About the Publication
Focus and scope
The JOURNAL QRU: Quaderns de Recerca en Urbanismo was created with the aim of becoming a vehicle for the dissemination of research work on various topics in the field of urban planning and spatial planning.
In accordance with the objectives of the Grup de Recerca en Urbanisme (GRU), this magazine wants to accommodate all kinds of reflections on these issues, both theoretical and applied research. Each issue will usually consist of an Editorial; a series of Essays for reflection and balance on the subject of cultural landscapes; a review of Works and interventions; an Explorations section, intended for the review of ongoing research and lastly, Reviews on publications, courses and events related to this topic.
QRU proposes to address specific topics in a monographic way, selected by the editors of each issue, which may or may not belong to the GRU. Once the topic has been raised, a call for papers will be held to invite the authors to present unpublished articles related to the topic raised. After a first selection, the articles will be sent to peer review to consider their publication.
QRU is a journal committed to open access to knowledge and therefore all its articles will be published in open access to the international scientific community, under a Creative Commons license.
e-ISSN: 2385-6777
ISSN: 2014-9689
Scientific Comittee and evaluation
All the papers presented to this journal will be evaluated by external and blind peers, selected by the international scientific committee.
The Scientific Committee will be made up of members with a marked academic profile and active in the field of research. Each member of the committee is recorded on the platform with their academic link.
Open access policy & licenses
QRU is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy,
distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This
is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.
QRU makes available to the international community in open and free access mode all accepted papers that have passed the peer review process. Communications are subject to the Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 in order to disseminate the results of the research presented. This license allows others to download the works and share them with others, as long as their authorship is acknowledged, but they cannot be changed in any way or used commercially (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.es_ES; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode.es).
All the contributions to this journal are published electronically by incorporating them into the open access repository of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya: UPC Commons, with its corresponding direct access link (DOI and handle).
Peer review process
All the papers presented to QRU will be evaluated by blind peer review system. Reviewers will be selected by the international scientific committee.
The Scientific Committee will be made up of members with a high academic profile and active in the field of research. Each member of the committee is recorded on the platform with their academic filiation.
QRU Editors will ensure that the peer review process is fair and that there are no conflicts of interest. However, if during the review process there are discrepancies between author, editor and reviewer, it will be understood that these are produced under a constructive critical spirit, in order to improve the publication.
Step-by-step process description
1. The author submits an article
2. The editor performs a first evaluation to verify its relevance to the theme of the journal.
3. If the article passes this first instance, the article will be sent for peer review.
4. If accepted by the reviewers, the article is returned to the author for corrections (if applicable)
5. The author returns the article to the journal with the requested corrections.
6. The article is mock-up and published.
Publications frequency
QRU is published once a year.
Originality of texts and peer review
QRU will consider for its evaluation and publication only those articles that have not been published before in another journal. If there is suspicion about the originality of a work, the editors have the right to question the authors about it.
The works presented to QRU will be audited with the Urkund plagiarism detection tool.
Authorship of communications
Articles with several authors will be accepted, up to a maximum of six authors. To be considered the author of a scientific article, it is understood that the person must have participated in the conception and design of the work or in the analysis and interpretation of the data obtained; Likewise, the authors must have participated in the writing of the article and in the critical review of its content. The authors of a work may consign a section of thanks to include those who have collaborated in the preparation of the work but are not considered authors.
All images included in the works must be accompanied by the respective reference to the original source from which it comes.
Digital preservation policy and interoperability protocols
QRU’s articles are stored in the institutional deposit of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya: UPCommons, which guarantees perpetual access and preservation of their contents by hosting them on secure university servers and complies with the technical requirements necessary to guarantee interoperability with other information systems.
The Libraries, Publications and Archives Service is responsible for UPCommons, which mainly uses DSpace, an open source program developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Hewlett Packard (HP).
UPCommons integrates with the different information systems of the UPC: Prisma (Information system for the management of enrollment and study plans of the UPC), DRAC (Descriptor of research and Academic Activity of the UPC) or TDX (repository of doctoral theses of Catalan universities), among others.
UPCommons uses the Open Archives Initiative (OAI-PMH) interoperability protocol, in order to increase the visibility of deposited documents. The OAI-MHP protocol allows other applications to collect the metadata of the documents deposited in UPCommons in order to develop other products and improve their visibility and impact.
The metadata of the records deposited in UPCommons are served under a CC-by 3.0 ES license that authorizes them to be shared (copied and distributed in any format) and adapted (remix, transform and create for any purpose, even commercial) as long as when you acknowledge its authorship.
This license refers exclusively to the metadata associated with the deposited documents and at no time does it replace or alter the specific licenses and permissions for each one of them.
Acknowledgments and collaborations
Servei Disseny i Desenvolupament Solucions TIC (UPC)
- Fran Máñez
Biblioteca de l'Escola Tècnica Superior d'Arquitectura de Barcelona (UPC)
- Mònica Bonich
- Inma Suy
- Marta Serrat
Servei de Biblioteques, Publicacions i Arxius (UPC)
- Alejandro Yoldi
