Article 1
Format and Organs of the Journal

1. The Journal Italian Papers On Federalism (hereinafter, Journal) is a four-monthly online legal journal – Registration at the Court of Rome n. 186/2011 of 06.17.2011 – published by the Institute of Studies on Federal Regional Systems and Autonomies (ISSIRFA) “Massimo Severo Giannini” of the National Research Council (CNR), open access, of a scientific nature, and published periodically quarterly with ISSN code, without requiring publication costs and guaranteeing the pluralism of the scientific debate.
2. The bodies of the Journal are: the Director, the Management Committee, the Scientific Committee and the Editorial Committee.
3. The bodies of the Journal with decision-making duties regarding publication are the Director and the Management Committee. The Scientific Committee exercises functions of guaranteeing the prestige of the Journal and expresses opinions and formulates indications on scientific orientations and on issues that require particular attention. The Editorial Committee is assigned exclusively secretarial, organizational, and editing functions.
4. The bodies with decision-making tasks are composed of scholars belonging to the roles of university professors in legal subjects and to the roles of researchers in legal subjects of universities and public research bodies, or of scholars and experts from public institutions and private bodies of proven qualification and prestige, both Italian and foreign.
5. The Director of the Journal is designated by the Institute Council of the CNR-ISSIRFA.
6. The Management Committee is made up of nine members, in addition to the Director who is a member by right and appoints its members from among scholars and experts on the topics of reference of the Journal, ensuring that the composition does not include more than 40% of members belonging to the same University, Institution, Research Institute or other Institution of proven qualification and prestige.
7. The members of the Scientific Committee are appointed by the Director from among scholars of proven qualification and particular prestige.
8. The members of the Editorial Committee are appointed by the Director, who also indicates the member who carries out the functions of Coordinator and the members who are assigned the secretarial functions of the Committee.

Article 2 
Contributions

1. The Journal publishes contributions relating to Area 12 (legal sciences), with particular attention to the sectors of public, constitutional and administrative law, both Italian and comparative, concerning the themes of regionalism, federalism, autonomies, trials of European and supranational integration, decentralization, multilevel government, and institutional pluralism.
2. The Journal proposes Call for Papers for the publication of contributions on themes or issues of particular interest to the relevant scientific community.
3. The Journal exclusively publishes contributions that address new problems or that in any case present an appreciable degree of innovation in the solution of already known problems or an appreciable level of critical analysis in the evaluation of solutions already proposed by others; who dedicate adequate attention to the international debate, where it exists, however making use, among others, of the comparative method; which have a systematic scope suited to the topic covered and in any case move within a sufficiently broad cultural horizon.
4. The Journal also publishes contributions in languages other than Italian and English, it being understood that each contribution must in any case also be accompanied by an abstract in English.
5. All contributions are available free of charge for download in .pdf format via the Journal’s website.

Article 3 
Procedure for reviewing scientific contributions.

1. The Journal undertakes to comply with the provisions of the Regulations for the classification of journals in non-bibliometric areas published by the National Agency for Evaluation of the University and Research System (ANVUR), in relation to the criteria according to which the Journal will be evaluated for its scientific purposes.
2. The contributions are sent by the Author, on his initiative, to the email address: italianpapersonfederalism@gmail.com and subjected to double verification.
3. The first verification, carried out by the Management Committee, consists in ascertaining the presence of the minimum requirements of formal and scientific adequacy of the contribution.
4. Once this first phase has been passed and the contribution has been made anonymous, the latter is subjected, together with an evaluation form, to the single blind review procedure by a referee external to the decision-making bodies of the Journal.
5. The referee evaluates the contribution, completing the evaluation form in its entirety, within 20 days of receipt.
6. The Journal keeps an electronic copy (.pdf) of all the evaluation forms assigned and completed by the referees by preserving the text of the email communications received.
7. If the referee receiving the assignment proves unable to carry out the review, the Management Committee entrusts it to another referee.
8. The outcomes of the refereeing are the following: 1) publishable contribution; 2) publishable contribution with revisions; 3) non-publishable contribution.
9. The indications provided in the Evaluation Sheets are forwarded by the Management Committee to the Author to make him aware of the changes – if necessary – to be made.
10. The qualification of “Scientific article subjected to referees pursuant to art. 3 of the Journal Regulations” is reported in the initial note of the scientific article.
11. In exceptional cases, a contribution assessed as unpublishable may be subjected to a second refereeing where the Director finds the presence of clear elements to believe that the first judgment – in relation to the content and method of the contribution – was not entirely satisfactory or that certain aspects are worthy of further investigation. Once the second refereeing opinion has been obtained, if the latter is favorable to publication, the Director decides on whether to publish the contribution, directly assuming responsibility for any publication, and the circumstance and the related reasons are duly reported.

Article 4 
Changes to the regulation

1. This regulation may be modified by the Director in agreement with the Management Committee. Any changes are adequately reported on the Journal’s website.