About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Estudos de literatura brasileira contemporânea is a quarterly scientific journal of the Grupo de Estudos em Literatura Brasileira Contemporânea (Contemporary Brazilian Literature Studies), from the Pós-graduação em Literatura (Graduate Course on Literature) of the Universidade de Brasília (University of Brasília). Since 1999, when it started to be issued, the journal is committed to raise a critical debate on the contemporary literature produced in Brazil, in its varied manifestations, departing from many theoretical and methodological approaches, with an open dialogue with other literatures and other kinds of artistic expression.

 

Brief Background

ELBC began airing in 1999. In 2010, all editions of the newspaper became available online as well. Starting from issue number 40, the print version was discontinued, and the magazine became exclusively accessible in electronic format. In 2016, the magazine became quarterly, and in 2021, it adopted the modality of continuous publication.

ELBC is the only newspaper in the country exclusively focused on contemporary Brazilian literature. From its inception until 2021, it was directed by Prof. Regina Dalcastagnè (UnB), and currently, Professors Paulo Thomaz (UnB) and Rejane Pivetta (UFRGS) serve as the magazine's general editors.

 

Open Science Compliance

ELBC follows the Gold Open Access model.

Interested parties can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles, as well as use them for any other lawful purpose, without needing prior permission from the editors or authors. When using material from the magazine, the source should be cited with the reference to the publication in ELBC.

With the aim of facilitating manuscript evaluation and, once approved, contributing to the preservation and reuse of content and reproducibility of research, ELBC recommends the provision of all underlying content (such as collected data and information, program codes, among others) alongside the manuscript text either prior to or at the time of publication.

When not included as part of the submitted manuscript, the cited underlying content in the article should be deposited in open-access repositories. The cited data must be referenced in the article along with bibliographic references, indicating the location address of the file(s) in the repository, if applicable.

To ensure accessibility and reuse of the data, it is recommended that they be made available in an open file format (e.g., spreadsheets instead of PDFs).

In the case of data restricted due to legal and/or ethical issues, the article should inform the reason for the restriction and provide contact information for the person or group responsible for making the information available upon request.

Regarding promoting transparency in the evaluation process, authors and reviewers will be consulted to ascertain whether they agree to the publication of manuscript approval reports and if they are willing to interact for potential adjustment suggestions.

In the submission process, authors should include on the cover page submitted with the manuscript information about the conformity of the work with Open Science communication practices.

 

Ethics in Publication

Estudos de Literatura Brasileira Contemporânea is a journal committed to remain aligned with the guidelines provided by the  CNPq’s Brazilian commission for integrity on  scientific activity (http://www.cnpq.br/web/guest/diretrizes) and the ethical recommendations in publishing for authors, editors and reviewers of the Committee on Publication Ethics – COPE (http://publicationethics.org/).

Authors should adhere to Resolution CNS No. 674/2022 regarding the need for review by the CEP/Conep System. Studies involving directly or indirectly human subjects that do not fall under the exemption situations outlined in Article 26 of the said Resolution must provide in the manuscript the protocol number and the date of approval by the Research Ethics Committee.

 

Focus and Scope

The journal is committed to raise a critical debate on the contemporary literature produced in Brazil, in its varied manifestations, departing from many theoretical and methodological approaches, with an open dialogue with other literatures and other kinds of artistic expression.

Each issue includes three distinct sections:

  • A section of articles that relate to the issue’s specific theme
  • A section of articles that relate to diverse themes within the scope of the journal
  • A section of book reviews

Contributions for the open theme sections and book reviews are received continuously.

 

Digital Preservation

This journal follows the standards defined in the Digital Preservation Policy Program of the SciELO Program.

This journal is preserved by Rede Cariniana and utilizes the LOCKSS system to create a distributed archiving system among participating libraries and permits those libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for purposes of preservation and restoration.

 

EDITORIAL POLICY

Preprints

Committed to the principles of open science, the journal also accepts preprints, completed scientific articles that have not been published or peer-reviewed and that have been previously uploaded to open-access online repositories. 

The use of preprints is an option and choice of the authors. Preprints share with journals the novelty in publishing articles and inhibit the use of double-blind procedures in manuscript evaluation.

The journal accepts archived preprints from the following servers: SciELO, CORE Repository (MLA), Zenodo, Preprints.org and SocArXiv. Other repositories will be considered on basis of the editorial team’s evaluation and approval.

Information regarding preprints should be provided on the cover page, which should accompany the manuscript in the submission system.

