About the Journal
Focus and Scope
USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics is the first Italian academic journal entirely dedicated to the study of U.S. history and politics. It is published annually by an editorial board of early-career and established scholars based in Italy and across Europe. Founded with the support of CISPEA (Inter-university Consortium for the Study of Euro-American History and Politics, https://www.cispea.it/) and the U.S. Embassy in Rome, the journal sets out to offer the occasion particularly to postgraduates and early career Italian and international scholars to publish innovative and ground-breaking academic research that investigates any aspects of U.S. history and politics: social, economic and intellectual developments, relations of gender, race and class, foreign policy, international relations, history of policies and institutions. The journal pays particular attention to recent historiographical trends, in particular global, transatlantic and Atlantic history, and to multidisciplinary approaches which successfully intermingle history with social and political sciences. USAbroad publishes in English. A double-blind peer-reviewed journal, USAbroad’s aim is to select and publish exclusively independent and top-quality scientific production.
By publishing world-leading research, USAbroad sets out to favor the professionalization and growth of a new generation of Italian scholars of American history and politics while at the same time opening opportunities to develop a fruitful platform for academic and scientific exchanges with early-career and established scholars of U.S. History based in Europe and United States.
Peer Review Process
All research essays published in USAbroad have undergone a rigorous peer-review process, involving a first evaluation from the Editorial Board and the Scientific Committee. This latter, composed by leading scholars and experts in different fields related to U.S. history and politics, will assure the compliance with the maximum standards of scientific quality. After the first screening from the Editorial Board and the Scientific Committee, selected essays will undergo a double-blind peer review process with external reviewers. This means that the reviewers and the authors don’t know each other’s identity. To facilitate this, the authors need to ensure that manuscripts submitted on the USAbroad platform are prepared in a way that does not reveal their identity. Reviewers are chosen on the base of their expertise and knowledge on the selected paper topics.
As part of the initial quality assessment, each article will undergo plagiarism detection through iThenticate.
Publication Frequency
USAbroad – Journal of American History and Politics is an annual journal.
Indexing and Abstracting
The Journal is indexed in the following databases and search engines:
- ANCP – Italian Catalogue of Serials
- BASE – Bielefield Academic Search Engine
- DOAJ – Directory of Open Access Journals
- ERIH PLUS – European Reference Index for the Humanities and the Social Sciences
- Google Scholar – Academic search engine
- JournalTOCs – International aggregator of scientific articles TOCs
- ROAD – Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources
- Worldcat – The world’s largest library catalog
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.
Quality control, publication ethics and publication malpractice
The following statement is inspired by the COPE Code of Conduct (pdf)
Duties for Journal Editor and Co-Editor
Editor and Co-Editor have a duty to act if they suspect misconduct or if an allegation of misconduct is brought to them. This duty extends to both published and unpublished papers.
Editor and Co-Editor have a system for managing their own conflicts of interest as well as those of the staff, authors, reviewers and Editorial Board members.
Editor and Co-Editor have a process for handling submissions from the editors, employees or members of the Editorial Board to ensure unbiased review.
Editor and Co-Editor encourage study and research into peer review and publishing and reassess the journal’s process in the light of new finding.
Editor and Co-Editor guarantee that errors, inaccurate or misleading statements are corrected promptly and with due prominence.
Editor and Co-Editor will publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.
Editor and Co-Editor will respond promptly to complaints and will ensure there is a way for dissatisfied complainants to take complaints further. Complains and appeals could be sent to the principal contact of the Journal.
Editor and Co-Editor ensure that contents are published on a timely basis, following the stated frequency.
Editor and Co-Editor take all reasonable steps to guarantee that the published material is securely preserved and all articles are published in open access, freely available to anyone. Permanent identifiers as DOI guarantee tracking and preservation of articles in the long term.
Editor and Co-Editor are responsible for the selection and the publication of the articles submitted to the journal
Editor and Co-Editor take all reasonable steps to ensure the quality of the material published in USAbroad.
The decision of Editor and Co-Editor as to accept or reject a paper for publication in the journal is based on subject relevance and originality and is guided by the review of suitably qualified reviewers.
Editor and Co-Editor will ensure that appropriate reviewers are selected for submissions.
Editor and Co-Editor strive to ensure that peer review at the journal is fair, unbiased and timely.
A description of peer review process is published, and Editor and Co-Editor are ready to justify any important deviation from the described process.
Editor and Co-Editor evaluate manuscripts for their intellectual content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.
Editor and Co-Editor’s decision may be constrained by such legal requirements regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.
Editor and Co-Editor provide guidance to authors that encourage accuracy, completeness and clarity of research reporting, including technical editing and the use of appropriate guidelines and checklists.
Editor and Co-Editor have a system to ensure that material submitted to the Journal remains confidential while under review. Confidentiality of individual information obtained in the course of research or professional interactions is guaranteed.
Duties for Authors
Authors are responsible for the articles they submit: they must assure the originality of their works, being aware of the consequences of misconduct.
Authors should always acknowledge their sources and provide relevant citation details for all publications that have influenced their work.
Authors are asked to provide the raw data in connection with a paper for editorial review, and should be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable time after publication in order to provide access to such data.
Authors are asked to follow the Author’s Guidelines published by the Journal, therefore ensuring accuracy, completeness and clarity of research reporting, including technical editing.
Duties for Reviewers
Reviewers are provided guidance on everything that is expected of them including the need to handle submitted material in confidence.
Reviewers are required to disclose any potential competing interests before agreeing to review a submission.
Reviewers are encouraged to comment on the originality of submissions and to be alert to redundant publications and plagiarism. They will alert Editor and Co-Editor regarding intellectual property issues and plagiarism and work to handle potential breaches of intellectual property laws and conventions.
Reviewers should help identifying relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors.
Handling of errors and misconducts
Editors will promptly act in case of errors and misconducts, both proven and alleged. In case such as errors in articles or in the publication process, fraudulent publication or plagiarism, appropriate steps will be taken, following the recommendations, guidelines and checklists 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.
Publication Fees
The journal has neither article processing charges nor submission fees.
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/
Publisher
Department of Political and Social Sciences – SPS
Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna
Via Zamboni, 32
40126 - Bologna (Italy)
Inter-university Consortium for the Study of Euro-American History and Politics (CISPEA)
