Submissions

Submission
Pre-review & Evaluation
Proofreading
Responsibility and Copyright
General Style and Guidelines
Critical apparatus (APA)
Examples

Submission

The journal will primarily accept manuscripts written in English; however, on an exceptional basis, manuscripts in Spanish may also be accepted.

Papers submitted to Metis must be sent electronically in a .docx file (template), via this website, which will be used for communication between the journal and the authors..

Papers must be original works that have not been published or accepted for publication in the same or another language, nor are they in the process of being published or evaluated by another journal. The original must be submitted in its final form and must comply with the instructions provided by the journal, which can be found in this section.

The metadata and the first page of the articles must include:

1. Title of the article.
2. An abstract (maximum 150 words). This should stand out as it is the most accessible part of the article and a factor in the reader's interest. It must be concise and allow readers to understand the most important material of the research, whilst also conveying why it is significant to the field of study. It is advisable to repeat the words in the title in the abstract so that they carry more weight in search engines. In addition, a good abstract can speed up the peer review process, as reviewers only receive the abstract before accepting the evaluation.
3. A list of keywords. Keywords are a tool to help search engines, so they should represent the content of the article and be specific to your field of research.

The article metadata (fields on the online submission form) must include:

1. First and last names of ALL authors. Authors are encouraged to use their standard signature to facilitate citation counting and retrieval of all their work throughout their professional career.
2. Institution (or workplace, if applicable), in its standard form, without abbreviations and in the original language to avoid non-standard variants of names.
3. E-mail, ORCID (full URL) and, if available, personal website. The e-mail address and ORCID will appear on the first page of the article.

If the article has been written by several authors, all those who have made a substantial contribution to it must be included in the submission form. It should be noted that the order in which they appear will reflect each author's responsibility in the research, with the first author being the lead author and the others listed in order of their involvement.

The journal does not impose a limit on the number of authors, provided that this number is justified by the complexity of the study. It should be noted that, unlike areas where multidisciplinary teams are common, in the social sciences and humanities it is rare (and even considered bad practice) for a paper to be signed by more than four authors. The journal will not accept subsequent modifications or the addition of new authors.

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Pre-review & Evaluation

Once the manuscript has been received, a pre-review of the text will be carried out to analyze whether the topic of the article is of interest and appropriate to the scope of the journal and whether it meets minimum quality requirements, as well as the formal specifications required in these same guidelines.

Originals received that do not comply with these guidelines will be returned to their authors before proceeding with the evaluation. In such cases, authors must complete them and make the relevant formal adjustments within one week. Otherwise, these works will not continue with the review process.

If accepted, the formal evaluation process will begin and the manuscript will be sent anonymously to two external reviewers who are experts in the field, who will issue an opinion based on the originality, relevance, and methodological rigor of the manuscript.

The final decision will be communicated to the author, with reasons, within a maximum period of six months. If accepted, the maximum time between submission of the article and its publication will be one year, although this period may be extended depending on the journal's schedule.

This review must include a justification, indicating whether the reviewers recommend accepting the manuscript, accepting a revised version, or rejecting it. In the event of disagreement, a third, tie-breaking report will be requested. Ultimately, the final decision will be made by the editorial board.

By submitting their work, authors agree to abide by the decision of the reviewers and editors, adjusting the final draft of the text to their instructions. To this end, they must include all modifications deemed essential and, as far as possible, they must also take their suggestions into account. If corrections are requested, the maximum period for submitting a new version of the article will be two months.

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Proofreading

The journal will send authors feedback on their article. Authors will have a maximum of ten days to proofread these suggestions. After this period, if no response has been received, it will be understood that there is no intention to make these changes.

Authors should understand that this feedback is not sent for the article to be rewritten, but rather to correct any errors (if any). Making stylistic corrections may alter the content of the article as it was accepted and change the structure and organization of the text, which may delay its publication.

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Content Responsibility and Copyright

By submitting their work, authors guarantee the journal the authorship and originality of the manuscript, assuming sole responsibility for it.

The journal and its editors do not necessarily identify with the content, assessments, and conclusions of the articles published, nor will they assume any responsibility for the consequences arising from the possible use by third parties of the information and criteria included in these works.

The authors of articles accepted in Metis retain the intelectual property rights to their works and grant the journal the necessary distribution and public communication permissions for them to be published under a  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.

