Who are we?

Ala Este is a journal that focuses on Literary Theory and Comparative Literature. It originated in 2020 as a teaching innovation project and has since grown in a university environment. Its members consist of students, teachers, and staff from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, all of whom are related to the world of arts and humanities. Ala Este aims to promote transversability and innovation by providing a publishing opportunity to university students studying for a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, or a PhD, as well as all researchers that wish to send us their work.

The dark space of the «east wing» («ala este» in Spanish) is a recurring metaphor in universal literature - Barbazul’s forbidden cabinet, Jayne Eyre’s secret attic… -. Ala Este exposes itself to different readings, from the word play of the ornithological imaginary, to the archetype of the forbidden room so ever present in fiction. Maybe it is this idea of a locked room the most striking one. The enigmas that got the better of so many fictional characters are the same that contain the greatest masterpieces in literature and entice us to enter their caged worlds.

The journal peer-reviews all submissions and accepts articles about Criticism, Literary Theory and Comparative Literature, which means that transversality is an essential aspect, specially in the latter field, where literature is more clearly connected to other fields of knowledge. Furthermore, we are looking for an innovative criterion not only in topics and subjects of study, but also in perspectives about literature.

The innovation project Ala Este. Revista de Teoría de la Literatura y Literatura Comparada can exist thanks to the collaboration of all its contributors and editors, past and present. Even though the members of the team will be posted below, the responsibility of the project is shared amongst everyone equally.

Ala Este is an open access journal, which means that all its contents are available for free to users or institutions. Users can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or cite complete texts, or use them for other purposes as long as they are used legally, without the author or journal’s permission. This has been written in accordance with the BOAI’s definition of open access. Unless otherwise indicated, all contents are distributed under a "Creative Commons Attribution" (CC-by) licence for use and distribution. An informative version of the licence is available here. The licence allows you to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and to remix, transform and build upon the material for any purpose.

With respect to copyright, articles are published in the electronic edition of the journal under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

_{Authors retain their copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication of their work, which is simultaneously subject to the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) that allows third parties to share the work as long as the author and first publication in this journal are indicated.
Authors may adopt other non-exclusive licensing arrangements for distribution of the published version of the work (e.g. depositing it in an institutional telematic archive or publishing it in a monographic volume) as long as the initial publication in this journal is indicated.
Authors are allowed and encouraged to disseminate their work via the Internet (e.g. in institutional telematic archives, repositories, bilibraries, or on their website), which may lead to interesting exchanges and increase citations of the published work.}

In 2023, Ala Este. Revista de creación literaria was established with the goal of showcasing short literary texts from new Spanish-speaking voices. Additionally, it features a miscellaneous section that welcomes all types of artistic dossiers related to other art forms, including photography, painting, sculpture, illustrations, and illustrated texts. The aim of this section is to spread all sorts of artistic manifestations of our time.

Ala Este’s editorial Team. Revista de Teoría de la Literatura y Literatura Comparada (2023/2024)

Direction

• Eva Ariza Trinidad (Department of Spanish Language and Literary Theory, Department of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature, Faculty of Philology, UCM, Spain).

Secretary

• Miguel Cisneros Perales (Department of Romance, French, Italian and Translation Studies, Faculty of Philology, UCM, Spain)
• Carolina López Fic (Department of Romance, French, Italian and Translation Studies, Faculty of Philology, UCM, Spain)
• Laura Rey-Stolle Tortosa (Department of French, Faculty of Commerce and Tourism, UCM, Spain)
• Celia Vázquez Martínez (Degree in General and Comparative Literature, Faculty of Philology, UCM, Spain).

