1 Responsibilities and duties of the Editors

The Editors of Hamsa are responsible for the contents published in the journal, and must therefore ensure its scientific quality, avoid malpractice in the publication of research results.

In order to achieve this goal, the Editors will be impartial in handling the papers proposed for publication and must respect the intellectual independence of the authors, who must be granted the right of reply in the event of a negative evaluation.

Equally, the Editors will keep the confidentiality of the texts received and their content until they have been accepted for publication. Likewise, neither the Editors nor any person involved in the evaluation and the publishing processes may use data, arguments or interpretations contained in unpublished works for their own research, except with the express written consent of the authors.

The Editors are responsible for the correct application of the rules governing the operation. These include: to represent the journal in the different forums; to suggest and support possible improvements; to seek the collaboration of specialists in the field; to review, in a first evaluation, the articles received; to write editorials, reviews, comments, news, reviews, etc. for the journal; to attend the meetings related to the edition of the journal.

The journal will preserve the integrity of its contents and unauthorised reproduction by third parties of part or the totality of the texts published in it are not permitted.

1.1 Review of papers

The Editors will take all reasonable steps to ensure the quality of the material that is published, recognising that sections within the journal will have different aims and standards.

The Editors shall ensure that published research papers have been peer-reviewed by, at least two specialists in the field, and that the review process has been fair and impartial. Hamsa: Journal of Judaic and Islamic Studies uses the double-blind procedure (anonymity of authors and reviewers) for the articles submitted to this journal. If one of the two evaluations is negative, a third report may be requested at the discretion of the editorial board.

The originality of the work will be evaluated in the review process and special attention will be paid to detect plagiarism and redundant publications, as well as falsified or manipulated data. The evaluation process should ensure that plagiarism and redundant or duplicate publication are detected.

Editors will provide guidance to reviewers on everything that is expected of them including the need to handle submitted material in confidence. Editors will ensure that peer reviewers’ identities are protected.

1.2 Acceptance or rejection of manuscripts

The responsibility for accepting or rejecting a paper for publication rests with the

Editors, who will rely on the reports received on the paper from the reviewers. These reports shall base their opinion on the quality of the papers on their relevance, originality and clarity of exposition.

Editors will not reverse decisions to accept submissions unless serious problems are identified with the submission. It will be possible for authors to appeal editorial decisions.

The Editors’ decisions to accept or reject a paper for publication will be based on the paper’s relevance, originality, and clarity, and the study’s validity and its significance to the journal.

The Editors reserve the right to directly reject the papers received, without resorting to an external consultation process, if they unanimously consider them inappropriate for the journal because they lack the required level of quality, they lack relevance to the scientific objectives of the journal, do not comply with the journal's standards, or present evidence of scientific fraud.

1.3 Retraction and notice of irregularity

The editors reserve the right to retraction published papers that are subsequently found to be unreliable due to unintentional errors or scientific fraud or malpractice: fabrication, manipulation or copying of data, plagiarism of texts, and redundant or duplicate publication, omission of references to the sources consulted, use of content without permission or justification, etc. The objective guiding the retraction is to ensure the integrity of the scientific production.

In case of conflict, the journal will ask the author(s) for explanations and evidence to clarify it, and will make a final decision based on these.

In case of conflict of duplicity, caused by the simultaneous publication of an article in two journals, it will be resolved by determining the date of receipt of the work in each of them. If only part of the article contains an error, this will be rectified later by means of an editorial note or an erratum.

The journal reserves the right to publish notice of the retraction of a given text. The reasons for such action should be mentioned in the notice, in order to distinguish malpractice from unintentional error. The decision to disavow a text should be taken as soon as possible, in order to ensure that the erroneous work is not cited in its field of research.

De-authorised articles will not be retained in the electronic edition of the journal, but substituted with a clear and unambiguous statement that it is a de-authorised article.

1.4 Rules for Authorship

The Editors will ensure that the rules for the presentation of manuscripts of each journal (concerning the length of the abstract and the article, the preparation of images, the system for bibliographical references, etc.) are public.

1.5 Conflict of interest

When a paper received by the journal is signed by a person who is an Editor of the Journal, by a person with a direct personal or professional relationship, or is closely related to an Editor’s past or present research, it will be considered a conflict of interest with that Editor. Anyone affected by any of these cases will refrain from intervening in the evaluation process of the proposed article.

1.6 Guest Editors’ Responsibilities

Guest editors are responsible for defining the subject matter and role of every article in a thematic issue; providing clear guidelines to authors regarding the topic and boundaries of their contributions and the overall design of the issue; ensuring, in collaboration with the Editors of the Journal, that appropriate reviewers are selected for all the articles; establishing a timeline for draft paper submission, peer review, revision and final paper submission with the executive editorial board, and ensuring that all deadlines are met; and writing the Introduction to the issue.

The Editors will review that the monographic issue reaches the Journal’s standard of quality.