Authors must be able to prove that they have the necessary permissions to use the photographs and graphics included in their research, bearing in mind that the permission of the copyright owner is required to reproduce or adapt original tables and figures, which must be correctly cited. When a figure or table is of their own creation, it is not necessary to add the reference, as it is understood that anything that is not referenced is the work of the author themselves.

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General Style Guidelines

It is advised to follow the usual structure of a research paper: introduction and purpose of the paper, description of sources and methods, presentation and discussion of results, conclusions, and list of references.

The total length of articles should be between 6,000 and 9,000 words, including notes, graphs, tables, illustrations, and bibliographical references, and 1,000 words in the case of reviews.

Use of Bold, Italics, and Quotation Marks

The use of bold should be avoided, as it is intended solely for headings and titles of figures, graphs, or tables.

Italics (in the body of the article) should only be used to emphasize words or short phrases if they are foreign words, Latin terms, part of slang, used incorrectly, or not used in their proper sense.

The main functions of quotation marks are to express irony, to indicate to the reader that a vulgarism is being used, that the author cannot find a more appropriate word, or that the word has connotations with which the author does not identify. English quotation marks should be used. They should also be used to reproduce verbatim a fragment of another work that is less than 40 words long. If a text is being quoted within another text, double quotation marks should be used first, followed by single quotation marks.

Punctuation marks and footnote references should always come before the closing quotation mark. If a quotation ends with a punctuation mark, it should be omitted, unless it is part of an abbreviation.

Use of Capital Letters

Excessive use of capital letters should be avoided, limiting their use.

The following are some examples that may be of use:

• Proper nouns
• Names of divinities
• Geographical areas. Continents, countries, cities, seas, rivers, geopolitical areas, cardinal points: América, Perú, la Rioja, la Mancha, Picos de Europa, Occidente, Oriente Medio, Cono Sur, Magreb, Norte, Sudeste.
• Entities, institutions, organizations, departments: Universidad Pontificia Comillas; Comillas Pontifical University; Elcano Royal Institute; Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union, and Cooperation.
• Proper names of official documents Acuerdo de Comercio y Cooperación; Real Decreto-Ley 38/2020, de 29 de diciembre de 2020.
• Names of subjects and scientific disciplines: Foreign Policy and International Security; Economics and Business; Diplomacy.
• Historical events: the French Revolution; World War II.

Fields and jurisdictions (law, constitutional law, criminal law, civil law), positions (Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Secretary-General of the OECD, Secretary of State for Ibero-America and the Caribbean and Spanish in the World) are written in lowercase.

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Critical Apparatus (APA)

An essential component of the writing process is contextualizing the work by citing those sources that have directly influenced the research.

References to cited sources must follow APA standards, which require the use of parenthetical citations inserted in the text and a list of references in alphabetical order at the end of the article. Each reference cited in the text must appear in the final list.

Parenthetical Citations

In the text, the transcription of the ideas we cite can appear in two main ways: by rephrasing the idea in the article (paraphrase) or by literally reproducing the words of the author being cited (direct quotation).

The main elements of a parenthetical citation are the author's last name(s) and the year and, if the citation is textual, the page(s) on which it appears. Depending on the number of authors of the referenced work, the standard establishes the following guidelines.

Single Author

When the source we are citing has one author, the standard establishes that the author's last name, the year of publication, and the page or pages next to the text should be placed in parentheses.

Multiple authors

If the source has three or more authors, include the name of the main author plus "et al.” (in round) in each quotation, including the first, unless it creates ambiguity. In order to avoid ambiguity, write as many names as necessary to distinguish the references and abbreviate the rest.

"[...] corporate social responsibility and the community impact of business activity" (Flores-Guerrero et al., 2013).

When several works have an author or authors with the same name and identical date, add a letter after the year. This combination is used for both in-text citations and the reference list.

[...] in the Port of Piraeus or when acquiring a majority stake in NOATUM, one of Spain's leading port operators  (Izquierdo, 2018c, p. 122).

Institutional Author or Group of Authors

When responsibility for authorship lies with an institution, organization, research group, or corporate author, the full name must be given the first time it appears in the text. For subsequent citations, abbreviations or acronyms may be used if the abbreviation is well known. Do not abbreviate the name of the group author in the reference list.

