About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Athena is an open access, double-blind peer review scholarly journal that sets out to analyse the problems relating to the legal, political, and social changes attendant on globalization, proposing to provide these problems with theoretical answers.

Since the mid-twentieth century, we have been living in an age of deep transformation, with globalization processes that have heightened the crisis of the nation-state; amplified the clash, and meeting, of civilizations; and triggered huge migration flows.

In several disciplines, these epoch-making transformations have prompted an effort to understand their nature by wrestling with new themes and ideas: human rights, international constitutionalism, global justice, multiculturalism, new identities, accelerated technological changes, and the emergence of new forms of power and of regulation.

The incremental process toward a meeting of civilizations and cultures poses an inevitable challenge to Western knowledge and to its presumed centrality, making it necessary to recognize the particularity of the Western tradition, its connection and relation to non-Western traditions, and the importance of engaging with other approaches and cultures without claiming a position of superiority. For an apt visual rendering of this predicament of Western reason we can turn to the unsettling and enigmatic image of Klimt’s Pallas Athene, and the beheaded Medusa on her armour can be interpreted as signalling the end of a fossilized thought, while embracing the prospect of new horizons.

As global pressures mount and crises come to a head, several legal and philosophical questions come into focus that need to be addressed through different lenses, making it possible to break out of the traditional dogmatism so as to gain deeper insights into the issues with which we are confronted, leading to a wider perspective on how best to deal with those issues and find globally accepted formulations of the problem they pose.

These transformations that we are facing compel the philosophy of law to analyse the grounds of law from a critical perspective by also fostering interaction with other disciplines: political thought, history of political doctrines, cultural anthropology, international law, political philosophy, ethics and applied ethics, moral philosophy, theoretical philosophy, philosophy of technology, history of law, philosophy of international law.

Athena aims to be the vantage point from which to tackle these challenges by recurring to legal philosophy, but this observatory will also do double duty as a laboratory in which to test out different ideas through a discussion that can bring into play a whole range of perspectives reflective of the complexity of the changing reality were are currently experiencing.

Editorial Sections

  • Foreword: Not Open Submission / Reviewed (Editorial Review, only) / Indexed
  • Articles: Open Submissions / Peer-Reviewed / Indexed
  • Miscellanea: Open Submissions / Peer-Reviewed / Indexed
  • Conference Papers: Open Submissions /Peer-Reviewed/ Indexed
  • Book Reviews: Open Submissions / Peer-Reviewed / Indexed

Publication Frequency

In 2021 and 2022, the Journal published one issue per year. Starting from 2023, Athena adopts a half-year frequency, by releasing two issues per year.

Indexing

  • ACNP – Italian Catalogue of Serials

  • BASE – Bielefield Academic Search Engine

  • DOAJ – Directory of Open Access Journals

  • EBSCO - leading provider of research databases for universities, colleges, hospitals, corporations, government, K12 schools and public libraries worldwide

  • ERIH PLUS – European Reference Index for the Humanities and Social Sciences

  • Heinonline – Law Journal Library

  • Google Scholar – A simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature

  • ROAD – Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resource

  • WorldCat – The World’s Largest Library Catalog

Peer Review Process

(v.2/2024)

All submitted manuscripts which comply with the Authors' Guidelines are initially managed by both the Managing Editor and the Executive Editor in order to be prima-face considered by the Editor-in-Chief in terms of general eligibility to be included in Athena (hereinafter, Journal). Consequently, the selected ones undergo a prior anonymization by the Editorial Office and performed by the Board of Directors' in order to ensure their compatibility with the scientific purposes of the Journal.

Those manuscripts that do not match the purposes and/or the scope of the Journal, understood on a case-by-case basis and in a comparative perspective, are discarded (Desk Rejection). 

The Editorial Office will promptly notify all Authors the reception of their manuscripts through either the Journal e-mail account or the OJS Platform (hereinafter, OJS) as well as it will inform all Authors if their manuscripts are either eligible to the peer-review step or rejected (Desk Rejection) by 2 weeks from the notification of receipt (at the latest) via e-mail, only. 

As part of the initial quality assessment and prior to the peer-review stage, each manuscript will be undergone a plagiarism detection through iThenticate, and if it does not meet any kind of plagiarism is anonymously sent to two external and independent reviewers with the most suitable scholarly experience in the field of research for the formal peer review (i.e. double-blind peer review) which generally takes up to 6 weeks. Exceptionally, one of the two Reviewers may belong to either the 1) Board of Directors' or the 2) Associate Editors Team: in such circumstance, she/he will conduct the role in accordance with the Code of Ethics (i.e. sections 2.2, 8.2 as well as 3 in terms of conflicts of interest). 

