About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Over the last two decades, the increase in academic research and reflection about death has made it possible to multiply analyses of attitudes and conceptions about death and dying in different areas of knowledge, in research carried out in universities and research centers in various countries in Europe and the Americas. Revista M. is a product of this process. Created in 2016, it is a publication linked to the Imagens da Morte e do Morrer na Ibero-América (Images of Death and Dying in Ibero-America) Research Group based at the Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO) (Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro) and accredited by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development) (CNPq).

There are few academic journals focused on the subject of death available in the Americas and Europe, excepting, for example: Death Studies and OMEGA-Journal of Death and Dying, from the United States; Vita Brevis, from Mexico; Mortality and Bereavement Care, from the United Kingdom; and Rivista Zeta-ricerche e documenti sulla morte sul morire e sul lutto, from Italy. In addition to not being many, most of these journals have a paid subscription system, besides charging for access to individual articles. In Brazil, apart from some publications in the medical field, it is unknown, to date, of the existence of an interdisciplinary academic journal specifically aimed at disseminating thanatological studies. To fill this gap, the Revista M. Estudos sobre a Morte, os Mortos e o Morrer (|M. Journal, Studies on Death, the Dead and Dying) was conceived, with the mission of disseminating national and international scientific production on the subject of death online and with broad access, becoming a reference journal for those interested in the different forms of knowledge produced on the subject. A journal with the most varied focuses and perspectives possible, addressing different subjects around dying, as well as the diversity of practices and conceptions linked to human death in the most different environments, cultures, and times.  Its editorial process has relied on the collaboration of authors, editors, members of the editorial board and advisory board, as well as peer reviewers, from different countries, especially Ibero-America.

Revista M. is financed by the Postgraduate Program in History of the Federal Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO), through funding from the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel) (CAPES), linked to the federal government of Brazil, and has a partnership with the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo (Autonomous University of the State of Hidalgo) (UAEH) / Mexico and other institutions, associations and research groups, such as: Estudos em Saúde Coletiva da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (Institute of Studies in Public Health of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) (IESC-UFRJ); Programa de Pós-Graduação em Design da Universidade do Estado de Minas Gerais  (Postgraduate Program in Design at the State University of Minas Gerais) (UEMG); Programa de Pós-Graduação da Universidade Estadual do Oeste do Paraná (Postgraduate Program at the State University of Western Paraná) (UNIOESTE); Instituto de Investigaciones en Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades (Institute for Research in Social Sciences and Humanities), from the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (National Scientific and Technical Research Council) of Argentina and the Universidad Nacional de Salta (National University of Salta) (ICSOH CONICET-UNSa) / Argentina and Universidad de Barcelona (University of Barcelona); Associação Brasileira de Estudos Cemiteriais (Brazilian Association of Cemetery Studies) (ABEC); and the Research Groups of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development of Brazil (CNPq): “Images of death: death, the dead and dying in the Ibero-American world” (PPGH-UNIRIO), and Lugares de memória e consciência (Places of memory and consciousness) (FAU- USP). In the course of 2016 to date, other institutions and groups have already contributed to the journal’s production process, to which we are immensely grateful. They are: Programa de Pós-Graduação em História / Universidade Federal de Uberlândia (Postgraduate Program in History at the Federal University of Uberlândia) (from July 2016 to September 2020) and Centro de Estudos em Biodireito (Center for Biolaw Studies) (Cebid) (from 2016 to 2018).

EDITORIAL POLICY

The journal is published biannually (January-June and July-December) and publishes original, unpublished articles, preferably written by PhDs, that are not being evaluated by another journal, from areas of the Social Sciences and Humanities or at the interface with them, that have not been submitted to other journals. It accepts submissions in Portuguese, Spanish, English and French and prioritizes publications at the beginning of each semester.

Section Policies

Our journal receives contributions in a continuous flow, exclusively online, through access to the SUBMISSION menu, available on the Periodicals Portal of the Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO): http://seer.unirio.br/revistam/about/submissions. Collaborations that can be directed to three sections:

