About the Journal

Focus and Scope

RPD. Ricerche di Pedagogia e Didattica. Journal of Theories and Research in Education is an online open access international scientific journal dedicated to studies and research on education. It uses a double-blind peer review process and publishes articles in Italian and English.

RPD takes an interdisciplinary and pluri-methodological approach. It offers a place of dialogue for researchers and professionals coming from diverse theoretical and empirical backgrounds, involved in the study of educational phenomena. It is an intellectual forum of excellence for the circulation of scientific knowledge regarding education. It welcomes critical papers, research reports, historical and literary research inspired by diverse theoretical frameworks and empirical approaches. It is committed to facilitating international dialogue between researchers and professionals in education and ensuring that scientific knowledge can make a contribution to educational policies and everyday educational practices.

Founders: Antonio Genovese, Luigi Guerra and Franco Frabboni.
Editor-in-Chief: Letizia Caronia.
Co-Editors: Chiara Bove and Paolo Sorzio.

Peer Review Process

When the RPD editorial board receives a new article, the double blind peer review process will proceed as follows:

  1. The editorial board communicates to the author that the article has been received.
  2. The editors make an initial assessment of the article according to the following criteria: relevance of the topic; overall quality of the contribution according to the standard of the magazine; compliance with the editorial standards. Editors may refuse the article and communicate their decision to the author. The author will be informed no later than 1 month from the date of submission of the article.
  3. After successfully passing the first evaluation, the article will be sent to two anonymous reviewers, experts on the subject and/or of the methodological approach. No later than 3 months, the reviewers will evaluate the article with the following possible outcomes:
    • Article accepted
    • Article accepted with minor changes or additions
    • Article accepted with substantial changes/additions (the new version of the article will be submitted again to the peer-review process)
    • Article refused
  4. No later than 15 days, according to the referees’ evaluation, the editors will communicate to the author the final decision on the article. In case of request for changes, the author will have 1 month to change the article in accordance with the demands of the referee and provide the final version.
  5. Publication

The editorial board reserves the right to decide in which issue of RPD the article that passed all the evaluation stages will be published.

List of referees as of December 2023:

Salvatore Abruzzese, Leonardo Acone, Anna Rita Addessi, Gabriella Aleandri, Giuditta Alessandrini, Mara Allodi, Anna Aluffi Pentini, Gioacchino Amato, Gianluca Amatori, Cecilia Andorno, Giuseppe Annacontini, Francesca Antonacci, Fulvia Antonelli, Anna Antoniazzi, Debora Aquario, Giorgio Asquini, Annemarie Augschöll Blasbichler, Gabriele Azzaro, Mattia Baiutti, Lucia Balduzzi, Cristina Balloi, Nicola Barbieri, Marco Bartolucci, Susanna Barsotti, Barbara Baschiera, Federico Batini, Caterina Benelli, Stefano Benini, Milena Bernardi, Chiara Bertolini, Carmen Betti, Alessia Bevilacqua, Irene Biemmi, Cristina Birbes, Vanna Boffo, Paolo Bonafede, Giovanni Bonaiuti, Ivana Bolognesi, Anna Bondioli, Sara Bornatici, Francesca Borruso, Alessandro Bortolotti, Chiara Bove, Lysette Boyer, Francesca Bracci, Lisa Brambilla, Filippo Bruni, Maria Buccolo, Gianbattista Bufalino, Giuseppe Burgio, Francesca Cadeddu, Antonella Cagnolati, Michele Cagol, Silvana Calaprice, Carla Callegari, Antonio Calvani, Gabriella Calvano, Silvano Calvetto, Franco Cambi, Marnie Campagnaro, Lorenzo Cantatore, Francesco Cappa, Davide Capperucci, Barbara Caprara, Michele Caputo, Roberta Cardarello, Ursula Carle, Dorena Caroli, André H. Caron, Letizia Caronia, Rita Casadei, Rossella Caso, Daniele Castellani, Micaela Donatella Castiglioni, Mario Castoldi, Mario Catani, Enzo Catarsi, Laura Cavana, Donata Cesareni, Laura Cerrocchi, Gina Chianese, Andrea Ciani, Anna Maria Colaci, Alessandro Colombi, Asher Daniel Colombo, Mariagrazia Contini, Matteo Cornacchia, Cristiano Corsini, Massimiliano Costa, Piero Crispiani, Morena Cuconato, Antonia Cunti, Giuseppina D’Addelfio, Vasco D’Agnese, Marco Dallari, Daniela Dato, Fulvio De Giorgi, Barbara De Serio, Angel Garcia Del Dujo, Giovanna Del Gobbo, Rosita Deluigi, Luca Decembrotto, Duccio Demetrio, Silvia Demozzi, Giuseppe Filippo Dettori, Conny De Vincenzo, Antonietta De Vita, Cosimo di Bari, Martin Dodman, Gaetano Domenici, Liliana Dozza, Alison Duguid, Mirella D’Ascenzo, Rossella D’Ugo, Pier Giuseppe Ellerani, Loretta Fabbri, Maurizio Fabbri, Rita Fadda, Floriana Falcinelli, Eleonora Farina, Roberto Farné, Graziella Favaro, Daniele Fedeli, Ettore Felisatti, Alessandro Ferrante, Davide Ferrari, Luca Ferrari, Simona Ferrari, Ilaria Filograsso, Otto Filtzinger, Massimiliano Fiorucci, Laura Formenti, Alberto Fornasari, Antonio Fragoso, Sabrina Fusari, Rosa Gallelli, And Ivano Gamelli, Angelo Gaudio, Antonio Genovese, Stefano Gheno, Rossella Ghigi, Luca Ghirotto, Andrea Giacomantonio, Catia Giaconi, Angela Giallongo, Epifania ‘Fanny’ Giambalvo, Stefania Giamminuti, Mario Giampaolo, Alessandra Gigli, Enrico Giliberti, Mariangela Giusti, William Grandi, Tamar Groves, Lucio Guasti, Luigi Guerra, Monica Guerra, Giovanna Guerzoni, Hubert Houben, Joanne Hughes, Marta Ilardo, Dario Janes, Silvia Kanisza, Manuela Ladogana, Arianna Lazzari, Silvia Leonelli, Chiara Lepri, Rita Locatelli, Teresa Longo, Walter Lorenz, Stefania Lorenzini, Maria Lucenti, Piero Lucisano, Nicola Lupoli, Elena Luppi, Anita Macauda, Emiliano Macinai, Elena Madrussan, Silvia Maggiolini, Elena Malaguti, Maria Rita Mancaniello, Emanuela Mancino, Andrea Mangiatordi, Paola Manuzzi, Giovanni Marchetti, Luca Marconi, Massimo Marcuccio, Elena Marescotti, Umberto Margiotta, Alessandro Mariani, Alessandro Martelli, Stefano Martelli, Licia Masoni, Maria Cristina Matteucci, Salvatore Messina, Mariachiara Michelini, Elena Mignosi, Maria Cristina Morandini, Maria Teresa Moscato, Paolo Mottana, Maria Teresa Muraca, Marisa Musaio, Martino Negri, Stefano Oliviero, Albertina Olveira, Elena Pacetti, Fabio Paglieri, Gabriele Pallotti, Manuela Palma, Maria Laura Palma, Francesco Panarelli, Carlo Pancera, Chiara Panciroli, Sabrina Panesi, Giulia Pastori, Luigi Pati, Marta Pellegrini, Teodora Pezzano, Anna Pileri, Elisabetta Piras, Tiziana Pironi, Simonetta Polenghi, Andrea Porcarelli, Agostino Portera, Silvio Premoli, Maria Ranieri, Aurora Ricci, Bruno Riccio, Maria Grazia Riva, Patrizia Romito, Alessandra Rosa, Giorgia Ruzzante, Marzia Saglietti, Marta Salinaro, Patrizia Sandri, Salvatore Saltarelli, Flavia Santoianni, Donatella Savio, Vega Scalera, Michela Schenetti, Vincenzo Schirripa, Irene Dora Scierri, Giulia Selmi, Gabriella Seveso, Clara Silva, Caterina Sindoni, Fabrizio Manuel Sirignano, Chiara Sità, Magdalena Ślusarczyk, Alessandro Soriani, Giuseppe Spadafora, Flavia Stara, Massimiliano Stramaglia, Maura Striano, Gianfranco Staccioli, Arianna Taddei, Maria Teresa Tagliaventi, Letterio Todaro, Giuseppe Tognon, Alessandro Tolomelli, Maria Tomarchio, Andrés Torres Carceller, Giulia Toti, Paola Trabalzini, Sergio Tramma, Miriam Traversi, Marica Triola, Maria Teresa Trisciuzzi, Stefania Ulivieri Strozzi, Alessandro Vaccarelli, Ira Vannini, François Vedelago, Cristina Vieira, Paola Villano, Gerwald Wallnoefer, Beate Weyland, Carla Xodo, Hao Xu, Luisa Zecca, Miguel A. Zabalza Beraza, Alessandro Zanchettin, Federica Zanetti, Elena Zanfroni, Lucia Zannini, Federico Zannoni, Enzo Zecchi, Michele Zedda, Paola Zini, Davide Zoletto.

