Submissions

Author Guidelines

Author Guidelines

Phase A - Submission and Peer Review

1. Authors should submit unpublished and non-reviewed articles to this journal through the Open Journal System (OJS) platform, available at http://ojs.uniurb.it/index.php/argomenti/index. Follow the instructions under “Submit a Proposal” and register if necessary.

It is recommended to write the article using the formatting styles adopted by the journal, which are available in a downloadable file on the platform.

The guided procedure requires entering author information (name, last name, email address, and affiliation) and some article information (title, authors, abstract in English, bibliographic references, and keywords). This information will be used for DOI registration. However, during this submission phase, the article should be uploaded in a single PDF file without author names in the text, and any identification elements in the document properties in Adobe Reader should be removed.

Changes to the data entered in the platform can only be made by the author who initiated the submission process by accessing the “edit metadata” section. Only the author who initiated the guided process can monitor the submission’s progress and upload revised articles or other files.

This procedure ensures double blind peer review and effective submission management, keeping the article and its related information separate but linked only for the journal’s editorial team.

After the peer review process and the acceptance, the author commits to meeting the deadlines set by the editorial team and formatting the article in Word according to the editorial guidelines listed below.

Phase B - Article Editing

1. Articles must be accompanied by a release letter (attached to these guidelines) in which the author grants the journal’s editorial team the right to the first publication of their work and accepts the clauses contained in the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

2. In the Word file, assuming the computer is set to print on A4-size paper (select A4 from Page Layout-Size in the File menu), the page layout should be as follows:

•   Top margin: 5 cm; Bottom margin: 6.2 cm; Left margin: 4.6 cm; Right margin: 4.6 cm;
•   Header and footer: Different for even and odd pages; Different for the first page
•   Header: 0 cm;
•   Footer: 5.5 cm;
•   Binding: 0.

Consequently, the text will be 11.8 cm wide and 18.5 cm tall, excluding the page number, which will be centered and positioned 0.8 cm from the bottom of the last line.

3. Text and Citations Formatting. Three font styles are allowed: normal, italics, and bold. Italics should be used for uncommon foreign words and to emphasize words or short phrases. English quotation marks (“English quotation marks”) should be used to emphasize words or phrases or non-literal quotations. Literal quotations should use curly quotes («curly quotes»).

4. Text Fonts:

• Body text: Times New Roman, size 11, justified, single spacing, 0.5 cm first-line indentation (using the “allow first-line indent” option).
• Essay title: Times New Roman, size 16, bold, left-aligned.
• Paragraph titles: Times New Roman, size 12, bold, left-aligned, two white lines above and one below.
• Subparagraphs: Times New Roman, italics, size 11, left-aligned, two white lines above and one below.
• Page number: Times New Roman, size 11, italics, centered, no indentation, no frame.
• Footnotes: Times, size 9, single spacing, 0.5 cm first-line indentation, sequentially numbered starting from note number 1.
• Bibliographic references: Times, size 9, single spacing, 0.5 cm first-line indentation.

5. The author’s (or authors’) name, institutional affiliation, address, contact information, and any article-related annotations must be clearly indicated and included as a footnote on the first page. Symbols (*) and (**) should be used for these footnotes, while sequential numbers starting from 1 should be used for in-text notes in the final version to be sent to the editorial team.

6. Authors should provide an Italian and English abstract of approximately 700 characters each (including spaces). Each abstract should clearly outline the article’s key points and be written in the third person (e.g., “The author argues that”). The English abstract should start with the article title translated into English.

7. At the end of each abstract, include:

• From two to six keywords in Italian and two to six in English that clearly indicate the article’s topics. These keywords are used for article indexing in international databases and analytical indexes of the year.
• JEL classification, available at http://www.aeaweb.org/econlit/subject.php.