Each Author, whose manuscript has been peer-reviewed, will be kept duly informed by the Editorial Office in order to ensure the best transparency and integrity of the whole process. The Editor-in-Chief then makes a decision on extending a Publication Offer based on multiple factors (i.e. the content compliance with the topic proposed in the Call for Papers and the scientific potential to foster the pluralism in the scholarly debate) being the reviewers’  feedback (in terms of requests, comments and suggestions) the most relevant one. The no binding advisory opinions of the Board of Directors’, Associate Editors and the Managing Editor also concur to the Editor-in-Chief’s decision. The decision will then be notified (via e-mail) to the Authors as soon as it is taken (meaning that the time needed will usually be longer for manuscripts that are considered eligible for publication with Major revisions).

Each revised manuscript with Major revisions will be undergone a new round of review by the same Reviewer who has previously evaluated the manuscript in its original version, while the Managing Editor will confirm the compliance of the revised version with the Reviewer’s requested Minor revisions. 

In case of Reviewers’ conflict about the eligibility for the publication, the Editor-in-Chief may assign the manuscript to a third external Reviewer prior to the rejection; the no binding advisory opinions of the Board of Directors’, Associate Editors and the Managing Editor concur to the Editor-in-Chief’s decision.

Exceptionally, (3) a member of the Scientific Committee may be involved as third Reviewer by taking into account its scholarly experience in evaluating the manuscript.

The Editor-in-Chief then will makes a decision on extending a Publication Offer based on all the Reviewers’ feedback. The no binding advisory opinions of the Board of Directors’, Associate Editors and the Managing Editor also concur to the Editor-in-Chief’s decision.

In very exceptional cases, the Editor-in-Chief may authorize the publication of a manuscript which is evaluated directly suitable for the publication by skipping the prior peer-review process: in such circumstance, a request of a not binding advisory opinion of both the Board of Directors’ and (4) the Scientific Committee is compulsory. Consequently, an Editorial note will appear in the frontpage in order to duly inform readers about the Editorial decision and its reasons.

Athena manages the whole Peer Review process in accordance with the Code of Ethics.

The Scientific Committee, composed of international and national recognized experts and academics, is devoted to warrant the prestige and the scientific integrity of the Journal while it is not generally involved in any peer-review step (except the (3) abovementioned circumstance) or editorial decision (except the (4) abovementioned circumstance in terms of no binding advisory opinion). 

Any complaint relating to the peer-review process is directed to the Editor-in-Chief.

In accordance with the Journal’s blind evaluation policy, the Reviewers’ list is not made public, and may be disclosed to institutional bodies for accreditation purposes, only.

According to the Journal's Editorial sections managements and prior publications, the average time for publication is 10 weeks (updated on September, 2024). 

Fees

Athena has neither article submission charges (ASCs) nor processing fees (APCs).

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 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

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, although you are kindly requested to inform the journal for every reuse of the papers.

Authors who publish on this journal maintain both the copyrights and the publishing rights.

Authors are welcome to post pre-submission versions, the original submitted version of the manuscript (preprint) and 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.

Ethics

All editorial, publishing and reviewing activities of Athena comply with the Code of Ethics adopted by the AlmaDl Journal Service.

Especially for:

  • The Editorial Team (Editor-in-Chief, Directors’ Board, Managing Editor, Associate Editors, Assistant Editors and Executive Editor): sections 1, 2.1, 3.1 and 8.1
  • The Reviewers: sections 1, 2.2, 3.2 and 8.2.

Each Author is invited to read the Code of Ethics (especially sections 1, 2.3, 3.3, 4,5, 6, 7 and 8.3) before submitting a manuscript to the Journal. Authors accept the whole Code of Ethics by submitting a manuscript to the Journal.

Each member of the Scientific Committee is duly informed on the Code of Ethics before joining the role in the Journal’s body. In case of reviewing commitment, it will be conducted in accordance with the Code of Ethics (i.e. sections 2.2, 3.2 and 8.2 as well as 3 in terms of conflicts of interest).

Data Policy

When relevant, authors are encouraged to follow Open Science and FAIR principles by publishing the research data associated to their articles in trusted data repositories, according to the international best practices and data management guidelines.

Detailed information is reported in the AlmaDL Journals Data Policy.

Authors who are affiliated to the University of Bologna can publish their data in AMSActa, the institutional research data repository.

Archiving & Repository Policies

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/

The Journal’s Repository Policy for auto-archiving is recorded on Sherpa Romeo

Publisher

CIRSFID – Centro di Ricerca in Storia del Diritto, Filosofia e Sociologia del Diritto e Informatica Giuridica
Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna

Via Galliera, 3
40121 - Bologna (Italy)

The Athena logo is a faithful photographic reproduction of a two-dimensional, public domain work of art: Gustav Klimt's "Pallas Athena (1898). Oil on canvas, 75 × 75 cm (29.5 × 29.5 in)", collected in the Vienna Museum, Austria.