Committee

• Bárbara Arango Serrano (Degree in General and Comparative Literature, Faculty of Philology, UCM, Spain).
• Irene Arenas Rubio (Degree in Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, UCM / Degree in Modern Languages and their Literatures, Faculty of Philology, UCM, Spain).
• Ana Isabel Bartolomé Sandoval (Degree in Modern Languages and their Literatures, Faculty of Philology, UCM, Spain).
• Lourdes Blazquez Pulido (Master in Literary Translation, Faculty of Philology, UCM, Spain).
• Irene Brunete González (Master in Digital Letters: Advanced Studies in Electronic Textualities, Faculty of Philology, UCM, Spain).
• Marta Y. Casanova Cebader (Degree in General and Comparative Literature, Faculty of Philology, UCM, Spain).
• Aitana García Campanón (Master in Literary Translation, Faculty of Philology, UCM, Spain)
• Dayana García Vallejos (Degree in General and Comparative Literature, Faculty of Philology, UCM, Spain)
• Guadalupe Herce Gil (Master in Literary Translation, School of Philology, UCM, Spain)
• Juan Manuel Huaman Chumbipuma (Ph.D. in Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, UCM, Spain)
• Amaia Izkue Daroca (Department of Basque Language and Communication, Faculty of Arts, UPV/EHU, Spain)
• Leticia M.ª Millán Fanconi (PhD in Literary Studies, Faculty of Philology, UCM, Spain).
• Elena Mora Rubio (Master in Literary Translation, Faculty of Philology, UCM, Spain).
• Marta Morueco O'Mullony (Master in Cultural Heritage in the 21st Century: Management and Research, Faculty of Geography and History, UCM, Spain)
• Angélica Nathalie Ortiz Olivares (Degree in General and Comparative Literature, Faculty of Philology, UCM/ PhD in Letters, Unidad de Posgrado, UNAM, Mexico)
• Daniel Prasnicki Amaro (Master in Advanced Hispanic Studies, Faculty of Philology, UV; Degree in General and Comparative Literature, Faculty of Philology, UCM, Spain)
• Andrés Daniel Robles Cordero (Master in Theatre and Performing Arts, Faculty of Philology and Theatre Institute of Madrid, UCM, Spain)
• Lorena Rozas Martínez (Master in Literary Translation, Faculty of Philology, UCM and Master in Book Editing, UAM, Spain)
• Bárbara Saiz Escobar (Degree in Spanish: Language and Literature, Faculty of Philology, UCM, Spain)

Collaborating Team

• Andrea Abello Collados (PhD in Literary Studies, Faculty of Philology, UCM, Spain).

• M.ª Isabel González Gil (Department of Spanish Language and Literary Theory, Department of Literary Theory and Comparative Literature, Faculty of Philology, UCM, Spain).

• Andrea Navacerrada Domínguez (PhD in Literary Studies, Faculty of Philology, UCM, Spain).

• María del Rocío Simón Mora (PhD in Hispanic American Literature, Faculty of Philology, UCM, Spain).

Consultants

• Valeria Marella (Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia, Italy)

• Luciana Rusu (University of Bucharest, Romania)

• Miguel Ángel Guerra Blázquez (Ghent University, Belgium)

• Ana Alvarez Vivo (University of Alabama, USA)

• Sarah Valentin-Sanchez (University of Alabama, USA)

• Zahra El Morabit Sghire (Ghent University, Belgium)

• Eduardo Fabian Rodriguez Pacheco (Universidad del Valle, Colombia and Universidad Centroamericana de Ciencias Empresariales, Nicaragua)

• Ignacio Sánchez Osores (University of Notre Dame, France)

Journal’s Statutes

1. Preamble

Ala Este. Revista de Teoría de la Literatura y Literatura Comparada was born as a teaching innovation project in 2020 and has since grown in a university environment. Its members consist of students, teachers, and staff from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, all of whom are related to the world of arts and humanities. Ala Este aims to promote transversability and innovation by providing a publishing opportunity to university students studying for a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree, or a PhD. Furthermore, it is a journal of scientific nature, since it peer-reviews all submissions to select articles from young researchers in the fields of Literary Theory, Comparative Literature, and Literary Criticism.

Since its creation the journal has aimed at achieving the following general goals:

1. Bring the different processes that take place in a scientific journal, which are imperative for any academic career, closer to bachelor’s, master’s and PhD students.

a) Publish and spread the different processes that take place in a scientific journal across different mediums.

b) Inform the authors about the many steps that must be followed in a journal of such characteristics in order to accept or reject articles, as well as about the estimated deadlines for each one of them.

2. Create publishing opportunities for bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD students.

2.1. Make the journal known to the students through various methods.

2.2. Inform of the submission deadlines and of the annual nature of the journal.

2.3. Promote the sharing of information amongst students from different faculties related to the Arts and Humanities.

2.4. Publish the accepted articles after their review and bring attention to them through the journal’s website and social media.

2.5. Understand a journal’s editorial process.

2.6. Clearly define the necessary tasks to properly go through an editorial process.

2.7. Set the deadlines for all specified tasks.

2.8. Manage all the steps during the editorial process within the deadlines.

2.9. Learn and practice the various functions necessary for the publication of a journal.

 

2. Journal’s Characteristics and Operations

Editorial steps

Description of an article’s itinerary:

1. The author sends the article.
2. A confirmation of the delivery will be sent by The Editorial Team. The author will also be informed about the pre-evaluation process.
3. The pre-evaluation takes place: the team will make sure that the article is original, that it complies with the format style and content requirements.
4. After the pre-evaluation:

a) If it passes, the author will be notified that the article has been sent for peer-review (anonymous).

b) If the article’s topic is not relevant to the journal, the author will be notified.

c) If the article is relevant but has been found in need of modifications, the author will be notified and asked to send it again after the necessary corrections have been made. Afterwards, the process will continue from step 4.a.