8. Citations within the text should include the author’s last name followed by a space and the year of the original publication in parentheses (e.g., “Murray (1938) said that...") or the author’s last name in parentheses followed by a comma, a space, and the year (e.g., “(Murray, 1938)”). If indicating the page number, place it in parentheses in the text, preceded by “p.” after the year, followed by a comma. If the page refers to the original edition and not to the Italian translation indicated in the bibliography at the end of the article, add “ed. orig.” (e.g., “Murray, 1938, p. 56 ed. orig.”). If there are multiple publications by the same author in the same year, add lowercase letters of the alphabet in progression after the year.

 If there are two authors, both should be listed with “and” connecting them, which can also be used to connect the last two authors if there are three. If there are more than three authors, write the first author’s last name followed by “et al.” (in italics, from the Latin “et alii”).

9. In-text bibliographic references should be listed without numbering in alphabetical order by the author’s last name and, for each author, in chronological order of publication (for works by the same author published in the same year, use a, b, c). For reference formatting, prefer the APA style (http://www.apastyle.org/learn/tutorials/basics-tutorial.aspx), also available in Word under the References - Manage Sources menu.

Include the year in parentheses immediately after the author’s last name and initial, followed by a period (e.g., “Murray, H.A. (1938)”). If the author has two first names, both initials should be written without a space.

For multiple authors, list all last names. For edited works, list the editor’s name followed by “(Ed.)” or “(Eds.)”.

Limit references to those cited in the text.

The bibliographic references should be formatted according to the following examples:

Books:

Murray, H.A. (1938). Explorations in personality. New York, Oxford University Press.

Phillips, A., & Steward, J. (Eds) (2001). The richness growth. San Francisco, CA; Jossey-Bass.

Edited Volume or Book Chapters:

Araghi, G. and Zanardi, A. (2001). La devoluzione nel paese del dualismo. In G. Araghi and A. Zanardi (Eds), La finanza pubblica italiana (pp. 137-149). Bologna, il Mulino.

Eatwell, J., & Jachtenfuchs, M. (2010). Democracy and Governance in the European Union. In G. Smith & M. Naìm (Eds.), Altered States. Globalization, Sovereignty, and Governance (pp. 45-65). Oxford, Blackwell.

Journal Article:

Mowen, J.C. & Mowen, M.M. (1991). Time and outcome evaluation. Journal of Marketing, 55(3), 54-62. DOI: 10.2307/1251956.

Authors should include the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) for all articles in the bibliographic references. To obtain DOI codes, authors can use the link: http://www.medra.org/en/search.htm or search via Google.

When the article is uploaded, these references should also be entered in the appropriate space within the Ojs platform.

10. Figures, Tables, and Graphs: They should be inserted into the text in a format that allows for future edits. 

Captions should be in Times, size 9, italic, and left-aligned.

Tables should be formatted in Times, size 8 or 9, with a heading at the top in italics and black lines above and below (see example).

Example Table:

Tab. 3 - Percentage distribution

Source: Istat

11. Accents: Italian words ending with the accented letter “e” typically have an acute accent é, (perché, poiché, affinché, né, sé, etc.) except for the third person singular of the verb “essere”, è, some common nouns (bebè, caffè, tè, cioè, etc.), and some proper nouns (Noè, Giosuè, Mosè, etc.). Always use “È” (capitalized and accented) and not “E’” (capitalized with an apostrophe).

12. Punctuation: Never leave spaces before the following punctuation marks: . (period), , (comma), : (colon), ; (semicolon), ! (exclamation mark), ? (question mark), “(closing English quotation marks), » (closing curly quotes). Always leave spaces after these punctuation marks.

13. Hyphens: There are three types of hyphens: short hyphens (-), en dashes (–), and em dashes (—). Short hyphens are reserved for compound words, for example, “analisi storico-critica,” or for numbers like “negli anni 1970-80,” “pp. 46-47,” “pp. vii-viii,” “pp. XV-XVI,” etc. (short hyphens should never be preceded or followed by spaces). On the other hand, en dashes should be used for parenthetical phrases to open a sort of parenthesis in the text. In this case, there should always be a space before and after the en dash (e.g., “Vede dottore – disse il paziente – oggi mentre venivo da lei...”); en dashes can also be used to indicate the minus sign. Em dashes should not be used.