 

Peer Review Process

Collaborations submitted to ELBC are evaluated, firstly, regarding their scientific character and their alignment with the guidelines for authors, the focus and scope of the journal, as well as compliance with the principles of open science adopted by the journal. If the article is considered adequate, the evaluation follows the following steps:

1) Technical evaluation: carried out by editors of the Editorial Nucleus of the journal, has the purpose of evaluating the interest of the article for the journal and its publication potential.

2) Ad hoc evaluation: external evaluation, performed in the double-blind system, by specialists designated according to the theme of the article. This stage considers, primarily, the following aspects:

  • relevance of the problem
  • contribution to the field
  • up-to-dateness of the theme
  • originality of the content
  • mastery of arguments and context of debate
  • theoretical framework
  • clarity of objectives
  • coherence and relevance of  arguments
  • organization of the text
  • language and quality of the text
  • link between abstract and article
  • adequacy of keywords
  • consistency of bibliography used
  • up-to-dateness of bibliography used

 

3) Final evaluation: the section editors, based on the considerations made by the referees (at least two, but may be more, in case of controversy), verify the reliability of the opinion in relation to the proposed article and send the result of that evaluation to the Editorial Committee for final evaluation. Finally, the Editorial Committee, composed of the editors, the editor-in-chief and the organizers – in the case of thematic dossiers – deliberates on the publication of the article. The final result of the evaluation of the article may be: approve, approve with adjustments, require review for reassessment / resumption or reject.

Deadlines

The assessment process from the time an article is submitted to the final decision of publication takes on average 6 (six) months, depending on the amount of papers received for analysis and the availability of the consultants. The journal ensures that the maximum period between submission and publication does not exceed one year.

Open Peer Review

Among the practices adopted by the open science movement is transparency in peer review. Thus, upon publication of approved articles, ELBC will inform the editors responsible for the evaluation.

Additionally, authors may choose from the following means of openness:

- Publication of approval reports along with the manuscript.

- Direct interaction with reviewers for manuscript adjustments.

Authors should indicate their choice on the cover page accompanying the manuscript in the submission system.

 

Open Data

Transparency and openness of research processes and content are essential to allow evaluation, validation, and reproducibility of results, as well as to ensure preservation and enable reuse of data, codes, and materials collected and used in the conception, execution, and communication of published research.

In this regard, the methodology of data collection and manipulation must be clearly stated in the article. Authors are also responsible for storing, preserving, and providing access to the data used in the research. When not included as part of the submitted manuscript, data, codes, and materials cited in the article should be deposited in open-access repositories such as SciELO Data, Dataverse, DataHub, Figshare, Dryad e Zenodo,, among others.

Authors are encouraged to promote data accessibility and reuse by providing them in a file format that allows easy data extraction (e.g., spreadsheets instead of PDFs). In the case of restricted data, the reason for the restriction should be stated in the article, along with contact information for the person or group responsible for providing the information upon request. The cited data must be referenced in the article along with bibliographic references, indicating the location address of the file(s) in the repository, if applicable.

All data, codes, and materials underlying the article and used in the conception and execution of the research should be properly cited in the text and included in the reference list, indicating the location address of the file(s) in the repository, preferably with a persistent identifier such as DOI. The article will not be published until the citations are adequate, and the references are in accordance with the example provided below.

WILKENS, Matthew, Replication Data for: "Too isolated, too insular": American Literature and the World. [dataset], Harvard Dataverse, versão 1, 2021. https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/XXN1UE

 

For more information on this matter, please visit the following link: Guia para promoção da abertura, transparência e reprodutibilidade das pesquisas publicadas pelos periódicos SciELO.

 

Fees

This journal does not charge the authors any fee related to submission and processing of manuscripts.

 

Ethics and Misconduct, Correction and Retraction Policy

Our editors will make efforts in the prevention of unsuitable practices and unethical behavior in the publication of articles, and they will not tolerate any kind of plagiarism.  

  1. When submitting articles to the journal, authors automatically state that the contents are original. In addition, they assert that the article has not been published yet, partially or totally, in another language, nor was submitted to another journal simultaneously. Authors also undertake to notify the journal when they detect errors or inaccuracies in their own work (already published, in review or in the process of being published) and cooperate with publishers in order to further the process of withdrawal or correction.
  2. Editors and reviewers agree to review papers submitted to the journal factually, centered on its intellectual content, without discrimination of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, geographical origin or political thought. They also undertake to keep submissions confidential, while are under review and if the paper is refused. Papers will be subjected to reviewing or discussion with external reviewers only by permission of the editors.
  3. When reviewers identify that the paper submitted has relevant content previously published – by the author or others, whether in form of statements, arguments or excerpts – they shall notify publishers directly and authors must provide that such content will always be complemented with the bibliographical reference to indicate its origin. Similarly, when there is substantial similarity or indication that the paper in evaluation has already been published in another journal, reviewers should notify editors that the article violates the ethical principles of the journal.  Note: the journal uses CopySpider software for plagiarism detection.
  4. Nonconformities and other cases not mentioned in these guidelines should be reported to the chief editor of the journal, which will take appropriate action to solve the problem presented.

