Statutes of the Complutense Journal Sociedad e Infancias

Date of modification: 10 June 2022

Preamble

The journal SOCIEDAD E INFANCIAS (ISSN-e: 2531-0720 / p-ISSN  2695-8996) is a scientific periodical published by the Department of Applied Sociology of the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology.

Sociedad e Infancias (Society and Childhoods) is an interdisciplinary journal that takes into account the condition of children and adolescents as social actors, emphasising their rights as citizens and their position in society. It considers childhood as a permanent structural component of any social structure, although its members are continually renewed and experience childhood in different ways, giving rise to a diversity of lived childhoods.

Its objective is to promote the exchange between scientists and researchers, mainly Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American, but also from any part of the world, who are oriented along the lines of the new childhood studies.

This platform is aimed at teachers, researchers and students in any field of social sciences related to childhood: sociology, anthropology, social psychology, education, law, social work, social education, economics, history, paediatrics, etc., as well as professionals, children's organisations, international cooperation organisations and the media.

1. Management bodies

The organs of management responsible for the scientific coordination and editing of the journal will be the Editorial Board and the Advisory Board. All members of these boards undertake to respect the principles of the Code of Ethics established for scientific journals by the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

1.1. Editorial Board: structure and composition

  • The Editorial Board will be composed of the Director, the Secretary, the members (fourteen) and the Sub-Director (if applicable). An active lecturer with a contractual relationship with UCM must hold the post of Director. At least one third of its members must belong to institutions other than the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
  • The Editorial Board will assist the Director in all his or her functions and, in particular, in the monitoring of articles (reception, evaluation, and acceptance) and in the definition of the contents and style of the journal (drafting of rules for the presentation of originals, creation and orientation of the sections, etc.).
  • The members will be elected by the Council of the Department of Applied Sociology, at the proposal of the management team. There will be three ballots on the candidates proposed for each of the positions: one for the election of the Director, one for the election of the members of the institution and one for the election of the external members. The post of Secretary shall be appointed directly by the Director.
  • Proposals to fill vacancies in the membership shall be submitted by the Editorial Board. In order to guarantee the continuity of the Journal, partial renewals of the Editorial Board will take place.
  • The members of the management team (Director, Sub-Director and Secretary) shall be elected for a period of four years and may be re-elected for a further four years.
  • Appointments to the posts of Director and Secretary must be notified to the Vice-Rectorate for Culture, Sport and University Extension and to the Directorate of Ediciones Complutense, attaching the corresponding accrediting document issued by the Council of the Department of Applied Sociology.
  • The appointment will be effective from the moment of receipt of the aforementioned document, taking effect from the date of appointment by the Council of the Department.

1.1.1. Duties of the Director

  • The Director will be responsible for the coordination and representation of the journal, relations with the Editorial Board, the Advisory Board and Ediciones Complutense. He/she will also be in charge of relations with other institutions for any matter related to the journal.
  • The Director will elect the Secretary.
  • The Director shall convene the meetings of the Editorial Board.
  • The Director will have the obligation to inform the Council of the Department of Applied Sociology about the functioning of the journal, as well as its needs.
  • The Director will be responsible for ensuring the maintenance of the highest scientific quality of the journal, as well as its recognition and inclusion in national and international databases and its evaluation for the achievement of quality seals, for which he/she will be assisted by the other members of the Editorial Board.
  • The Director will have a casting vote in the event of a tie in the deliberations of the Editorial Board.

1.1.2. Duties of the Secretary

  • The Secretary will be responsible for the reception of the originals and their management throughout the evaluation and publication process.
  • The Secretary will be responsible for communication with authors, members of the Editorial Board, the Advisory Board and Ediciones Complutense.
  • The Secretary will acknowledge receipt to the authors of all papers received.
  • The Secretary will organise the review process of the originals received by the Editorial Board to decide which papers are submitted for evaluation and which are returned, once compliance with the journal's requirements has been verified.
  • The Secretary will be responsible for sending the originals to the reviewers together with an instruction document and a review template.
  • Once the decision to publish the originals has been taken, the Secretary will be responsible for communicating the decision to the authors.
  • The Secretary is responsible for monitoring the entire editorial process of the journal issues (preparation and delivery of originals, including first pages and statistics, layout process, sending proofs to authors, review of the pre-print version, communication to authors of the publication).
  • The Secretary will prepare the meetings with the Director and take minutes of the meetings of the Editorial Board. He/she shall also be responsible for the custody of the minutes and shall certify the work carried out by the members, scientific advisors and reviewers.
  • The Secretary will collaborate with the Director in the dissemination of the journal, in institutional relations, exchanges, indexing and any other tasks that improve the quality and recognition of the journal.

1.1.3. Duties of the members of the Editorial Board

  • The members of the Editorial Board shall be obliged to attend the meetings called. In the event that there are members who reside in other cities, in other provinces or abroad, the Board may establish a procedure to ensure their effective participation, even if they are not present at the meetings.
  • The members, under the coordination of the Secretary, shall collaborate in the preliminary reading of originals in order to decide which are submitted for evaluation and which are returned to the authors.
  • The Members shall collaborate in the search for external evaluators for the papers and shall not be evaluators in any case.
  • The members will advise and collaborate with the journal's management in any tasks deemed necessary for the proper functioning of the journal, including ensuring compliance with punctuality and periodicity.

1.2. Advisory Board

  • The Advisory Board shall be composed of professionals and researchers of recognised prestige and solvency, with no institutional links to the journal. In addition to providing the journal with rigour, it shall serve to set editorial policy, make the journal attractive to both authors and readers, and disseminate it, as far as possible, in all forums. It will also collaborate in the evaluation and auditing processes.
  • Ten percent of the members of the Advisory Board shall be from foreign institutions.
  • The election process for its members will be as follows: The Director of the Journal will propose to the Editorial Board the names of the persons who may form part of the Advisory Board, in consideration of their merits related to research, teaching, or professional practice in the field of interest of the journal. Once the Editorial Board, in an ordinary meeting, has accepted the proposal the Director will contact the person accepted in order to issue the appropriate invitation. Subsequently, the Director will inform the Editorial Board of the outcome of this process. If the resolution of the process is positive, the person in question will become a member of the Journal's Advisory Board. The Council of the Department of Applied Sociology must ratify the appointments, as the case may be.
  • The members of the Advisory Board may participate in the evaluation processes of original articles as external peers, bearing in mind that at least one of the evaluations will always be issued by an evaluator from outside the Advisory Board.

2. Characteristics and functioning

2.1. Frequency

  • The journal will be published every six months, i.e. two issues per year. In addition, on an extraordinary basis, the journal may propose to Ediciones Complutense the publication of a special issue.

2.2. Structure

The journal will consist of the following fixed sections:

  • Monographic section: original papers, of a theoretical or empirical nature, dealing with the subject proposed by the Editorial Board of the journal.
  • Miscellaneous section: Original works, of a theoretical or empirical nature, on any other subject related to childhood and adolescence and/or the study of the lives of children and adolescents.
  • Reviews: Works of evaluation and critical analysis of a work that deals with any of the topics of interest to the journal.
  • Other contributions: This section is open to different contributions that showcase activity in the field of applied research, social intervention, defence of rights or the development and evaluation of projects; especially those that have involved the active participation of children and adolescents.

Occasionally a special section of key texts for children's studies may be included.

2.3. Publication guidelines

  • The publication guidelines document containing information on: manuscript submission, editorial process (review, evaluation and publication of manuscripts), bibliographical notes and references, etc.) is attached as an annex.