Welcome to the Romanitas electronic portal, the first multilingual virtual journal in Puerto Rico dedicated to the study of Romance languages, literatures and cultures. Romanitas is an academic, research journal refereed by peers.
Romanitas publishes articles and reviews of critical, cultural, linguistic and literary interest focused upon romance language speaking societies. These articles can be:
- theoretical readings (analysis)
- reviews of recently published books
- interviews of recognized authors in the fields of linguistics and literature
- annotated bibliographies
We will also publish multidisciplinary articles focused upon the relation among these disciplines and related areas such as film, the plastic arts, philosophy, history, theatre and music. We wish to foment, as well, academic approaches of the most recent critical approaches.
Romanitas considers romance studies in a wide-ranging and inclusive way through which the countries of the New World, of Africa, of Asia, and the Pacific, where romance languages are spoken, become producers of knowledge as well as privileged objects of study.
With the launching of its second volume, Romanitas, after having reoriented itself towards Romance languages, reorganized its governing bodies in order to guarantee its independence. Focused upon the quality of its articles and the imperative of refereeing by peers, Romanitas is directed by a group of professors of the University of Puerto Rico. The Editorial Board and the Editor-in-chief constitute the group in question named the Romanitas Collective. Together these entities are responsible for the establishment of the editorial policy of the journal and its administration. The Advisory Board assists them with this task. Said committee is composed of national and international experts in romance studies.
The publishing policy of Romanitas is free. Nevertheless, depending on the circumstances, we could publish thematic numbers in which there might also appear articles that vary from the stated theme of that issue.
Romanitas is a journal refereed by colleagues and, as required by its academic protocol, all submissions are evaluated anonymously by two members of the Editorial Board and/or by the Advisory Board. As an independent academic journal, Romanitas possesses its own publication protocol. Please, familiarize yourself with said protocol and adapt your article to it before submitting it for our evaluation.
Protocol of Style
Submissions will be accepted only in electronic form. Send your submission to: romanitas@gmx.edu.
Do not include personal information in your article. In a separate message send your first and last name(s), institutional affiliation, and the title of your article. DO NOT INCLUDE in the text of your article first person biographical information or elements that might allow you to be identified. Concerning the bibliography, once your article has been approved for publication, if you desire, you may modify its contents by adding your previous publications.
Your manuscript must have a maximum of 30 pages (notes and bibliography included). It will contain notes and bibliography at the end of the document and must not have been submitted for evaluation to any other journal. Reviews can not exceed 3 pages.
In a separate message from your article, include a brief biographical note of no more than 250 words. Include your academic titles and your institutional affiliation and publications.
Provide a bilingual abstract of your article in Spanish and the language of your submission. Each will not exceed 250 words.
Include a list of 5 or 6 descriptors that identify the content of your submission.
Publication Format
Prepare your document in Word, double-spaced with a New Roman Times font of 12 pts. and universal margins of 1". Use normal letters in the whole of the document. Use italics only for foreign words or for titles of books. In order to emphasize a word use French quotation marks (« »). English quotation marks (" ") will be used for direct quotations.
Never use the automatic formatting of Word. Do not indent the first lines of paragraphs: it is not being used. Also, do not use the automatic listing (nor bullets neither numbers) of Word. If you desire, you can use tables in your article when you use the automatic columns of Word. Do not construct columns by indentations because, in any case, they will be altered when opened on another computer. Remember that the work of the Romanitas group is volunteer and it will be accomplished during the free time of its members. Please show your understanding by the meticulous application of our protocol of style. Consider that in formatting your document you will complicate unnecessarily the editorial work of the webmaster and contribute to a delay in publication of the issue in which you hope to publish. For this reason, in the event that your article is accepted for publication all formatted documentation will be returned to the author.
The illustrations (images, photos or graphics) will be included as an attached document in jpg or png formats. In the text, identify the exact place of the insertion by means of [brackets] and the name of the archive: [imagen1.jpg].