 [...] By 2017, emissions of 5.3 million tons of CO₂eq had already been mitigated (Secretaría de Medioambiente de la Ciudad de México, 2017).

Mexico City was chosen as one of the eight pilot cities for this project (SEDEMA, 2017).

If the author's name is part of the reasoning in the text, we will only include the year and the pages:

According to Janne Nijman (2016), it could be argued that current globalization, urbanization, and decentralization are reshaping the power structure of the state and reconfiguring its structure of authority and responsibility.

If the quote is based on the text, the author, year, and page(s) are included at the end:

[…] These last two films dissect, in a deliberately cruel manner, the family understood as an anachronistic and dysfunctional social structure (Santos, 1999, pp. 359-371).

When the reproduced fragment has 40 words or more, it should be written with indentation, in a smaller font, without quotation marks, and in a separate paragraph.

Coaldrake (2013) comments on how Japanese tradition has tended toward unity in the arts rather than taxonomic classification:

The genius of Japanese art has historically been the way in which practical objects such as boxes and screens were elevated to the highest aesthetic levels. Historically, there was no distinction between the beautiful and the decorative: Japanese art was mellifluously both at the same time. (p. 177)

If the quotation is based on the text, after a full stop, the author, year, and page(s) are included at the end.

[...] reflects the degree of knowledge that existed in the 1870s about Japanese art:

[…] I was enchanted by a [porcelain] fountain measuring about a meter in diameter, with an allegory of the four seasons and a beautiful border of delicate butterflies around the edge. The fineness of the glazes and the vividness of the colors were worthy of the best times of this decadent art. The fans were very original and their paintings so unusual in taste that they have won the favor of the versatile Fashion, insatiable Goddess of contrast. (Navarro, 1875, pp. 555-556)

List of references

The list of references at the end of the article provides the information necessary to identify and retrieve each source. The APA standard stipulates that the list should only include references cited in the article, unlike the bibliography, which includes all sources consulted in conducting the research. All complete references to works cited in the text of the article must appear, regardless of the type of source, leaving only the list, without including classification titles, arranged alphabetically and indented.

Please review this list carefully. If reference information is incomplete or does not follow the guidelines, citation databases may not be able to extract the references correctly.

Components of References

Each reference usually has the following elements: author, date of publication, title, and publication details (all the information necessary for the unambiguous identification and bibliographic search of the source).

Author and Editor

Reverse the order of the author's name (last name(s), first name initial), the list should be sorted alphabetically by the last name of the first author. If several works by the same author(s) appear, the name is included in both the first and subsequent references, even if it is repeated, and they are sorted by publication date.

In the case of a co-authored work, all authors up to 20 are cited; if there are 20 or more, the first 19 are listed, followed by an ellipsis and the last author.

If the reference has no author, the title is placed followed by a period in the author's position, before the date of publication.

If we are citing a book in which the editor, coordinator, director, compiler, or organizer appears instead of the author, the name or names of the editor, coordinator, director, compiler, or organizer should be placed in the author's position and their responsibility for the edition should be placed in parentheses (ed., eds., coord., coords., dir., dirs., comp., comps., or org., orgs.). The period is placed after the closing parenthesis.

Alcántara, M. (ed.). (2013). Sistemas políticos de América Latina: América del Sur. Tecnos.

When referencing a chapter from an edited book, the first and last names of the chapter authors are reversed, but not the name of the editor, which must be preceded by the preposition “In.” For book chapters without an editor, simply add “In” before the book title.

Soeya, Y. (2015). The evolution of Japan’s Public Diplomacy: Haunted by its Past History. En J. Melissen y Y. Sohn (eds.), Understanding Public Diplomacy in East Asia. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137532299_5

Publication Date

The publication date is included in parentheses after the author's information.

If citing a newspaper or newsletter, include the exact date of publication (month and day).

Meléndez, J. (2013, 12 de septiembre). Panamá se alía con Colombia en la pugna regional contra Nicaragua. El País. https://elpais.com/internacional/2013/09/12/actualidad/1379003003_514586.html

When there is no information about the publication date, this can be indicated with the abbreviation n.d. in parentheses.

For articles that have been accepted for publication but have not yet been published, the date (and probably the issue or volume) will not be known until they are published, so instead [in press] is indicated in square brackets.

Title

The titles of articles and chapters in a book are written in roman type, while the titles of books and journals are written in italics.

