About the Journal

Focus and Scope

The journal has three main aims. First of all, it aims at encouraging interdisciplinary research on Asia and Africa, maintaining high research standards. Second, by providing a global forum for Asian and African scholars, it promotes dialogue between the global academic community and civil society, emphasizing patterns and tendencies that go beyond national borders and are globally relevant. The third aim for a specialized academic journal is to widen the opportunities for publishing worthy scholarly studies, to  stimulate debate, to create an ideal agora where ideas and research results can be compared and contrasted.

Another challenge is to combine a scientific approach and the interest for cultural debate, artistic production, biographic narrative, etcetera. This journal wants to be original (even hybrid) also in its structure, where academic rigor should not hinder access to the vitality of experience and of artistic and cultural production.

Peer Review Process

All research papers submitted to Kervan are peer-reviewed according to the following procedure:

  • Initial review: The Editor-in-Chief evaluates each manuscript to determine if it fulfills the all above mentioned criteria. Manuscripts that fail to pass the initial review will be returned to the authors.
  • Peer review: Manuscripts that pass the initial review are assigned to two independent reviewers according to their expertise in the particular field. All reviewers are PhD holders in the relevant academic discipline or have a significant, long-term professional experience. The review process is double-blind : the reviewers don't know the identity of the author, and the autor doesn't know the identity of the reviewers.
  • Recommendation: Based on the reviewers' comments, the Editorial Board makes a final decision on the acceptability of the research paper and notifies the authors, along with the comments of the reviewers. The decision can be "Accept Submission", "Revisions Required", "Resubmit for Review", or "Decline Submission." If the decision is "Resubmit for Review", the manuscript has to be revised and sent to the second round of peer review.

Appropriate reviewers should be knowledgeable about the subject but have no close connection with any of the authors. Reviewers must not be former co-authors or colleagues and must be from institutions other than those of any of the authors.

The articles in the others sections as well as book reviews are not considered to be original research papers and should not be treated so. They are evaluated in single blind mode by the members of the Scientific board. Such materials are published if they fit to the aims and scope of the journal, are relevant for the target audience and meet all formal criteria.



Publication Frequency

Kervan is published annually.

Open Access Policy

Kervan is an Open Access journal published under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

With the licence CC-BY, authors retain the copyright, allowing anyone to download, reuse, re-print, modify, distribute and/or copy their contribution. The work must be properly attributed to its author.

It is not necessary to ask further permissions to the author(s) or journal board.

This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of Open Access.

Archiving

Kervan utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration. More...

Code of Ethics

Kervan is committed to the highest publication standards. The prevention of publication malpractice is one of the important responsibilities of the editorial board. This Code describes Kervan’s policies for ensuring the ethical treatment of all participants in the peer review and publication process. Kervan Editor, Guest Editors, Reviewers and Authors are encouraged to study these guidelines and address any questions or concerns to Kervan Editor, Mauro Tosco (mailto:mauro.tosco@unito.it).

These guidelines apply to all manuscripts submitted to Kervan, and may be revised at any time by the Editor-in-Chief and the Board. The following duties outlined for editors, authors, and reviewers are based on the COPE – Core practices, https://publicationethics.org/core-practices (accessed July 2020).

 

Duties of Editor-in-Chief (Editor) and Guest Editor(s)

Editor/Guest Editor(s) are responsible for the content of the journal and for ensuring the integrity of all work that is published in it.

  • Publication Decisions: The Editor/Guest Editor(s) have the right to make the final decision on whether to accept or reject a manuscript with reference to the significance, originality, and clarity of the manuscript and its relevance to the journal.
  • Review of Manuscripts: Kervan follows a double-blind review process, whereby Authors do not know Reviewers and vice versa. The Editor/Guest Editor(s) are responsible for securing timely, independent and anonymous peer review from suitably qualified reviewers who have no disqualifying competing interests, of all manuscripts submitted to the journal. The Editor/Guest Editor(s) are responsible for ensuring that the journal has access to an adequate number of competent reviewers. Reviewers will be acknowledged by the journal at the end of each year. Reviewers’ list is public, on the journal website.
  • Fair Review: The Editor/Guest Editor(s) and their editorial staff must ensure that each manuscript received by Kervan is reviewed for its intellectual content without regard to sex, gender, race, religion, citizenship, etc. of the authors.
  • Confidentiality of submitted material: The Editor/Guest Editor(s) and the editorial staff will ensure that systems are in place to ensure the confidentiality and protection from misuse of material submitted to the journal while under review and the protection of authors’ and reviewers’ identities and will themselves take all reasonable steps to preserve the confidentiality of authors’ and reviewers’ identities.
  • Disclosure: The Editor/Guest Editor(s) should ensure that submitted manuscripts are processed in a confidential manner, and that no content of the manuscripts will be disclosed to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers, as appropriate.
  • Conflicts of Interest: The Editor/Guest Editor(s) should excuse themselves from considering a manuscript in which they have a real or potential conflict of interest resulting from competitive, collaborative, financial or other relationships or connections with any of the Authors, companies or institutions connected to the manuscript.
  • Authority: The Editor in Chief must have ultimate authority and responsibility for the Journal. The Editor-in-Chief should respect the Journal’s constituents (Readers, Authors, Reviewers, Guest Editors, Editorial Staff), and work to ensure the honesty and integrity of the Journal’s contents and continuous improvement in journal quality.

