with a semi-annual frequency.
Publisher
Dipartimento di Sociologia e Diritto dell'Economia – SDE
Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna
Strada Maggiore, 45
40125 - Bologna, Italy
In partnership with:
Largo Marco Biagi 10
(già viale Storchi 2)
41121 - Modena (MO), Italy