2 Authorship guidelines

2.1 Rules for publication

Texts submitted for publication must be the result of original and unpublished research. They must include the data obtained and used, as well as an objective discussion of the results. Sufficient information must be provided so that any specialist can confirm or refute the interpretations defended in the work.

Authors must adequately mention the origin of ideas or literal phrases taken from other published works in the manner indicated in the journal's regulations.

When images are included as part of the research, they should adequately explain how they were created or obtained. In the case of using graphic material (figures, photos, maps, etc.) partially reproduced in other publications, authors must cite their source, providing the relevant reproduction permissions if necessary.

Unnecessary fragmentation of articles should be avoided. If the work is very extensive, it can be published in several parts, each of which develops a particular aspect of the overall study. Related papers should be published in the same journal to facilitate their interpretation by readers.

2.2. Copyright and Licensing

Authors are fully responsible for obtaining permission to reproduce images, photographs and other elements protected by copyright, and proof of such permission may be required when the final version of the manuscript is submitted.

If authors are allowed to publish under a Creative Commons license, then any specific license requirements shall be noted.  The journal will not repost final accepted versions and/or published articles on third party repositories.

The authors retain the copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication, with the work simultaneously licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence which allows the work to be shared with acknowledgement of authorship and initial publication in this journal.

2.3 Originality and plagiarism

Authors must ensure that the data and results presented in the paper are original and have not been copied, invented, distorted or manipulated.

Plagiarism in all its forms, multiple or redundant publication, as well as invention or manipulation of data constitute serious misconduct and are considered scientific fraud.

Authors shall not submit originals to Hamsa that have previously been submitted to another journal, nor shall they submit such originals submitted to Hamsa to another journal until they have been notified of their rejection or have voluntarily withdrawn them.

2.4 Authorship

Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. The person responsible for the article to the journal, in the case of multiple authorship, must ensure that those who have contributed significantly to the conception, planning, design, execution, data collection, interpretation and discussion of the results of the work are acknowledged; in any case, all the persons signing the article share responsibility for the work presented. Likewise, the contact person must ensure that those signing the paper have reviewed and approved the final version of the paper and give their approval for its possible publication.

The contact author should ensure that none of the signatures responsible for the paper have been omitted and that they satisfy the aforementioned co-authorship criteria, thus avoiding fictitious or gift authorship, which is bad scientific practice.

Likewise, the contribution of other contributors who are neither listed as signatories nor responsible for the final version of the paper should be acknowledged in a note to the article, by way of thanks.

The original sources on which the information contained in the paper is based should be identified and cited in the bibliography. However, irrelevant or redundant citations should not be included and overuse of references to research that is already established in the body of scientific knowledge should be avoided.

Information obtained privately through conversations, correspondence or from discussions with colleagues in the field, should not be included unless the author has permission from the source of the information, the information has been received in the context of scientific advice, and the external contribution is acknowledged.

2.5 Significant errors in published work

When an author discovers a serious error in his or her work, he or she is obliged to notify the journal as soon as possible, in order to modify the article, withdraw it, retract it or publish a correction or erratum.

If the possible error is detected by any of the members of the Editorial Team, the author is obliged to demonstrate that his or her work is correct.

3 Guidelines Evaluation of Articles

The reviewer must consider the work to be reviewed as a confidential document until publication, both during and after the review process.

Under no circumstances may they disseminate or use the information, details, arguments or interpretations contained in the text under review for their own benefit or that of others, or to the detriment of third parties.

The reviewer must judge objectively the quality of the whole paper, including the information on which the working hypothesis is based, and the presentation and writing of the text.

He/she must specify his/her criticisms, and be objective and constructive in his/her comments. He/she must argue his/her judgements adequately, without adopting hostile positions and respecting the intellectual independence of the author of the work.

The reviewer must warn the Editor of any substantial similarity between the work submitted for review and another article already published or under review in another journal (redundant or duplicate publication). He/she must also draw attention to plagiarised, falsified, fabricated or manipulated text or data.

The reviewer must act promptly and must deliver his or her report within the agreed time and notify the Editors of any delays. The reviewer must also inform the Editor as soon as possible if they do not consider themselves capable of judging the work commissioned or if they are unable to complete the task within the agreed deadline.

Whoever carries out an evaluation should check that relevant works already published on the subject are cited. To this end, they will review the bibliography in the text and suggest the elimination of superfluous or redundant references, or the incorporation of others that have not been cited.

The reviewer must refuse to review a work when he/she has a professional or personal relationship with any of the persons involved in its authorship that may affect his/her judgement of the work, or when a conflict of interest may arise due to the work to be reviewed being closely related to the work being developed or already published by the reviewer. In these cases, the reviewer should give notify the Editors, stating the reasons their withdrawal.

4 Author fees

It is the journal’s policy that no author fees of any kind shall be charged for the purpose of manuscript processing, publication material or any other related reason.

References

CSIC, Guía de buenas prácticas para la publicación (Guide to Good Practices for Publication): http://revistas.csic.es/public/guia buenas practicas CSIC.pdf

COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics): http://publicationethics.org