About the Journal

Focus and Scope

The journal is meant to become the natural target for research papers describing significant, automated or semi-automated formalization efforts in any area, including classical mathematics, constructive mathematics formal algorithms, and program verification. The emphasis of the journal is on proof techniques and methodologies and their impact on the formalization process. In particular, the journal provides a forum for comparing alternative approaches, enhance reusability of solutions and provide a clear view of the current state of the field. Although outside the scope of the journal, it will also help to better understand the requirements for automatic and interactive tools supporting the formalization effort, becoming a major vehicle for their diffusion and enhancement. The journal encourages the submission of interesting, insightful, and informative papers, preferably accompanied by formal scripts. Although the journal is not meant to become a repository for proof scripts, an effort will be made to ensure that the "experimental data" backing formalisation papers will remain accessible.

Peer Review Process

All papers are subjected to peer review.

When JFR editorial board receives a new article, the peer review process will be developed as follows:

  1. The editorial board communicates to the author that the article has been received.
  2. The editors make an initial assessment of the article according to the following criteria: relevance of the topic; overall quality of the contribution according to the standard of the magazine; compliance with the editorial standards. Editors may refuse the article and communicate their decision to the author. The author will be informed no later than 15 days from the date of submission of the article.
  3. After passing successfully the first evaluation, the article will be sent to two anonymous reviewers, experts on the subject and/or of the methodological approach. No later than 2 months, the reviewers will evaluate the article with the following possible outcomes:
    • Article accepted
    • Article accepted with minor changes or additions
    • Article accepted with substantial changes/additions (the new version of the article will be submitted again to the peer-review process)
    • Article refused
  4. No later than 15 days, according to the referees' evaluation, the editors of the thematic sections will communicate to the author the final decision on the article. In case of request for minor changes, the author will have 1 month to change the article in accordance with the demands of the referee and provide the final version.
  5. Publication

The editorial board decide in which issue of JFR the article that passed all the evaluation stages will be published.

Referees over the past ten years:

Benedikt Ahrens, Nick Benton, Frederic Besson, Jesse Bingham, Sandrine Blazy, Silvie Boldo, Brian Campbell, Venanzio Capretta, Paolo Capriotti, Pierre Casteran, Iliano Cervesato, Adam Chlipala, Pierre Corbineau, Luis Cruz-Filipe, Delphine Demange, Maxime Denes, Josiah Dodds, Jacques Fleuriot, Ferruccio Guidi, Osman Hasan, Johannes Holzl, Lars Hupel, Joe Hurd, Cezary Kaliszyk, Gerwin Klein, Ondrej Kuncar, Stephane Le Roux, Gyesik Lee, Pierre Lescanne, Dan Licata, Victor Lopez Juan, Marco Maggesi, Victor Magron, Assia Mahboubi, Daniel Matichuck, Micaela Mayero, Alexandre Miquel, Ulf Norell, Michael Norrish, Gian Ntzik, Sidi Ould Biha, Sam Owre, Russel O'Connor, Iona Pasca, Grant Passmore, Florian Rabe, Wilmer Ricciotti, Laurence Rideau, Tom Ridge,  Cluadio Sacerdoti Coen, Ivan Scagnetto, Mathhieu Sozeau, Bas Spitters, Enrico Tassi, Laurent Thery, Josef Urban, Christian Urban, Tarmo Uustalo, Marcus Wenzel, Freek Wiedijk, Santiago Zanella-Beguelin.

Publication Frequency

With the exception of Special Issues, the journal operates under a continuous publication model.

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 3.0 (CC-BY 3.0).

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 the copyrights.

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.

The journal has neither article processing charges nor submission processing fees.

Quality Control, Publication Ethics and Publication malpractice

The following statement is inspired by COPE Code of Conduct.

http://publicationethics.org/files/Code_of_conduct_for_journal_editors.pdf

The journal is under review for membership in COPE.

 

Journal editors

Editors have a duty to act if  they suspect misconduct or if an allegation of misconduct is brought to them. This duty extends to both published and unpublished papers.

Editors have a system for managing their own conflicts of interest as well as those of the staff, authors, reviewers and editorial board members.

Editors have a process for handling submissions from the editors, employees or members of the editorial board to ensure unbiased review.

Editors encourage study and research into peer review and publishing and reassess the journal’s process in the light of new finding.

Editors guarantee that errors, inaccurate or misleading statements are corrected promptly and with due prominence.

Editors will publish corrections, clarifications, retractions and apologies when needed.

Editors will respond promptly to complaints and will ensure there is a way for dissatisfied complainants to take complaints further. Complains and appeals could also be directly sent to the Managing Editor.

Editors ensure that contents are published on a timely basis, following the stated frequency.

Editors take all reasonable steps to guarantee that the published material is securely preserved and all articles are published in open access, freely available to anyone. Permanent identifiers as DOI and NBN guarantee tracking and preservation of articles in the long term.

 

Duties for Authors

Authors are responsible for the articles they submit: they must assure the originality of their works, being aware of the consequences of misconduct.

Authors should always acknowledge their sources and provide relevant citation details for all publications that have influenced their work.

Authors are asked to provide the raw data in connection with a paper for editorial review, and should be prepared to retain such data for a reasonable time after publication in order to provide access to such data.

Authors are asked to follow the Author’s Guidelines published by the Journal, therefore ensuring accuracy, completeness and clarity of research reporting, including technical editing.

 

 

 

Duties for Reviewers

Reviewers are provided guidance on everything that is expected of them including the need to handle submitted material in confidence.

Reviewers are required to disclose any potential competing interests before agreeing to review a submission.

Reviewers are encouraged to comment on the originality of submissions and to be alert to redundant publications and plagiarism. They will alert Section Editors regarding intellectual property issues and plagiarism and work to handle potential breaches of intellectual property laws and conventions.

Reviewers should help identifying relevant published work that has not been cited by the authors.

 

The Journal policies will be reviewed periodically, particularly with respect to new recommendations from the COPE.

 

 

 

Indexing and Abstracting

The Journal is indexed in the following databases and libraries:

  • ACNP - Italian Catalogue of Serials
  • BASE - Bielefeld Academic Search Engine
  • DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journals
  • Google Scholar - Academic Search Engine
  • JournalTOCs - International Aggregator of Scientific Articles TOCs
  • Journals4free - Aggregator of Scientific Journals
  • PLEIADI - Portale per la Letteratura Scientifica
  • SUMMONS - Serial solutions
  • Ulrich's - Global Serials Directory
  • Worldcat - The world's largest library catalog

 

Scientific databases:

Libraries:

  • Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries
    • Open Access Digital Library, 01/01/2008-
  • Universitätsbibliothek Regensburg
    • Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek - Frei zugängliche E-Journals, 2008-
  • 中国教育图书进出口公司 (China Educational Publications Import & Export Corporation)
    • Socolar, 2008-

Archiving Policy

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/

Publisher

Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna

Via Zamboni, 33
40126 - Bologna (Italy)