About the Journal

Focus, Scope and Policy

The Editorial Committee of Revista Estudos Feministas has decided to use the feminine grammatical gender as the norm for texts explaining its guidelines and editorial policies. This decision seeks to ensure textual accessibility for visually impaired people, and to promote affirmative action in appreciation of the writings of women, who are the majority in the making of the journal. We hope everyone feels included.

Launched in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, Revista Estudos Feministas (REF), edited in the Federal University of Santa Catarina since 1999, is a quarterly journal which publishes original articles, essays and reviews about gender, feminisms and sexualities, either in the context of a specific discipline or from an interdisciplinary perspective in terms of methodology, theory and bibliography. With the aim of spreading the vast production in these fields, it offers subsidies for theoretical debates as well as analytical tools which might contribute to social movements involving women, feminisms, gender and sexualities.

The journal contains the following sections: articles, point of view, dossiers, thematic section, debate, and reviews. The dossiers alternate issues with the thematic and debate sections. Point of view includes essays and interviews. With three issues yearly, REF circulates nationally and internationally, being an important reference in Brazil and in Latin Ameica. Original manuscripts may be submitted all year round in Portuguese, English and Spanish. (For more information, check the section policies and the “Guidelines for Authors”.)

The Revista Estudos Feministas does not accept articles and essays that have been submitted to other publications or that have already been published elsewhere. The editors recommend the use of the SciELO Preprint platform before submission for evaluation, an information which should be given at the time the article is sent.

In case of doubt about the preprint, please access: SPINAK, Ernesto. “O que é este tema dos preprints?” SciELO em Perspectiva, 2016. Available in https://blog.scielo.org/blog/2016/11/22/o-que-e-este-tema-dos-preprints/

Composition of the Journal

The different sections of the journal are composed of articles (including a maximum of two translations), thematic articles, essays, interviews, dossiers, thematic section, section debate and reviews.

The Articles will contain analyses of empirical studies or of theoretical or methodological issues, following rules and criteria well established in academic culture.

The Thematic Articles comprise a set of articles already evaluated and accepted for publication that are coincidentally related to the same subject. One or more of the journal’s editors or other academic specialists are invited to organize and present them, according to their area of expertise.

The Point of View section consists of essays and interviews. The Essays are papers resulting from considerations on a specific topic without the academic formality of the articles, and are so classified, upon submission, by the Editorial Committee. The Interviews should be carried out with professionals, academics or activists with a relevant contribution to the field.

The Thematic Section, differently from the Thematic Articles, proposed beforehand by an organizer, who places a call for submissions on a subject of their interest and expertise. The proposal must be approved by the Editorial Committee and the articles must go through the process of blind external evaluation.

Organized by professionals with recognized expertise on the theme proposed, the Dossiers should contain discussions of current and controversial issues that contribute to the epistemological and political debate in the area of gender and feminist studies. Proposals, consisting of a group of papers related to a specific political or social movement, inside or outside the academy, must be submitted to the editorial committee. The papers may include, besides articles and essays, several other genres, such as testimonies, proposals, manifestos, case studies, or other non-academic documents related to politically engaged organizations.

The Debate section is dedicated to revisiting or introducing a relevant topic in women’s studies or gender, through the republishing of a seminal or controversial article, followed by comments and reviews by experts in the field. It is organized by the editors of the section, who are responsible for the evaluation of the texts.

The Reviews section publishes critical comments, evaluated by the Editorial Committee, on relevant work in the field published in Brazil in the last two years or abroad in the last four years.

Peer Review Process

Initial evaluation

Manuscripts undergo a preliminary evaluation by the technical team to assess whether they follow the journal’s norms. If problems are detected, they are rejected and the authors are advised to make the needed corrections and make a new submission. At this point, the texts also go through a similarity recognition tool in order to detect any plagiarism.

Next, manuscripts are evaluated by the Editorial Committee to check whether they fit the scope of the journal in terms of originality, quality and thematic appropriateness. If approved, they are sent to external referees.

Please check all information about norms and formatting in the “Guidelines for Authors” on the menu. Texts not in accordance with the journal’s specifications will not be considered.

Referee evaluation

Revista Estudos Feministas has a policy of “double-blind” evaluation, whereby neither author(s) nor referees have their names known to each other.

Manuscripts that have been submitted to or published in other journals or in books are not accepted. If you have any doubts about this, or need further information, please get in touch: ref@cfh.ufsc.br.

Texts approved in the initial evaluation are sent to two ad hoc reviewers who are experts in the area.

If they diverge, the manuscript is sent to a third referee. If the result remains still inconclusive, a member of the editorial committee has the final word.

Referees are asked to provide a response in 20 days. After this process, the unidentified comments will be sent to the author(s).

Conditional acceptance

If the external reviews are favorable, the text will be accepted under the condition that the author(s) adequately address the issues raised in the comments. The article should be resubmitted within no more than 30 days, with highlights to the changes made. The text will then be examined by members of the editorial committee and, if deemed necessay, by at least one of the original ad hoc evaluators. This is to ensure that the suggested changes have been adequately made.

Non-acceptance

A text may be rejected after the initial evaluation, after the peer evaluation, and also after revision and resubmission of the work. If the ad hoc evaluators call for substantial rewriting or revision, the manuscript will not be accepted.

The editorial committee hopes that authors understand the reasons for such a careful evaluation system, a needed step for securing high academic quality. Even recognizing that no system is immune to error, REF’s editorial policy hopes to maintain the standards of an academic journal that is reference in feminist, gender and sexualities studies.

Periodicity

Quarterly.

Open Access Policy

This journal offers immediate open access to its contents, according to the principle that the free sharing of scientific knowledge provides a democratization of science.

Recommendations for ethical conduct and procedures

We follow the recommendations for ethical conduct and procedures of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), available here.

Sponsors

We are grateful for the support of CNPq and CAPES.

Sources of Support

REF thanks the Federal University of Santa Catarina for the support in terms of equipments and physical space. Special thanks go to the volunteer work of the researchers on its editorial staff, which has allowed for the continuity of its publication.

History

The Revista Estudos Feministas was created in 1992 and initially edited by the Coordenação Interdisciplinar de Estudos Contemporâneos of the Escola de Comunicação of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. After that, the responsibility for the journal was assumed by the Graduate Program in Social Sciences of the Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Sociais of the same university. Since 1999, it has been hosted at the Centro de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas and the Centro de Comunicação e Expressão Of the Federal University of Santa Catarina. It is currently integrated to the Institute of Gender Studies, composed of researchers from different areas of knowledge and fields of action at UFSC, who engage in feminist and gender studies.