Focus and Scope

The International Journal of Communication and Development (RICD) aims to be tool of scientific diffusion, providing, in a regular basis, a critical reading of the link between Communication and Development. Research projects carried out in the field together with civil society will be prioritized. Each issue deals with a thematic line of special interest for the journal. The programmed thematic lines are announced through the Call for papers. The list of reviewers is published annually.

UNESCO Nomenclature:

Main field:

  • 63 08 Sociology: Social communications

Related fields:

  • 63 01 Cultural sociology.
  • 63 02 Experimental sociology
  • 63 07 Social change and development
  • 63 10 Social problems - Social disorder
  • 63 11 Sociology of human settlements.

Peer Review Process

Peer review policy: double blind

Two members of RICD Editorial Board will review all manuscripts. They will resolve whether the paper meets the minimum requirements to be published, specially whether the paper subject and content conform to the Journal sections. If any clarification is required the text will be sent to the author in the term of a month.

If minimum requirements are met, the manuscript will be anonymously sent to two referees (two Experts in the field selected by the Editorial Board). The referees should return a evaluation of the work in a month. Only if both evaluations are positive should the paper be published. If any corrections are suggested, the author should assume them so that the paper can be published. If just one referee recommends publishing the paper, a third referee will be searched and his report will be unappealable.

Referees will have a 30 days delay to present his evaluation or report.  Evaluations might include recommendations about grammar, style, bibliography, writing, etc.

Referees identities will keep unknown to author(s).

Once the paper (corrected if necessary) has been accepted author will be informed of the date of publishing.

Publication Frequency

Biannual

Open Access Policy

RICD offers open access to its full-text content.

There are no processing charges.

Disclaimer and exclusion of liability

RICD is not responsible for the contents of any article, and the fact of its sponsoring the spreading of an article does not necessarily entail its agreement on the theses exposed in the article.  The editor, in any case, is free of any responsibility resulting from the author’s eventual violation of intellectual property rights.

Review form

Review form

Ethical Guidelines

The publication of scientific articles involves several actors, including the publisher, the editors in chief, the reviewers and the authors. It is expected that each of these agents have an ethical behaviour referred to ethical principles partially inspired in those provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Best Practice Guidelines.

Publisher:

The publisher provides technical assistance and support to the journal editors in the use of the web platform, and maintains the software updated and able to facilitate the submission, evaluation and publication process of scientific works. The publisher also collaborates with the editors in chief indexing the papers, providing information about the databases requirements and, so, contributing to the Journal positioning in the usual rankings. Broadly, the publisher should helps to increase the editorial quality of the Journal, contributing to its visibility, internationalization and impact.

Editors in chief:

Editors in chief ensures that manuscripts submitted are evaluated based exclusively on its intellectual content, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, political affiliation or philosophical trend of the authors. They guarantee the confidentiality of the work, not revealing the identity of the authors to other agents except to those authorized by the publisher, the potential reviewers, the actual reviewers or the editorial board of the journal. Editors can refuse a job if it not satisfy the formal requirements or approach a subject not belonging to the scope of the journal. Editors communicate within the deadlines, once they see the referees and heard the editorial board, the acceptance or rejection of the submitted papers.

Reviewers:

Reviewers should refuse to refer a paper if they do not feel qualified in the subject approached or if they can not take the evaluation within the deadline suggested by the Journal. The referee report should be objective and written in a clearly and reasoned style. Reviewers should avoid ad hominem references and offensive or demeaning comments; their suggestions should focus mainly on the improvement work. Reviewers should treat manuscripts as confidential documents, and their contents is not used in their own works. Reviewers should reject referee papers if they show a conflict of interest, for example a past or present relationship with the paper's authors or the institutions they depend.

Authors:

Authors should submit papers containing original research on a clearly identifiable and not previously published subject. They should not send articles including a substantial part of others papers or books already published. Papers should be written so that they can be understood or replicated by reviewers. If ideas of others are used, they should be clearly referenced; plagiarism is an unacceptable behaviour and its detection involves cancel the submission or remove it from the platform if it was already published. In case of co-authorship, all people that significantly contribute to the paper are considered its author; each author should be able to identify which parts of the work are own and which parts are from others authors, and must maintain confidentiality of the all contents until the article is published. Simultaneous paper sending to other Journals is a sufficient condition for archiving it. If in the process of the paper edition the authors find errors or improprieties, they should communicate to the editors in chief as soon as possible and cooperate in their correction. Authors should communicate the potential conflict of interest between the paper findings and the financial support.

These guidelines are consistent with the ethical code of the University of Santiago de Compostela, institution to which this Journal belongs.

https://www.usc.es/gl/goberno/valedor/codigoetico/CodigoEtico.html

Digital preservation policy

This journal develops various processes in order to preserve permanent access to digital objects hosted on its own servers:

- Backups.
- Monitoring of the technological environment to foresee possible migrations of obsolete formats or software.
- Digital preservation metadata.
- Use of DOI.

The files published on this website are available in easily reproducible formats (PDF)

Anti-plagiarism Policy

This journal is a member of Similarity Check, a multi-publisher initiative started by Crossref to screen published and submitted content for originality.

Through Similarity Check, we use the iThenticate software to detect instances of overlapping and similar text in submitted or published manuscripts.

By depositing all of our content in the Similarity Check database we allow other Similarity Check members to screen their submissions against our published articles.

Interoperability protocols

RICD provides an interface OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative – Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) that allows other websites and information services to harvest the published content metadata.

Specifications:

OAI-PMH Protocol Version 2.0
Dublin Core Metadata 1.1

URL for harvesters:
http://www.usc.es/revistas//index.php/ricd/oai

Journal History

The International Journal of Communication and Development (RICD) is a scientific publication rooted in Europe and Latin America Network of Communication and Development (REAL_CODE) . REAL_CODE was promoted by Galician universities and led by research Gi-1927 "Communication and Citizenship” (CIDACOM) from Santiago de Compostela University.

RICD assumes Compostela’s Manifesto, signed in 2011 by REAL_CODE founding groups. The Manifesto  encourages to set up a new insight of the relation between Communication and Development, as diverse and transversal processes which shape social changes. The editorial policy intends to give priority to field researches made altogether with civic organisations and entities.