The Rivista Geografica Italiana was first published in Florence in 1894, the brainchild of the geographer Filippo Maria Pasanisi. A striking feature of the first number, which set out the journal’s programme for the years to come, was the intent to promote and spread reliable knowledge about Italy. One of the main tasks of the journal is, in fact, in the words of the editors Filippo Maria Pasanisi and Giovanni Marinelli, to undertake with scientific rigour "the task of collecting, ordering and slowly but effectively analysing some of the fundamental facts about our country" It was not long before the Rivista became the organ of the Società di Studi Geografici e Coloniali (Società di Studi Geografici), which was founded in Florence in 1895. In its first year the Rivista ran to over 650 pages. The contributors, in addition to the two editors, included some of the major Italian geographers of the time: Mario Baratta, Renato Biasutti, Giovanni De Agostini, Olinto Marinelli, Attilio Mori. Looking at the material published in the Rivista from its earliest days, it becomes clear that the original aims and structure have remained essentially unchanged. The strictly scientific nature of its publications, which developed alongside a gradual broadening of the themes which were discussed, has remained a fundamental characteristic of the editorial approach. Today the Rivista Geografica Italiana is the pre-eminent vehicle for geographical studies in the Italian linguistic and cultural area. It’s the only human geography journal, among those published in Italy, that is listed in the “Scopus” repertoire, since 2013. In the context of a scientific debate that becomes ever more international in character, the desire and necessity of moving beyond the restricted circle of those who read Italian has led to English, French and Spanish being adopted as the other official languages of the Rivista. The Rivista Geografica Italiana is published quarterly (March, June, September and December). It consists of the following sections: Articles: scientific papers whose originality and quality have been assessed by Italian and/or foreign experts. Opinions and debates: they are not subject to peer review but simply to quality control on the part of the editorial board. They consist of opinions on various subjects, for which the authors are regarded as being primarily responsible. Bibliographical Information: includes reviews of books published in Italy and abroad in the two years preceding the publication of each issue of the Rivista, which are regarded as being of interest to the geographical community. The aim of the Rivista is to provide a high quality forum for Italian and international scholars of geography and related disciplines who wish to bring their work before the scientific geographical community.
Since 2007, articles submitted to the Rivista geografica for publication are subjected to a double-blind peer-review process. All submissions are initially given a preliminary reading by the journal’s Board. If the submission passes this preliminary reading, it is anonymized before being sent to two external reviewers. The text is anonymized not only by removing the author’s name and affiliation, but also by removing other elements that might make it possible to identify the author(s), for example by removing as far as possible citations in the text and in the final bibliography of works by the author(s). The external reviewers may be members of the Scientific Committee, of the Board of Referees, or selected by the Editorial Board on an ad-hoc basis. All reviewers are individuals with an established scientific reputation and experience in international publications. The complete list of reviewers is kept by the Editorial Board and published every two years in the Rivista’s website. The anonymous article is sent to each reviewer together with a questionnaire in which the reviewer is asked to give:
-an analytical judgement on various aspects of the article;
- an overall comment about the article as a whole;
- a confidential comment on the article, to be seen only by the Editorial Board;
- a judgement on the publication-worthiness of the article in terms of the following five possibilities:
a) acceptable for publication as it
stands;
b) acceptable but only after minor revisions have been made;
c) acceptable but with major revisions and with the suggestion that it be resubmitted to the review and reviewed a second time;
d) not acceptable but the authors are advised to submit the article to other journals;
e) not acceptable.
At this point the comment is sent to the author. In the case of b), once the author has implemented the changes requested by one or both reviewers, the paper is sent to the Board who make a judgement as to whether the changes are satisfying. In the case of a negative judgement the Board will ask for further changes to be made. In the case of c), once the author has implemented the changes requested by one or both reviewers, the paper is sent back to the Board who send it on to the reviewer or reviewers who made the judgement, to allow them to judge whether the changes are satisfying. In the case of a negative judgement the reviewer will request further changes until these are considered satisfying. If one of the reviewers judges the work to be a), b) or c) and the other judges it to be d) or e), the paper may be either rejected or sent to a third reviewer (who will not be told of the previous judgements). If their judgement is d) or e) the paper will be rejected. If it is a), b) or c) the paper will be accepted and will follow one of the paths outlined above.
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