RPD/JOTRE is profoundly grateful to those who give up their time and expertise to review submissions. Without their work, the journal could not attain and maintain its quality standards nor could it be recognized as an excellent journal in its domain.  We wish to thank all those above, who took part in the reviewing process.

Publication Frequency

The journal publishes two issues per year. The first issue is published on 30th June and the second issue is scheduled on 30th December. Submission deadlines are on 31st March and 30th September, respectively. Each issue will include articles submitted by the relevant deadline which have been accepted for publication following the review process.

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.

This journal is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Licence 4.0 International (CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0).

This license allows anyone to download, reuse, re-print, modify, distribute and/or copy the final version of the papers, without commercial purposes. All works must be properly attributed to their author(s). Any modified copy of the contributions and any work derived from the contributions cannot be distributed. It is not necessary to ask further permission either from the author(s) or the journal board, although you are kindly requested to inform the journal board of every reuse of the papers.

Authors who publish in this journal retain copyright.

The journal has neither article processing charges nor submission processing fees.

Publication Fees

The Journal has neither article processing charges nor submission processing fees.

Ethics

RPD. Ricerche di Pedagogia e Didattica adopts the AlmaDL Journals Code of Ethics.

The code is inspired by the guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), in particular to the COPE Core Practices and its Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing.

All parties involved in the editorial process, editorial staff members, authors, reviewers must know and apply the ethical principles of that document.

Data Policy

When relevant, authors are encouraged to follow Open Science and FAIR principles by publishing the research data associated to their articles in trusted data repositories, according to the international best practices and data management guidelines.

Detailed information is reported in the AlmaDL Journals Data Policy.

Authors who are affiliated to the University of Bologna can publish their data in AMSActa, the institutional research data repository.

Indexing and Abstracting

The Journal is indexed in the following databases and libraries:

  • ACNP – Catalogo collettivo italiano dei periodici
  • BASE – Bielefeld Academic Search Engine
  • DOAJ – Directory of Open Access Journals
  • EBSCO – Education Source Database
  • ERIH PLUS - European Reference Index for the Humanities and the Social Sciences
  • EZB – Electronic Journals Library, University of Regensburg
  • FRANCIS – Humanities and Social Science database
  • Google Scholar – Academic Search Engine
  • JournalTOCs – International Aggregator of Scientific Articles TOCs
  • ROAD – Directory of Open Access scholarly Resources
  • Scopus – The largest database of peer-reviewed literature
  • Summon Discovery – Easy Access to Academic Resources
  • Ulrich’s – Global Serials Directory
  • Worldcat – The world’s largest library catalog
  • ZDB – German National Library

Archiving Policy

As part of AlmaDL Journals, the Journal adopts a strategy to ensure long term preservation of the published content. Please see the archiving policy of the publishing service AlmaDL Journals.

Publisher

Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna
Alma Diamond – open scholarly communication

Via Zamboni 33,
40126 - Bologna (Italy)

Ownership

Dipartimento di Scienze Dell’Educazione «Giovanni Maria Bertin» – EDU
Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna

Via Filippo Re, 6
40126 – Bologna (Italy)