5. Peer-review: each article will be sent to two reviewers after the information about the author and the metadata has been removed. Reviewers will write a report following the journal’s standards. The article’s publication will depend on the result of the reviews.

a) The article is accepted: both reviews are positive and the article does not require any modifications.

b) The article is accepted with modifications: both reviews are positive, but either one or both ask to modify certain parts (can be minor or major changes).

c) The article is rejected: one or more reviews reject the publication of the article.

6. The authors are informed about the result of the reviewing process.

a) In the case of 5.b, the deadline to modify the article will be set at one month. Once the corrected article has been sent, the Writing Team will go through the changes and, if they have been made, the editing phase will begin.

7. The accepted articles go through an editing process.
8. The journal issue is published and spread through the journal’s social media (each week the social media accounts will focus on the contents of one of the articles)

Description about the activities of the Writing, Reviewing, and Social Media teams

Article reception coordination team, pre-reviewers, preparation of articles and coordination with reviewers

Role:

• Answer any questions authors or future authors might have (email is checked daily).
• Receiving, pre-reviewing and checking whether the changes have been made if they had been requested.
• Prepare the articles so that anonymity is preserved.
• Assign the reviewers who will be in charge of the peer-review process.
• Receive the reviewers’ evaluations and prepare the files so that they remain anonymous.
• Message the author to:
• Provide the delivery receipt.
• Provide the results of the pre-evaluation.
• Provide the reviewers’ results.

Reviewing Team

Role: 

• Evaluate the articles that have been received following the agreed upon criteria. The deadline will be a month after the article is received.

Editorial Team

Role:

• Review the articles focusing on ortho typographical or stylistic mistakes.
• Communicate their findings to the authors and prepare the article's design.
• Lay out the articles with the established design for this section of the journal
• Recheck the articles in the design process.
• Include the corrections in the design.
• Order the cover page.
• Edit and publish the new issue on the webpage.

Social Media Team

Role:

• Post about the journal’s editing and publishing process.
• Post the journal’s issue.
• Create weekly content about the published articles (each week will focus on an article).
• Post about the weekly contents in the journal’s social media.

Prices

This journal is completely free, which means that no fee will be charged in order to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or cite complete texts, or use it for other legal purposes. Ala Este does not charge submission fees, nor does it charge publication fees for its articles.

Code of Ethics

The code of ethics and malpractice in the journal’s publication supports the combined efforts of the authors, editors and reviewers to produce a responsible research publication.

This declaration is based upon ethical principles that generally follow the guidelines established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

 

1. Responsibility on Authorship

The texts sent for publication must be the result of a novel and original research. All sources used must be included, as well as an objective discussion of the results. Sufficient information must be provided so that any specialist might replicate the research and confirm or reject the interpretations put forward in the article.

Authors must refrain from any violation of the scientific conduct and from breaking the ethics of publication.

Authors must present their results with clarity, honesty and without falsifying or manipulating the data.

Authors must ensure that the data and results in their articles are original and have not been copied, fabricated, distorted or manipulated.

Plagiarism of any kind (multiple publications of the same article, data manipulation, etc.) is considered a major breach of the Code of Ethics and will be labeled as scientific fraud.

The draft’s authorship will be assumed to be of the author that takes responsibility for its content, and all non substantial contributions must be accounted for in the «acknowledgments» section. Authors must refrain from deliberately distorting the relationship between a scientific work and the published article. All articles must significantly contribute to research.

Authors must notify the editors when there is a conflict of interest (direct or indirect) with the Editorial Team.

No significant part of the article must have been previously published, be it as an article or a chapter of a book, or be under consideration by other journals.

When an author spots a critical mistake in the article they have the obligation of notifying the journal at the earliest possible time so that the article can be modified, rejected, retracted, or have a correction published. 

If the error has been spotted by any of the members of the Editorial Team, the author must prove that their work is correct.

Authors must participate in the peer-review process and answer any questions the Editorial Team may ask.

 

2. Editors’ Responsibilities

The Editorial Team must remain unbiased when working with the texts submitted for publication, as well as respect the authors’ intellectual independence. The authors’ right to complain must be respected when the reviews are negative.

