About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Main topics of publication:

  • Study of the system: artifact-environment-biota
  • Historical-artistic knowledge of cultural heritage (i.e. author, art movement, period of realization, techniques, society and cultural characteristics, socio-economic context, commissioning, financing, interested public)
  • History, diagnosis, restoration, maintenance, conservation, valorization, prevention
  • Document research
  • Book, codex, and manuscript production in its historical context
  • Appropriate methodologies and analytical techniques used for the characterization of historical artifacts and evaluation of the conservation state
  • Environmental monitoring: assessment of atmospheric pollution and correlated degradation of monuments and historical-artistic sites
  • Micro and macroclimatic monitoring in confined areas (i.e. museums, libraries, archives, churches, galleries…)
  • Art diagnostics and evaluation of the authentication of art works
  • Art market and auction houses
  • Experiences in cultural heritage conservation
  • Evaluation of the suitability of products for restoration, conservation, and maintenance of works of art
  • Information science and cultural heritage: data processing and cataloguing methods
  • Virtual re-elaboration and use of historical artifacts and environments
  • Study, valorization and digitalization of archive and library heritage
  • Environmental context and technical-conservative issues related to historic architecture
  • Virtual or traditional conservation, cataloguing and processing of photographs
  • Various other topics including education, safeguard, education, legislation, economics, social aspects, management, marketing, interdisciplinarity, internationalization, etc.

Peer Review Process

All articles submitted by Conservation Science in Cultural Heritage will undergo a double blind peer review.
For more information on the peer review process, please read Quality control and Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice.

Publication Frequency

The journal is published once a year.

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. It releases its articles under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

Creative Commons License

This license allows anyone to download, reuse, re-print, modify, distribute and/or copy the contributions. The works must be properly attributed to its author(s). It is not necessary to ask further permissions both to author(s) or journal board.

Authors who publish on this journal maintain the copyrights.

Authors are welcome to post the final draft post-refereeing (postprint) on a personal website, a collaborative wiki, departmental website, social media websites, institutional repository or non-commercial subject-based repositories.

Publication Ethics and Publication Malpractice

The following statement is inspired by COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics – http://publicationethics.org/).

Duties for the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal

The Editor-in-Chief of the Journal Conservation Science in Cultural Heritage is responsible for the selection and publication of the articles submitted to the Journal.

The Editor-in-Chief takes all reasonable steps to ensure the quality of the material published in Conservation Science in Cultural Heritage.

The Editor-in-Chief’s decision 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 Editor-in-Chief will ensure that appropriately Qualified Reviewers are selected for submissions.

The Editor-in-Chief strives to ensure that peer review at the Journal is fair, unbiased and timely.

A description of the peer review process is published below and Scientific Editors are ready to justify any important deviation from the described process.

Organization of peer review

The process of peer review must satisfy principles of autonomy, and therefore follow lines of democratic and unprejudiced evaluation in order to be objective.

In practical terms it is structured as follows:

First is the Editor-in-Chief, with his specific competences and direct obligations, followed by the Deputy-Editor; this, to balance any demands which might arise regarding possible conflict of interest relating to the Editor-in-Chief himself.

A list of Scientific Editors follows, made up of scholars of consolidated personal and scientific rigor, whose corresponding backgrounds, skills and experience must respond to the different scientific areas covered in aspects related to the Journal’s objectives of interdisciplinarity and internationalization. It is precisely these pre-established aims and objectives, that have been achieved during the period from 2001 to date with the publication of the respective issues of the Journal, formerly “Quaderni di Scienza della Conservazione” and renamed “Conservation Science in Cultural Heritage” in 2007.

In this way, published papers answer to the specific characteristics of the Journal, described as “historical-technical” and refer to studies and research related to cultural and environmental heritage, covering fields within the various scientific worlds in respect of the holistic value of cultural heritage. The members of the Scientific Board come from wide-ranging scientific and humanistic backgrounds — technical-experimental, historical-humanistic, ministerial, professional, managerial and political — as evidenced by its composition.

The Editor-in-Chief evaluates manuscripts for their scientific content without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship or political philosophy of the Authors.

The Editor-in-Chief’s decision may be constrained by such legal requirements regarding libel, copyright infringement and plagiarism.

The Editor-in-Chief provides appropriate guidelines to Authors that encourage accuracy, completeness and clarity of research reporting, including technical editing, to correctly draw up their manuscript.

The Editor-in-Chief ensures 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.

The Editor-in-Chief has a duty to act if he suspects misconduct or if an allegation of misconduct is brought to him. This duty extends to both published and unpublished papers.

The Editor-in-Chief manages his own conflicts of interest as well as those of the entire editorial structure and of the Authors.

The Editor-in-Chief ensures unbiased review for manuscripts submitted by components of the editorial structure.

Evaluation of submitted papers

After a preliminary assessment based on the established objectives of the historical-technical Journal, “Conservation Science in Cultural Heritage”, in the event of a positive evaluation, the Editor-in-Chief will send the paper to the Scientific Editor with expertise in the relevant field the paper covers. It is then sent to two Qualified Reviewers belonging to the same field of competence for “double blind peer review”. They will proceed in their evaluation by making comments and suggestions, where necessary. The Author will subsequently revise the paper, which is then sent once more to the Qualified Reviewers. After final review, the corrected paper will be ready for publication.

The following diagram shows the players in the hierarchical pyramid:

Hierarchy diagram of the evaluation process

The Editor-in-Chief, in drafting the Journal, will adopt innovative procedures relating to trends in peer review and publishing standards.

The Editor-in-Chief guarantees that errors, inaccurate or misleading statements are corrected promptly and with due prominence.

The Editor-in-Chief will publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.

