About the Journal

Aims and Scope

The Grove – Working Papers on English Studies is the journal of the HUM.0271 Research Group at University of Jaén. The Grove is an international peer-reviewed academic journal which has been publishing since 1996. The journal has been published in paper since its foundation, and an open-access online version is also available on its website for free.

The Grove is primarily aimed at specialists in any area of English Studies. The major scope of the journal is literatures in English, critical theory, English language and linguistics, translation, English as a foreign language and cultural studies.

The Grove publishes annually (from January to December), in December, and includes articles, book reviews and literary contributions. Call for papers closes on 31st December for issues to be published the following year.

The Editor kindly invites submissions in English or Spanish of original unpublished articles and book reviews within the domain of the above topics, as well as unpublished poems or short literary contributions. Multiple submissions of the same author or redundant publications would not be considered. Contributions should be unpublished and not considered for publications elsewhere. Otherwise, they will be automatically declined.

During the process of article assessment, authors must communicate all relevant information regarding any external funding of the research that led to the elaboration of the work under consderation, namely: funding agency, call, project reference and (optionally), title. This information must also appear at the beginning of the article.  

Articles, book reviews and literary contributions for publication should be submitted through the journal website.

There are no fees to publish in this journal.

 

Editorial Policies

  • Open Access Policy

The Grove provides immediate open access to its content so it is a fully open access journal, i.e., all content is available free of charge for users or their institutions. This is based on the principle of offering the public free access to the research and helping to create a greater global exchange of knowledge.

  • Copyright

Authors who publish with this journal agree to retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a liberal CC-BY license that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal. Also, authors will retain the rights on their work, even if they will be granting The Grove. Working Papers on English Studies a non-exclusive right of use to reproduce, edit, distribute, publicly communicate and show their work. Therefore, authors are free to engage in additional, independent contracts for non-exclusive distribution of the works published in this journal (such as uploading them to an institutional repository or publishing them in a book), as long as the fact that the manuscripts were first published in this journal is acknowledged. Authors authorise The Grove to publish them in the journal and to include them in the indexing and abstracting services, academic databases and repositories the journal participates in. Users who adapt (i.e., remix, transform or build upon the material) must distribute their contributions under the same licence as the original.

Self-archiving is also permitted, once the article has been published, so that authors are allowed to deposit the published PDF version of their articles in academic and/or institutional repositories, without fee or embargo. Authors may also post their individual articles on their personal websites, again on condition that the original link to the online edition is provided.

  • Publication Ethics Statement

This section describes the best practice principles applied in The Grove – Working Papers on English Studies. These principles have been outlined on the basis of Elsevier recommendations and the Best Practice Guidelines  published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). In submitting a manuscript to The Grove, authors acknowledge these principles have been applied to the research reported in the article by ticking the corresponding box in the Submission Preparation Checklist.

Publishing in The Grove involves the acceptance of the journal’s policy of ethical oversight, conflict of interest and the Universidad de Jaén Code of Ethics.

1) Standards

Articles must follow the author’s guidelines of The Grove. Otherwise the articles will be immediately returned to their authors and will not be sent to the two blind reviewers until compliance with the author’s guidelines is satisfactory. Submissions which do not reach the minimum word count (5,000 in articles and 2,000 in book reviews) or which are plagiarised will be declined immediately.

Authors are required to check off their submissions by ticking the corresponding box in the Submission Preparation Checklist.

2) Selection of contributions

Given that The Grove receives more submissions (articles, reviews and fiction/poetry) than it can publish, our peer-reviewers are asked to consider the quality and originality of each paper accepted for publication. In general terms, to be acceptable a paper must deal with one of the fields of study covered by our journal, be original, provide substantial evidence for its conclusions, and prove relevant for the specific field. Additionally, we will be looking for methodological rigour, theoretical consistency and innovation, stylistic merit, and academic seriousness. Manuscripts are evaluated without regard to the authors' race, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief, ethnic origin, citizenship, or political philosophy.

The process has two different steps:

  • Firstly, there is an internal review made by the editorial team. Each manuscript is carefully reviewed by the editors to ensure that it meets the basic requirements specified in the author’s guidelines, and that it is of sufficient quality to be sent to external reviewers. Manuscripts that do not meet these requirements are returned to the authors  so that they can meet the minimum requirements, i.e. word count, author’s guidelines, etc. If the topic is out of the scope, manuscripts will be rejected by the editors. This process will take between 3 or 4 weeks.
  • Secondly, an external review is carried out. Submissions which meet the basic requirements are then sent out for blind peer review by at least two anonymous referees. Papers may be approved, rejected, or approved with modifications, in which case detailed reports will be sent to the author(s); the paper will be evaluated again unless the editors consider the modification of minor importance. For details, see the evaluation form used by the blind referees. This process will take approximately 2 months. The revised version of the manuscript should be submitted within 1 or 2 months depending on the requested revision.

Authors whose contributions are accepted will be kindly asked to review a manuscript for the following year’s issue. We will really appreciate their contribution.

The editors reserve the right to reject a paper if it does not meet the aforementioned criteria or if it has not been revised satisfactorily.

Revised versions should be accompanied with a short summary about the modifications authors have made and the author's response to the reviewer's comments.

The rejection rate of our journal is 20% (Vol. 28).

3) Originality, plagiarism and acknowledgement of sources

Manuscripts submitted to The Grove require the assurance that it is an original work which has not been previously published and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere. By originality, we understand that the work has been produced by the authors themselves.

Plagiarism is the unethical act of using others’ prior ideas, processes, results or words without explicit acknowledgement of the original authors and sources. Plagiarism is considered academic dishonesty and a breach of journalistic ethics, and some cases of self-plagiarism can also be considered a form of scientific misconduct. Therefore, all manuscripts submitted to The Grove will be checked using advanced plagiarism and AI detection software Turnitin to prevent the journal from publishing plagiarized and/or unoriginal content. 

If the plagiarism and AI detection program presents a high similarity index, the manuscript will be automatically rejected by the editorial staff and not considered for publication in the journal. However, citation improvement may be required if the similarity index is considerably low. After undertaking the necessary corrections, the manuscript could be resubmitted.

4) Research with humans

If the research requires humans’ participation, authors should sign a form stating that informed consent was obtained for experimentation with them stating that all procedures were performed in compliance with relevant laws and institutional guidelines.

5) Confidentiality

The editors or any member of the editorial board must not disclose any information about a submitted manuscript to anyone other than the corresponding author, reviewers and the publisher.

6) Conflict of interest 

Unpublished materials of a submitted paper will not be used by the editors, the members of the editorial board and the reviewers for their own research without the author’s consent.

Editors and members of the editorial board will recuse themselves from considering manuscripts in which they have conflicts of interest.

7) Complaints and appeals

The described procedure applies to complaints to editorial decisions, about failure of processes or about publication ethics. The complaint should in first instance be handled by the Editor-in-Chief(s) responsible for the journal.

The Editor-in-Chief together with the editorial board will investigate the matter. The complainant will be given appropriate feedback.

8) Privacy Statement

All names and email addresses entered in this magazine will be used exclusively for the stated purposes and will not be provided to third parties or used for other purposes.

 

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