 

Duties of reviewers

  • Fair reviews: Reviewers should evaluate manuscripts objectively, fairly and professionally. Reviewers should avoid personal biases in their comments and judgments and they should express their views clearly with supporting arguments. Reviewers must provide substantiated and fair reviews. These must avoid personal attack, and not include any material that is defamatory, inaccurate, libellous, misleading, obscene, scandalous, unlawful, or otherwise objectionable, or that infringes any other person’s copyright, right of privacy, or other rights.
  • Confidentiality: Information regarding manuscripts submitted by authors should be kept confidential and be treated as privileged information. Reviewers should not discuss the manuscript with anyone other than the Kervan Editor/Guest Editor(s), nor should they discuss any information from the manuscript without permission.
  • Acknowledgement of Sources: Manuscript reviewers must ensure that authors have acknowledged all sources of data used in the research. Any kind of similarity or overlap between the manuscripts under consideration or with any other published paper of which reviewer has personal knowledge must be immediately brought to the Editor/Guest Editor(s)’s notice.
  • Timeliness: In the event that a reviewer feels it is not possible for him/her to complete review of manuscript within stipulated time then this information must be communicated to the Editor/Guest Editor, so that the manuscript could be sent to another reviewer.
  • Right of refusal: Reviewers should refuse to review manuscripts: a) where they have provided written comments on the manuscript or an earlier version to the Author, b) in which they have any conflicts of interest resulting from collaborative, financial, institutional, personal, or other relationships or connections with any of the companies, institutions, or people connected to the papers.
  • Complain: Any complaint relating to the journal should, in the first instance be directed towards the Editor-in-Chief of Kervan.

 
Duties of Authors

  • Originality: Authors must ensure that no part of their work is copied from any other work, either authored by themselves or others and that the work is original and has not previously been published in whole or substantial part. The author should not submit concurrent manuscripts (or manuscripts essentially describing the same subject matter) to multiple journals.
  • Authorship of the Paper: Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to conception, design, execution or interpretation of the reported study. Others who have made significant contribution must be listed as co-authors. The author should ensure that all co-authors have affirmed the final version of the paper and have agreed on its final publication.
  • Plagiarism and Self-Plagiarism: All work in the manuscript should be free of any plagiarism, falsification, fabrications, or omission of significant material. Plagiarism and Self-Plagiarism constitute unethical publishing behaviour and are unacceptable. RSUT reserves the right to evaluate issues of plagiarism and redundancy on a case-by-case basis.
  • Acknowledgement of Sources and Conflict(s) of interests: The author should indicate explicitly all sources that have supported the research and also declare any conflict(s) of interest.
  • Data Access and Retention: The author should provide raw data related to their manuscript for editorial review and must retain such data.
  • Timeliness: Authors should be prompt with their manuscript revisions. If an Author cannot meet the deadline given, the Author should contact the Kervan Managing Editor as soon as possible to determine whether a longer time period or withdrawal from the review process should be chosen.
  • Fundamental Errors in Published Works: The author should promptly inform the Editor/Guest Editor(s) of any obvious error(s) in his or her published paper and cooperate earnestly with the Editor-in-Chief in retraction or correction of the paper. If the Editor-in-Chief is notified by any party other than the author that the published paper contains an obvious error, the author should write a retraction or make the correction based on the medium of publication.

The Kervan Code of Ethics was developed by the Editor-in-Chief and the Board of Kervan.
The Code draws heavily from the following on-line source, which is recommended reading on ethical guidelines:

Anti-plagiarism Policy

Kervan takes instances of plagiarism very seriously. Some papers may be randomly selected and reviewed using anti-plagiarism software (with Turnitin provided by the Univ. of Turin). Please refer to our Ethical Standards policy.

Articles and submissions processing charges (APC)

Kervan does not ask for articles processing (APC) or submissions charges.

Indexing & Abstracting

Kervan is indexed by:

- ACNP

- BASE

- EZB - Elektronischen Zeitschriftenbibliothek

- Google Scholar

- La Criée – Periodiques en ligne

- Worldcat (OCLC)

- ZDB - Zeitschriftendatenbank

Journal History

Kervan is an interdisciplinary journal, promoted and realized by scholars active at the Department of Humanities of the University of Turin, who focus on Asia and Africa, in the context of an international web of collaborators. The journal was originally created by the researchers and teachers of Asian and African languages and literatures of the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures of the University of Turin, later tranferred to the “Kore” Free University in Enna. The founder, Michele Vallaro, launched the journal in 2005 and was the scientific director until 2014. Since January  2005 (issues 1-17, 2005 to 2013), it has been published online, and in 2014 (issue 18-) it was re-founded as an OpenAccess academic journal.
All issues are collected in the Open Access platform of the University of Turin.