Accent capital letters according to the rules of the language in which the article is written. In the case of articles in Spanish, French, Portuguese and Italian, pay particular attention to the application of this rule.
Quotations
Use faithful quotations. Any alteration must be shown by the use of [brackets] if text is eliminated or (parentheses) if it is added.
If the quotation occupies 2 lines or less, it must be integrated into the text by the use of "English quotation marks". Longer quotations must be presented with 2 indentations and justification.
When citing for the first time, include all the reference information. From the second reference on, include an abbreviated reference (last name; year of publication; page number).
Notes
Romanitas is an electronic journal. For this reason, whenever possible, integrate notes into the body of your text. The process of creation and reading of electronic notes is very tedious: utilize them only when absolutely necessary. The webmaster and readers will appreciate it. Indicate complete references corresponding to each author cited or mentioned in your article and enumerate them manually from the number 1 to number «n».
In order to add a note, enumerate between brackets in the following manner: [1].
At the end of the document, add the note preceded by the corresponding number in the following manner: [1] Body of the note.
Author's Copyright
Romanitas is a free access journal and therefore does not ask for the author’s copyright of the article it publishes. Neither does it remunerate for the publication of articles. We request that our readers use responsibly our editorial offerings by respecting the copyrights of our authors and collaborators.
Abbreviated model of the bibliographical protocol
Books :LAST NAME(S), Name. Title in italics, city of publication, publisher, year of publication, pages.
LODARES, Juan Ramón. El paraíso políglota, Madrid, Taurus, 2000, 290 pp.
Article or chapter: LAST NAME(S), Name. «Title of the article/chapter», name of the journal or of the collection, place of publication, date, vol(ume), num(ber), pages
TOLLINCHI, Esteban. «La individualidad y el héroe romántico», Romanitas, San Juan, 2006, vol. 1, núm. 1, pp. 3-11.
Romanitas is an academic journal and as required by academic protocol, it is refereed by peers. This is a common procedure which is practiced in order to avoid the proliferation of journals deprived of rigorous criteria for the selection of its articles or, worse yet, of journals published among colleagues. In the U. S. academic world they are known as "in-house" publications.
Double Blind Review
The staff of Romanitas has chosen the anonymous process of a double blind evaluation. The purpose of this process is to provide our collaborators, as well as our evaluators, the most just and optimum conditions possible in the process of publication. The anonymous evaluation through the double blind process offers the guarantee of impartiality. In what follows, we describe the different stages of the evaluation process to which all received articles will be submitted after the final date of our call for papers.
The submitter will send his article by electronic means and, in a separate message, send his/her personal information and academic affiliation.
The Editor-in-chief:
- Opens the document.
- Copies it to his computer.
- Transfers it to a blank document.
By this process the identity of the author will be kept secret, because by the application of this procedure, the Word program will attribute authorship to the Editor-in-Chief, thus guaranteeing the anonymity of the author.
The evaluator receives the article, sent by the Editor-in-Chief, and without knowing the identity of the author, will evaluate it according to the established criteria of the Editorial Board of Romanitas. After completing his/her evaluation, the article will be resubmitted to the Editor-in-chief.
Said process will be repeated in the Advisory Board.
The evaluation will correspond to one of the following categories: recommended, conditional or denied.
In cases in which the evaluators recommend publication, the Editor-in-Chief will communicate the results to the members of the Editorial Board and provide a report of the evaluation in question. At this stage the names of the authors of the articles to be published will be revealed.
If a conflict should exist between evaluations (a recommendation to publish and a denial), the Editor-in-Chief will transmit the article in question to the Editorial Board in order that the conflict be resolved. In this stage the identity of the article will remain anonymous.
The evaluators have the power to recommend conditional approval. We underline that the acceptance of the recommendations, on the part of the author, is a sine qua non requisite for final publication.
The complete process of evaluation takes approximately 2 months from the date of the close of the call for papers. With the conclusion of the evaluations, the author will be notified of the final results, and he/she will be allowed one month in order to complete the requested corrections.
Our evaluations are final and unquestionable.