• Artigos (Articles): Intended for analytical texts that result from investigations and studies relating to different ways of approaching the topic. This section accepts, preferably, articles submitted by doctors. They are received in two forms: those intended for thematic dossiers proposed and organized by experts, with an open call on the journal’s website, and free articles, which can be submitted in a continuous flow. The text must contain between 40 thousand and 70 thousand characters with space, including footnotes and complete bibliographic references, which must be listed in alphabetical order at the end of the article.
• Em campo (In Field): Focused on reports of fieldwork and/or methodological experiences in handling the topic, involving interviews and transcriptions of commented sources. The submission of texts that involve human beings, directly or indirectly, must be accompanied by the authorization of the “assignment of rights over oral testimony” or, if applicable, the assignment of image dissemination rights to Revista M. The text must contain between 20 and 40 thousand characters with space, including footnotes and complete bibliographic references, which must be listed in alphabetical order at the end of the text.
• Resenha (Review): Of works that have been published, at most, three years ago in Brazil (or four years for international publications), or of out-of-print titles that have recently been reissued. Respecting the approach to Death, the Dead and Dying, reviews can also be submitted about other expressions of culture, such as films, documentaries, exhibitions, plays, etc. The text must contain between 10 and 20 thousand characters with space, including complete bibliographic references (if applicable), which must be listed in alphabetical order at the end.

Ethical Commitment, Similarity Verification and Combating Plagiarism

To avoid plagiarism and ensure ethical commitment in academic production, Revista M. makes use of the iThenticate text comparison software to detect similarities and coincidences between the manuscript being evaluated and other already published texts. After analyzing the similarity report produced by the software, if signs of plagiarism are found, the author of the submitted manuscript will be contacted by the journal’s editors to provide clarification within a period of three weeks. If, within the deadline, there is no response, the explanation is unsatisfactory, or plagiarism is admitted, the manuscript will be rejected following the opinion of the Editorial Board. If the explanation is considered satisfactory by the Editorial Board, upon verification of a citation error, subject to adjustment, the author of the article will have a deadline to review and resubmit the manuscript.

If the originals contain material previously published by the author of the manuscript, this must be mentioned, with an indication of the complete reference of the previous article and explanation that the submitted article makes a significant new contribution to the proposed topic, despite resuming an analysis already developed before. Such warning does not exempt the author from avoiding reproductions of various passages from previous texts.

In order to ensure ethical publication criteria and avoid committing plagiarism, Revista M. recommends that the following guidelines be observed when submitting an article: 1) That the content obtained from other academic works and/or other authors in the process of writing of the manuscript is explained as a bibliographic reference, according to the citation criteria indicated in the Publication Standards; 2) only those people responsible for the conceptual structuring of the article and its writing/revision should be indicated as authors. People who collaborated in the data collection process but did not contribute to the construction of the manuscript, must be mentioned in a footnote of acknowledgement at the beginning of the text, depending on their contribution.

Peer review process and deadline for processing manuscripts

After the similarity verification stage, the manuscript undergoes pre-evaluation by the editors to identify whether the text fits the journal’s thematic proposal and whether it follows the Publication Standards. If there is no adherence to the scope of Revista M., the submission will be rejected, accompanied by an opinion substantiating the authorship of the manuscript. If it is found that the text does not follow the rules, it will be returned so that the author can make the necessary adjustments. Contributions to the Em Campo/In Field and Resenha/Review sections will be evaluated on merit by the respective editors and may be approved or rejected in this instance.

In the case of a manuscript submitted to the Artigo/Article section, once it meets the standards of Revista M., the absence of identification of its authorship will be verified. To ensure blind evaluation, the authorship and institutional affiliation of the file’s authors must be removed from the first page of the text, as well as mentions in the footnotes that could lead to the identification of the author at the time. To remove authorship from Word, the author must click in the “file” menu, then “inspect document”, and remove the document properties and personal information. If it is necessary to refer to the link between the submitted article and the author’s previous articles, it is requested that the text fragment be marked in YELLOW so that the editors can exclude it from the version to be sent to the evaluators.

After this step, the manuscript will be forwarded to two ad hoc reviewers (who are doctors and specialists in the topic covered), appointed by the Editorial Board, to guarantee the “double blind” peer review system. In their analysis, reviewers will be guided by the Evaluation Form provided by the journal so that they can examine the merits of the work, considering the approach to the topic, its treatment, and the clarity of the writing, and may recommend or refuse publication. If one of the reviewers rejects the proposal, a third will be appointed.

The recommendation may occur in two forms: 1) With or without specific suggestions for changes (which the author may or may not accept); 2) with suggestions for reformulating part of the text, which must be resent to the respective reviewer(s), after the author has made changes, to accept the new version. Refusal will occur: 1) If both reviewers reject the proposal; 2) if one of the reviewers rejects it and the other accepts it with suggestions for reformulating the text; 3) if both reviewers suggest reformulation and the second version of the text sent by the author is rejected by one or both of them; 4) if the third reviewer rejects the text or accepts it through reformulations.