The Editor-in-Chief will respond promptly to complaints and will ensure there is a way for dissatisfied complainants to take complaints further. Complaints and appeals should be sent to the aforementioned Editor-in-Chief.

The Editor-in-Chief ensures that content is published on a timely basis.

The Editor-in-Chief takes 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 Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) guarantee tracking and preservation of articles in the long term.

Duties for 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 original data regarding their 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 Editorial guidelines for Authors published by the Journal, therefore ensuring accuracy, completeness and clarity of research reporting, including technical editing.

Authors are kindly requested to complete and sign the form: “Authorization for release and publication of individual contributions to collective works” which will be sent by the editorial staff only if the article is deemed fit for publication.

Archiving and free use of the post-print are permitted.

Self-archiving of the pre-print, peer review and any previous versions are not permitted.

Please note that papers should be submitted at the proper time, thereby allowing time to finalize editing and publication.

Duties for Qualified Reviewers

Qualified Reviewers are provided guidance on everything that is expected of them including the need to handle submitted material in confidence.

Qualified Reviewers are required to disclose any potential competing interests before agreeing to review a submission.

Qualified Reviewers are requested to comment on the originality of submissions and to be alert to redundant publication and plagiarism. They will alert the Editor-in-Chief regarding intellectual property issues and plagiarism and work to handle potential breaches of intellectual property laws and conventions.

Qualified Reviewers should indicate relevant published work that has not been cited by the Authors.

 

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

Quality control

Conservation Science in Cultural Heritage is a historical-technical Journal, the Authors and discussed topics, therefore come from different scientific backgrounds and disciplines. One of the Journal’s main objectives is to achieve an all-encompassing vision of interdisciplinarity and internationalization, essential elements in today’s society and relevant cultural sectors. In this, the Journal responds to a natural demand for information and professional growth — as far as possible correct and complete — on issues related to the cultural heritage sector for which the specific literature is somewhat limited. Another equally important aim is to ensure a high standard in the scientific content of the Journal together with high resolution of text and images in both hard copy and open access versions.

The Journal is also accessible through the websites of the previously listed publishers, collaborators, academic libraries, ministries and institutions, highlighting the need for complete information in the scientific field, understood as a symbiosis of the social and human sciences and experimental sciences: the globalization of culture.

The journal is accessible online (at: https://conservation-science.unibo.it/) and has been included in numerous websites of interest to all those looking for information regarding the subject areas listed in the main topics of publication.

The Journal has also officially been included in international databases and prestigious aggregators:

EBSCO (Elton Bryson Stephens Company) Publishing: http://www.ebsco.com/

DOAJ Directory of Open Access Journals: https://doaj.org/toc/1973-9494

ERIH PLUS (European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences): https://erihplus.nsd.no/

“Conservation Science in Cultural Heritage” is also been indexed in the Thomson Reuters Web of Science “Core Collection”, under ESCI (Emerging Sources Citation Index – Journal List), a new database launched in late 2015 (available at: http://mjl.clarivate.com/).

In 2014 the Journal was included in the international platform SCOPUS, a bibliographic database containing abstracts and citations for academic journal articles produced by Elsevier.

SCImago Journal Rank:

The National Agency of Evaluation for University and Research in Italy (Agenzia Nazionale di Valutazione del Sistema Universitario e della Ricerca – ANVUR) has listed the Journal in Class A.

The Journal has a SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) “seal” and CC license (Creative Commons): important certification for open access journals.

Indexing and Abstracting

The Journal is indexed in the following databases:

The Journal is indexed also in the following universities library catalogs:

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

Authors are requested to make a partial contribution to cover publication costs in the form of Article Processing Charges (APCs).

Payment of the APC (320.00 euros + VAT) will go towards editorial processing and printing of the scientific publication, including text, color figures, diagrams, tables, etc. and will allow the Author to receive one print copy of the Journal issue with their published paper.

Only after a paper has been submitted to a preliminary evaluation by the Editor-in-Chief in line with the Journal's scientific scope and aims, will it then be evaluated by the Journal’s Qualified Reviewers following the established peer review process. Authors of accepted papers will, at this point, pay the requested sum for the APC to the publishing house, L’Erma di Bretschneider Publisher, as specified below.

Details for payment of APC to L’Erma di Bretschneider Publisher 320 euros + VAT4% = 332.80 euros total.

Payment via bank transfer:

L’Erma di Bretschneider Publisher
Via Marianna Dionigi 57
00193 Rome, Italy

Bank details

DEUTSCHE BANK
IBAN IT 47 T031 0403 2030 0000 0822 633
BIC SWIFT DEUTITM1584

Payment via Paypal:

Please find below the address in order to proceed with payment of APC 320 euros + VAT4% = 332.80 euros total

lerma@lerma.it

N.B. For payment via bank transfer or Paypal please provide personal details for invoicing (full name and e-mail address, place and date of birth, tax number if resident in Italy, address where resident and delivery address for Journal) and state reason: contribution print issue N. [add issue number] of Conservation Science in Cultural Heritage.

Confirmation of payment, given to the Editor-in-Chief (Prof. Salvatore Lorusso), will allow the editorial process (i.e. text and English language correction) to continue. Only after the Author has made all the necessary corrections as indicated, will the paper be accepted for publication.

Journal History

Formerly (vol. 1-6): Quaderni di Scienza della Conservazione (Printed by Pitagora Editrice, Bologna) ISSN 1592-6443

Formerly (vol. 1-6): Quaderni di Scienza della Conservazione (Online) ISSN 1973-9486

Print editions of Conservation Science in Cultural Heritage ISSN 1974-4951:

Publisher

L’Erma di Bretschneider, Roma

Via Marianna Dionigi, 57
00193 - Roma (Italy)

Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna

Via Zamboni, 33
40126 - Bologna (Italy)

Sponsors