About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Papers. Revista de Sociologia (eISSN 0210-2862) is edited in electronic format by the Department of Sociology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Since it was founded in 1972, it has become one of the leading journals of sociology in Spain and the Spanish-speaking community. Its main aim is to publish and spread original scientific research and rigurous theoretical work in sociology and other related social sciences (anthropology, political science, economy, social psychology). The contents cover virtually all fields of sociological research and theory, and explore interdisciplinary boundaries in the social sciences. It accepts three languages (English, Spanish and Catalan), though all titles, abstracts and keywords are available in English

Peer Review Process

Manuscripts will be peer-reviewed in a double-blind way. All the works sent to Papers. Revista de Sociologia will be refereed according to standards of strict scientific quality.

In a first stage, the Editorial Team will revise the general quality and thematic adequacy of the manuscript; manuscripts whose quality is notoriously low or which do not make any contribution to the journal’s scientific fields may be directly rejected without external refereeing. For this first review, the Editorial Team may require assessment by the members of the Editorial Board or the Advisory Board. Proposals for the debate section can be accepted after passing this preliminary filter and will not necessarily be sent for further review.

Manuscripts which pass the first review will be sent to two external referees, who will be experts in the pertinent field or research area. In case of discrepancy between the referees, or if considered necessary by any other reason, the Editorial Team may send the manuscript to a third referee.

In the light of the referees’ reports, the Editorial Team may adopt one of the following decisions about the manuscript, which will be communicated to its author/s:

• Publication (as it is or with very minor changes).
• Publication after revision.
• Revise and resubmit.
• Rejection.

The rejection decision for articles may take around 160 days, and the acceptance decision, 300 days. Although PAPERS has a professional editorial management service, these timeframes can vary significantly depending on the availability of both the editorial team and external reviewers, who carry out their work on a voluntary basis. For this reason, the journal cannot commit to specific response times. Nevertheless, all manuscripts are handled with the greatest possible care and diligence.

Editorial production

Once the articles are accepted, a “final version” will be required, in which formal changes to the de-anonymized article will be requested regarding metadata, the presentation of tables and figures, adherence to citation and reference guidelines, among other aspects. This final version of the papers must include funding agencies and project research codes.

Accepted articles will be sent for proof correction to review layout errors or obvious typos, where no writing improvements or substantial changes may be made.

Communication with authors

Communication with authors (acknowledgment of receipt, notification of acceptance, inquiries, etc.) will be conducted through the journal's OJS system. For any other inquiries, please contact the following email address: r.papers.sociologia@uab.cat

Repository

Authors are permitted to deposit the published version of the article. Check Open Policy Finder.

Plagiarism, fraud, and retraction

Authors must ensure that the data and results presented in the work are original and have not been copied, invented, distorted, or manipulated. Plagiarism in all its forms, self-plagiarism, multiple or redundant publication, as well as the invention or manipulation of data constitute serious breaches of ethics and are considered scientific fraud.

When an author discovers a serious error in their work, they are obliged to communicate it to the journal's editors as soon as possible to modify their work, withdraw it, retract it, or publish a correction or erratum.

If a possible error is detected by any member of the Editorial Team, the authors are obliged to demonstrate that their work is correct.

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

You can consult the policy on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in articles at this link.

Publication Frequency

Papers is a journal published quarterly in january, april, july and october.

Editorial practices in gender equality

Papers, Revista de Sociologia is committed to gender equality. In this sense, the editorial practices includes:

Inclusive language

It is recommended to use inclusive language in scientific articles that contributes to making the situation of women in society more visible. In this sense, it is suggested to replace the use of the generic male terms when referring to men and women for: terms of generic value, explanatory syntagms or split formulas. In order to facilitate the application of the principle of equality, it is recommended to read the UN website: Gender Inclusive Language.

Gender perspective in research

It is recommended to incorporate a gender approach in research work. On the one hand, it should be avoided gender stereotypes and biases that adopt the masculine as the universal referent or naturalize the social construction of gender inequalities. On the other hand, the variable “sex” must be taken into account in any type of research:

Reflect and make informed decisions about the gender composition of the samples and report the sex of the research subjects.
Analyse the differences within each of the sexes and present the results disaggregated by sex.

In this regard, it is recommended to consult the handbook: Gender in Research.

Visibility of women

In order to contribute to making visible the scientific production and contributions of women, the journal includes the full name of the authorship of the manuscripts it publishes.

Gender parity

Papers, Revista de Sociologia will seek to maintain gender parity in the composition of the Editorial team, the Editorial Board and the people who evaluate the journal, as can be seen in the statistics published in the last issue of each year.

Open Access Policy

Papers. Revista de Sociologia 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. Open access to full contents in PDF, including all issues from 1973, are available electronically without any delay.

Papers. Revista de Sociologia is published under the licence system Creative Commons, according to the modality “Attribution-Noncommercial (by-nc): derivative work is allowed under the condition of non making a commercial use. The original work cannot be used with commercial purposes”.

Authors retain copyright.

Interoperability and digital preservation protocols

Interoperability protocols

The content published in this journal is also available through the OAI-PHM 2.0 protocol (Open Archives Initiative – Protocol for Metadata Harvesting). You can consult the available formats at the following link.