The final acceptance of the submitted work, therefore, will depend on the recommendation of the reviewers, the implementation of the necessary changes by the author, and the final approval by the Editorial Board. The average processing time for manuscripts is six months, between Submission and Editorial Decision on possible acceptance for publication or rejection, and one year between Submission and publication.

Copyright Statement and Open Access and Archiving Policies

Revista M. is a free, open-access electronic publication that keeps every issue published online. Our journal follows the principle of making scientific knowledge freely available to the public and offers immediate access to its content, providing greater democratization of knowledge. As such, it does not charge submission or publication fees.

In this sense, we follow the proposed Open Access Journal Policy. This defines that the authors are fully responsible for the entire content of the contribution they publish, agree to the terms that they retain copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication. The manuscript is simultaneously licensed under the Creative Common - Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) attribution license, in line with the policy guidelines of leading open access journals. This allows the texts to be reproduced in a variety of ways, if the authorship and original publication are cited. We refer you to the Creative Commons website: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.pt-br if you have any questions. In line with this principle, the journal adheres to the BOAI (Budapest Open Access Initiative), an initiative in defense of open access to scientific publications.

In line with this, Revista M. is produced using the Open Journal System (OJS) platform, which is free software developed by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) at British Columbia University of Canada for the production and management of electronic journals. This system was translated and customized in Brazil by the Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia (Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology) (IBICT) and, since 2003, it has promoted the use of the Sistema Eletrônico de Editoração de Revistas (Electronic Journal Publishing System) (SEER) for the production of electronic journals, such as our jornal.

Open Journal Systems is compatible with the LOCKSS system ("Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe") to guarantee the safe and permanent preservation of your journal. We have adopted the LOCKSS System as our Archiving policy, developed by Stanford University, allowing libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for preservation and restoration purposes. More information can be found at http://lockss.org. Our journal is also part of Rede Cariniana de Serviços de Preservação Digital Cariniana (IBICT's Cariniana Digital Preservation Services Network), which provides preservation for any Open Journal System [OJS] journal in Brazil, as part of a national network for the preservation of open access journals worldwide. This initiative by IBICT and the Network's partners follows the international trend of creating electronic journal archiving agencies, in order to guarantee long-term access to Brazilian publications that were not yet included in the major digital preservation initiatives (https://cariniana.ibict.br/?page_id=1487  ).

Conflict of Interest Guidelines

When submitting their work, the author must declare the existence of conflicts of interest, understood as conflicts that may arise when authors, reviewers, or editors have personal, academic, political, commercial, or financial interests that influence the preparation or evaluation of texts. When submitting their manuscript, authors are responsible for reporting possible financial or other conflicts that may have influenced their work. In this sense, they must declare in the manuscript any financial support received for the research, as well as other commercial, financial, or personal relationships. With this mention by the author, the Editorial Board will be able to know about potential conflict of interests when sending the text for evaluation. In turn, reviewers must inform the Editorial Board about any conflicts of interest that may influence the issuance of their opinion on the text and, in this case, declare the impediment to carrying out the evaluation of the manuscript.

Qualis CAPES Periodicals and Indexers

In its first evaluation (2013-2016), Revista M. obtained Qualis Periódico: B4 (History); B5 (Sociology; Communication and Information); C (Architecture, Urbanism, and Design; Literature/Linguistics). In 2017, it received the Qualis A4 in what was called “eaked Qualis”. In the last evaluation of Qualis Periódico in December 2022, the journal received Qualis B1.

Revista M. is indexed in the following databases of national and international scientific articles:

• Latindex: Regional Online Information System for Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain, and Portugal. https://www.latindex.org/latindex/ficha/23363
• Miar: Information Matrix for the Analysis of Journals, da Facultad de Información y Medios Audiovisuales de la Universidad de Barcelona, Espanha - https://miar.ub.edu/issn/2525-3050
  • LatinRev: Red latinoamericana de revistas académicas en Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades - https://latinrev.flacso.org.ar/revistas/revista-m-estudos-sobre-morte-os-mortos-e-morrer
• Diadorim: Directory of Open Access Policies of Brazilian Scientific Journals. http://diadorim.ibict.br/handle/1/1673
• Miguilim: Diretório das revistas científicas eletrônicas brasileiras. https://miguilim.ibict.br/handle/miguilim/7284
• CAPES Periodicals Portal: https://www-periodicos-capes-gov-br.ezl.periodicos.capes.gov.br/index.php/buscador-primo.html
• Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com.br/citations?user=jTWPN-kAAAAJ&hl=pt-BR