Members of the Editorial Team must respect the confidentiality of the submitted texts and their content until they have been accepted for publication. Only then may their title and authorship be revealed.

Furthermore, no member of the Editorial Team will use data, arguments or interpretations in the texts for their own research, unless explicit written consent has been given by the author.

2.1 Publication Decision

All contributions will be evaluated at first by the Editorial Team. This team is the only one responsible for the selection, processing and decision of which articles comply with the editorial objective and, as such, may be published. Each document up for consideration is sent to two independent reviewers, both experts in the field and capable at evaluating the specific merits of the text. The Editorial Team is the sole responsible for the final decision of whether a text is accepted or rejected.

The decision of publishing an article will be based on the importance of the work to the potential researchers, professionals or readers. The Editorial Team must remain unbiased to financial considerations.

The Editorial Team must not make any decision on a text where a conflict of interest can be found. The existence of any relationship that may create problems with the articles under consideration must also be taken into account. The responsibility for the final decision to publish a given text will rest on those members of the Editorial Team without any conflict of interest.

2.2 Articles’ Review

The Editorial Team must ensure that all published research articles have been reviewed by at least two experts in the field, and that such process has been fair and unbiased.

The reviewed texts must remain confidential by the Editorial Team and by the reviewers.

The Editorial Team will take into account the contribution of those members who have helped with the articles submitted to the journal. Reviews of poor quality, incorrect, disrespectful or submitted after the deadline must not be included.

2.3. Identifying and Preventing Inappropriate Conducts

In no case will the Editorial Team encourage bad conduct of any kind or will knowingly engage in such conduct.

The Editorial Team will intervene to prevent inappropriate conduct notifying the authors and reviewers about the ethical conduct expected of them.

The Editorial Team and all reviewers will be asked to identify all documents sensitive to inappropriate conduct under investigation so that appropriate measures can be taken.

If inappropriate conduct is identified, the Editorial Team is responsible for solving the problem, and might ask for the reviewers or experts’ help.

The problem and all facts related to it must be properly documented: who, what, when, where, and why. All documents related to the problem must be preserved, especially the texts under scrutiny.

The Editorial Team will reach out to the authors and offer the opportunity to answer the complaint.

If inappropriate conduct has taken place or modifications must be made, the Editorial Team must deal with the different situations following COPE stipulations.

The Editorial Team must be careful in their scrutiny on whether the problem was made due to human error or willful malpractice.

The Editorial Team will consider the possibility of rejecting a publication if a case of inappropriate conduct is found, or to write a note in the case of insufficient evidence, or ask for a correction of the text.

 

3. Reviewers’ Responsibilities

Every reviewer must know and take into account the editorial policies as well as the journal’s Code of Ethics.

The journal requires that all reviewers have demonstrable work or scientific experience in a given field of knowledge. Potential reviewers must provide the exact information to prove their degree of work or scientific experience.

Furthermore, all reviewers must abstain from applying when they are not qualified to review a draft if they consider that it will not be objective or a conflict of interest may arise.

Reviewers must highlight all relevant sources that haven’t been cited in the reviewed article. If necessary, the Editorial Team may issue a correction notice to this effect.

Reviewers must identify the documents in which a case of inappropriate conduct has been found, as well as notify the Editorial Team which will be the one dealing with the case from that point onwards.

 

4. Conflicts of Interest

The Editorial Team and all reviewers must refuse to work on an article if there is any conflict of interest related to the author or the content of the text. All conflict of interest amongst authors, reviewers, and/or the Editorial Team must be avoided.

The Editorial Team and all reviewers must avoid making decisions when:

• There is a direct relationship between author and reviewer.
• There is a meaningful professional relationship between author and reviewer.
• The editor or reviewer is collaborating in an article submitted for publication.
• The editor or reviewer considers that they cannot remain objective, either for personal or financial reasons.

 

5. Publication and Deadlines

Ala Este is published once a year.

The submission deadline opens in October/November. Afterwards, articles will follow a process of evaluation, review and edition, until they are finally published in the month of April. Therefore, this process lasts for approximately 24 to 28 weeks.

 

6. Recommendations in Favor of Inclusive Language

All articles published in Ala Este must be free of biased language and avoid stereotypes. Therefore, potential authors are highly encouraged to peruse the following links on non-sexist language in academic contexts:

-APA’s guide for a bias-free language (English)

-Guía básica para el uso de un lenguaje no sexista en la UCM (Spanish)

-Manual «El género en la investigación», por el CSIC (Spanish)