Cases of plagiarism or similarity will be handled according to the guidelines recommended by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). For example, depending on the severity of the occurrence, in cases of suspected plagiarism or duplication, authors will be contacted, and the journal may request corrections or even reject publication. If irregularities are detected after publication, the editors will take appropriate action to publish an erratum or a retraction, as appropriate.

Policy on Conflict of Interest

Conflicts of interest may arise when authors, reviewers, or editors have interests that could influence the preparation or evaluation of manuscripts. Conflict of interest can be of a personal, commercial, political, academic, or financial nature.

If there is, even potentially, a conflict of interest, authors should disclose it on the cover page to be attached to the submission platform along with the manuscript. If the manuscript is approved, the conflict of interest statement will be published with the work.

Reviewers and editors involved in the evaluation should also declare if they have any conflicts of interest regarding the manuscript or its authors, such as: working or having worked at the same institution as the author(s); having a recent history of collaboration or publication with one of the author(s); having a personal relationship with the author(s), among others.

 

Adoption of similarity software

Approved manuscripts are analyzed using the CopySpider software before publication to detect plagiarism.

The journal may also utilize tools for detecting content generated by artificial intelligence (AI), such as ZeroGPT, among others.

AI tools may be used ethically, limiting their use, for example, to basic tasks such as revision and improvement of writing. It is not recommended to use AI for analyses and reflections, which should be original. Authors should inform in the manuscript if they have used AI and will be fully responsible for the content presented.

 

Gender and Sex Issues

The editorial team of ELBC, in addition to authors publishing in the journal, must always adhere to the guidelines on Sex and Gender Equity in Research – SAGER. ELBC also observes gender equity policy in the formation of its editorial board.

The SAGER guidelines aim to promote systematic reporting of sex and gender in research. To this end, they provide researchers and authors with a tool to standardize reporting of sex and gender in scientific publications whenever appropriate. They are also intended for reviewers and editors as a tool in manuscript evaluation and to increase awareness among authors and reviewers. We acknowledge that not all items included in the SAGER guidelines are applicable to every type of study. For this reason, SAGER encourages authors, editors, and reviewers to consider whether sex and gender are relevant to the study topic and, therefore, to follow these guidelines whenever applicable.

Access the full SAGER guidelines in English and Portuguese.

The table below summarizes the main recommendations:

Quadro 1 – Guidelines for Sex and Gender Equity in Research (SAGER)

 

Ethics Committee

In the case of research resulting from studies involving human subjects or sensitive data that do not fall under the exemption situations outlined in Article 26 of Resolution CNS No. 674/2022, authors must attach to the system at the time of submission a statement of approval from the ethics committee of the institution responsible for approving the research, along with the manuscript.

 

Copyright

Authors publishing in ELBC agree to the following terms:

  1. a) They retain the copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication, simultaneously licensing the work under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY), allowing sharing and reuse of the work with acknowledgment of authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  2. b) They are permitted to enter separate contractual arrangements for non-exclusive distribution of the version of the work published in this journal (e.g., publishing in institutional repositories or as a book chapter), with acknowledgment of authorship and initial publication in this journal.
  3. c) They are permitted and encouraged to publish and distribute their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories, personal websites, and social networks) after the editorial process, as this may lead to productive changes and increase the impact and citation of the published work. It is always requested to include the full citation to the version originally published on the journal's website.
  4. d) Authors of approved works authorize the journal to, after publication, license their content for reproduction in content indexers, virtual libraries, and similar platforms.
  5. e) They assume that the texts submitted for publication are their original creation, taking full responsibility for their content in case of any challenge by third parties.

 

Intellectual Property and Terms of Use

All content published on the ELBC website, unless otherwise specified, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY), allowing users to share and adapt the material without restrictions, provided proper credit is given and any changes made are indicated.

Authors retain the copyright to their works and take full responsibility for their content in case of any challenge by third parties. The opinions expressed by the authors of the articles are their sole responsibility.

ELBC reserves the right to make normative changes to the originals, such as spelling and grammatical corrections in accordance with the standard usage of the language, as well as editorial adjustments related to the journal's editorial standards.

 

Sponsors and Promotion Agencies

Currently, the editions of ELBC are being sustained with resources from the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), through the CNPq Call No. 12/2022 - Editorial Program.