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 15 days 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 minor 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 2022:

Salvatore Abruzzese, Anna Rita Addessi, Giuditta Alessandrini, Mara Allodi, Anna Aluffi Pentini, Gioacchino Amato, Cecilia Andorno, Giuseppe Annacontini, Francesca Antonacci, Fulvia Antonelli, Anna Antoniazzi, Debora Aquario, Giorgio Asquini, Annemarie Augschöll Blasbichler, Gabriele Azzaro, Mattia Baiutti, Lucia Balduzzi, Nicola Barbieri, Cosimo di Bari, Susanna Barsotti, Federico Batini, Caterina Benelli, Stefano Benini, Milena Bernardi, Chiara Bertolini, Carmen Betti, Alessia Bevilacqua, Cristina Birbes, Vanna Boffo, Giovanni Bonaiuti, Ivana Bolognesi, Anna Bondioli, Chiara Bove, Lysette Boyer, Francesca Bracci, Filippo Bruni, Maria Buccolo, Gianbattista Bufalino, Giuseppe Burgio, Francesca Cadeddu, Antonella Cagnolati, Silvana Calaprice, Carla Callegari, Antonio Calvani, Gabriella Calvano, Silvano Calvetto, Franco Cambi, 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, Andrea Ciani, Anna Maria Colaci, Alessandro Colombi, Asher Daniel Colombo, Mariagrazia Contini, 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, Rosita Deluigi, Luca Decembrotto, Duccio Demetrio, Silvia Demozzi, Antonietta De Vita, Martin Dodman, Gaetano Domenici, Liliana Dozza, Alison Duguid, Rossella D’Ugo, Pier Giuseppe Ellerani, Loretta Fabbri, Maurizio Fabbri, Rita Fadda, Floriana Falcinelli, Eleonora Farina, Roberto Farné, Graziella Favaro, Ettore Felisatti, Davide Ferrari, Luca Ferrari, Simona Ferrari, Ilaria Filograsso, Otto Filtzinger, Massimiliano Fiorucci, Laura Formenti, Sabrina Fusari, Rosa Gallelli, Ivano Gamelli, Angelo Gaudio, Antonio Genovese, Stefano Gheno, Rossella Ghigi, Luca Ghirotto, 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, 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, Elena Malaguti, Maria Rita Mancaniello, Emanuela Mancino, Andrea Mangiatordi, Paola Manuzzi, Giovanni Marchetti, Luca Marconi, Massimo Marcuccio, Umberto Margiotta, Alessandro Mariani, Alessandro Martelli, Stefano Martelli, Licia Masoni, Maria Cristina Matteucci, Mariachiara Michelini, Elena Mignosi, Maria Cristina Morandini, Maria Teresa Moscato, Paolo Mottana, Maria Teresa Muraca, Martino Negri, Stefano Oliviero, Elena Pacetti, Fabio Paglieri, Gabriele Pallotti, Manuela Palma, Maria Laura Palma, Francesco Panarelli, Carlo Pancera, Chiara Panciroli, Sabrina Panesi, Giulia Pastori, Luigi Pati, Teodora Pezzano, Anna Pileri, Elisabetta Piras, Simonetta Polenghi, Andrea Porcarelli, Agostino Portera, Silvio Premoli, Maria Ranieri, Bruno Riccio, Maria Grazia Riva, Alessandra Rosa, Giorgia Ruzzante, Marzia Saglietti, Marta Salinaro, Patrizia Sandri, Salvatore Saltarelli, Flavia Santoianni, Donatella Savio, Vega Scalera, Vincenzo Schirripa, Gabriella Seveso, Clara Silva, Caterina Sindoni, Fabrizio Manuel Sirignano, Alessandro Soriani, Giuseppe Spadafora, Flavia Stara, Massimiliano Stramaglia, Maura Striano, Gianfranco Staccioli, Maria Teresa Tagliaventi, Letterio Todaro, Alessandro Tolomelli, Maria Tomarchio, Andrés Torres Carceller, Sergio Tramma, Miriam Traversi, Marica Triola, Maria Teresa Trisciuzzi, Stefania Ulivieri Strozzi, Alessandro Vaccarelli, Ira Vannini, François Vedelago, Paola Villano, Gerwald Wallnoefer, Beate Weyland, Carla Xodo, Hao Xu, Luisa Zecca, Miguel A. Zabalza Beraza, Alessandro Zanchettin, Federica Zanetti, Lucia Zannini, Federico Zannoni, Enzo Zecchi, Michele Zedda, 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).

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.

Indexing and Abstracting

The Journal is indexed in the following databases and libraries:

• ACNP – Italian Catalogue of Serials
• 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
• Google Scholar – Academic Search Engine
• JournalTOCs – International Aggregator of Scientific Articles TOCs
• PLEIADI – Portale per la Letteratura Scientifica
• ROAD – Directory of Open Access scholarly Resources
• SUMMONS – Serial solutions
• Ulrich's – Global Serials Directory
• Worldcat – The world's largest library catalog
• ZDB – German National Library
• FRANCIS – Humanities and Social Science database
• Scopus – The largest database of peer-reviewed literature

Quality Control, Publication Ethics and Publication malpractice

The following statement is inspired by the COPE Code of Conduct.
http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors.pdf

The journal is under review for membership of COPE.

Journal Editors

Editors 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.

Editors have a system for managing their own conflicts of interest as well as those of the staff, authors, reviewers and editorial board members.

Editors have a process for handling submissions from the editors, employees or members of the editorial board to ensure unbiased review.

Editors encourage study and research into peer review and publishing and reassess the journal’s processes in the light of new findings.

Editors guarantee that errors, inaccurate or misleading statements are corrected promptly and with due prominence.

Editors will publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.

Editors will respond promptly to complaints and will ensure there is a way for dissatisfied complainants to take complaints further. Complaints and appeals may be sent to rpd@unibo.it

Editors ensure that contents are published on a timely basis, following the stated frequency.

Editors 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 such as DOI guarantee the tracking and preservation of articles in the long term.

Editorial Board

The Editorial Board of RPD RICERCHE DI PEDAGOGIA E DIDATTICA. JOURNAL OF THEORIES AND RESEARCH IN EDUCATION is responsible for the selection and the publication of the articles submitted to the journal.

The Editorial Board takes all reasonable steps to ensure the quality of the material published in RPD RICERCHE DI PEDAGOGIA E DIDATTICA. JOURNAL OF THEORIES AND RESEARCH IN EDUCATION.

The decision of the Editorial Board 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.

The Editorial Board will ensure that appropriate reviewers are selected for submissions.

The Editorial Board strives to ensure that peer review at the journal is fair, unbiased and timely.

A description of the peer review process is published, and members of the Editorial Board are ready to justify any important deviation from the described process.

The Editorial Board evaluates manuscripts for their intellectual content regardless of the race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy of the authors.

Editorial Board’ decision may be constrained by legal requirements such as those regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

The Editorial Board provides guidance to authors that encourages accuracy, completeness and clarity of research reporting, including technical editing and the use of appropriate guidelines and checklists.

The Editorial Board has 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.

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.

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 the Editorial Board 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.

 

The Journal policies will be reviewed periodically, particularly with respect to new recommendations from the COPE.

Archiving Policy

The University of Bologna has an archival arrangement with the National Central Libraries of Florence and Rome within the national project Magazzini Digitali.
http://www.depositolegale.it/editori-aderenti/

Publication Fees