The route for harvesters is: https://papers.uab.cat/oai

The metadata of the contents of this journal are offered under a CC0 license.

Digital preservation

In case of loss of material on the main server, Papers makes recurrent copies on local disks. It is also archived in LOCKSS and in the UAB institutional repository.

Publication Fees

Since the publication costs for Papers. Revista de Sociologia are covered by the editing university internal budgets, authors do not need to pay an article-processing charge (APC) and no waivers are offered.

Ownership registration

PAPERS. Revista de Sociologia is the exclusive property of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), by virtue of the provisions of Spanish legislation on intellectual and industrial property. Any use of the header (name, graphic design, logo, and associated identifying elements) without the express authorization of the UAB is prohibited.

Governance

The direction of PAPERS is appointed through the Council of the Department of Sociology at the UAB. The editor-in-chief selects editors and an editorial manager to form the Editorial Team.

The editorial team, in turn, proposes and selects new members for the Editorial Board, who are asked to provide preliminary recommendations on the articles received by the journal. The Editorial Board has the authority to recommend rejecting submissions or to send them for external review, suggesting potential reviewers.

Accessibility statement

The structure and aesthetics of the journal (hereinafter "theme") is a variation of the default OJS theme for version 3.3. This variation was carried out by the UAB Publications Service and introduces changes that are respectful of the WCAG accessibility standards, so that the same results of the audit carried out on the default theme of OJS 3.3 are applicable.

Statement on publication ethics and misconduct

The Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) is fully committed to promoting ethical conduct in the publication of its science journals, based on the principles laid down by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (http://publicationethics.org).

To achieve this, the UAB considers it essential for all parties involved in the publishing process for its science journals – editors, reviewers, and authors – to know and accept the terms of the above code, as summarised below.

Publishers
Publishers should undertake to do the following:
• clearly establish the relationship between publishers, editors and other parties through a contract;
• promote editorial independence;
• respect privacy;
• protect intellectual property;
• maintain the integrity of published content;
• publish content punctually.

Editors

• Decisions on publishing papers. After consulting the editorial board, journal editors decide whether or not to publish the papers submitted to their department, basing their decision on the reports made by two external reviewers and, in the case of significant disagreement between these, a third reviewer. They should apply the same criteria for accepting or rejecting all papers in accordance with their originality, importance and clarity. Editors must have systems in place for editorial decisions to be appealed against before the editorial board. They must also give full, up-to-date guidelines on authors' responsibilities and on the characteristics of papers sent to the journal.
• Non-discrimination. When examining submitted papers, editors should not take into account the authors' race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, ethnic origin, country of origin, citizenship or political views.
• Confidentiality. Editors and other journal employees should not reveal information about the papers received to anyone other than the authors themselves and the reviewers. They should ensure that throughout the process the anonymity of reviewers and authors is maintained at all times.
• Conflicts of interest and disclosure. Editors should not use results from papers submitted to them for their own research work without express permission from the author.
• Recognition of error. Editors should publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when necessary.
• Quality. Editors should elicit the opinions of authors, reviewers and the editorial board in order to improve the editorial process.

Authors
• Authorship of the text. Papers submitted should be signed by the author and by anyone else who has played a significant role in planning, organising, conducting or processing the research that the paper is reporting on. In cases of co-authorship, the author submitting the text should state explicitly that it contains the names of all the authors, and that these have given their approval to the final version of the paper, for publication in a UAB journal.
• Responsibility. Authors take full responsibility for the content of their manuscript.
• Plagiarism and originality. Authors should be prepared to declare that the paper submitted to the journal is original in each and all of its parts and that all sources used are correctly cited in it.
• Access and conservation of data. At the editors' request, authors should clarify the sources or the data on which the research is based. These data should be kept for a reasonable time after publication, and may be disclosed if necessary.
• Multiple or repeated publication and conflicts of interest. Authors should not publish papers that present the same content in more than one journal at the same time.
• Conflicts of interest and disclosure. Authors should be prepared to declare that there is no conflict of interest that could affect the results of the research or the interpretations offered. They should also state sources of funding for the research, where applicable, and the name of the project their paper reports on.
• Errors in published papers. Authors who discover an important error or inaccuracy in a published paper should inform the journal editors and provide any information needed to make the necessary corrections.

Reviewers
• Peer review. A system of double-blind review is to be adopted, which helps editors and the editorial board to make decisions on manuscripts submitted and at the same time gives authors an opportunity to improve their work.
• Meeting lead times. Having agreed to review a paper, reviewers should respect the lead times established. If unable to do so, they should give sufficient notice of this to the editors.
• Confidentiality. Papers under review are considered to be confidential documents, so the reviewers should not discuss them with third parties without the permission of the editors.
• Objectivity. Reviews should be carried out objectively. Reviewers should express their opinions on manuscripts appropriately and justify their conclusions.
• Bibliographic references. Reviewers should provide exact bibliographic data on works of importance in the paper's subject area that the author may have omitted. Reviewers should also inform editors about any similarities detected between the text under review and other works.
• Conflicts of interest and disclosure. Any restricted information obtained in the review process is considered confidential and may not be used for personal ends. If carrying out a review entails a conflict of interest for reviewers because they have collaborated or competed with the authors or the authors' institutions, these reviewers should decline the review proposal.