If the work has a subtitle, it is written after the title, followed by a colon.

Egenhofer, C., Alessi, M., Núñez Ferrer, J. y Tubiana, L. (2010). Greening EU Cities: The Emerging EU Strategy to Address Climate Change. Centre for European Policy Studies.

Publication Information

Add the information needed to identify the work in parentheses and do not add a full stop between the title and the parentheses. Indicate the edition number for the second and subsequent editions:

Gill, S. (2008). Power and Resistance in the New World Order (2.ª ed.). Palgrave.

If the work has several volumes, the title of the volume is treated as a second part of the title, in italics, including the number and separating it with a colon. If the volume does not have its own title, only the number is added in parentheses. Information on series or collections is not included to avoid confusion.

If both edition and volume information are included, separate the two elements with a comma, placing the edition information first.

It may be necessary to provide additional information to retrieve the resource being cited (e.g., special issue), in which case it is included in square brackets immediately after the title.

For periodicals, the volume information is written in italics, separated from the journal title by a comma. The abbreviation Vol. is not used. The issue information (if available) is followed by the volume in parentheses, without italics and without a space. The page range in the publication is separated by a comma. End the element with a period.

Do not include the city where the publisher is located, as readers can easily find the work by searching online. Information about the place of publication may not be clear in the case of international publishers with offices in different countries or publishers that only publish in digital format.

Smith, S., Hadfield, A. y Dunne, T. (2008). Foreign Policy. Theories, actors, cases. Oxford University Press.

Digital iIdentifiers

Include all information that allows the resource to be retrieved if it has a digital version.

Do not type a full stop after a URL. Do not include information about the database in which the resource is located, as the coverage of a journal in a specific database may change. To avoid cluttering the information, do not include unnecessary phrases before the link such as retrieved from, accessible at, DOI, online, etc. Likewise, do not include consulted on and the date of consultation or access, unless the content is subject to change or it is a legal resource in which the date of consultation is relevant information.

Include the DOI whenever the resource has one. The full URL must be included.

Finnemore, M. y Sikkink, K. (1998). International Norm Dynamics and Political Change. International Organization, 52(4), 887-917. https://doi.org/10.1162/002081898550789

The DOI uniquely identifies the resource, allows readers to retrieve it, and facilitates citation counting.

DOI information usually appears on the first page of the article. Crossref has a search tool to complete this information which can be accessed through the following link https://search.crossref.org/references

DOIs are not exclusive to books and can also be found in book chapters, images etc.

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Reference Examples

Periodicals

Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of the article. Title of Periodical, volume(number), 00-00. https://doi.org/xx.xxxxxxx
Author, A. A. [in press]. Title of the article. Title of Periodical. https://doi.org/xx.xxxxxxx

Books

Author, A. A. (Year). Title. Publisher name.
Author, A. A. (ed.). (Year). Title (X ed.). Publisher name.

Multivolume works

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of the work : Vol. X. Title of the volumen. Publisher name.

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of the work (X ed., Vol. X). Publisher name.

Book chapters

Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of the chapter. In E. Editor & F. Editor (eds.), Title of the book (pp. xx-xx). Publisher name.

Dictionary / Encyclopedia / Reference Works

Title of the entry. (Year, month day). in Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/xxxxxx

Editor. (n.d.). Entry. In Title of the dictionary, encyclopedia. https://dictionary.org/entry

Reports / Working paper

Author, A. A. (Year). Title (Report No. xxx). Publisher name.
Author, A. A. (Year). Title (Working paper No. XXX). https://doi.org/xxxxxx

Thesis

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of Thesis (Doctoral Dissertation). Name of Institution, Location.

Conference sessions

Presenter, A., Presenter, B., & Presenter, C. (Date). Title of contribution [Type of contribution]. Conference name, Location. https://XXXXX

Law

Name of law, title # U.S.C. § section #.

Newspaper

Author, A. (Year, month day). Title of the article. Title of Newspaper. https://url.com/noticia.html

Blog

Autor, A. (Year, month day). Title post. Webpage. https://blog.es/post.html

Video

Author, A. (Year, month day). Title of talk [Video File]. TED Talk. https://ted.com/xxxx
TED. (Year, month day). Title of video [Video File]. YouTube. https://youtube.com/xxxxxxxx
User. (Year, month day). Title of video [video]. YouTube. https://youtube.com/xxxx

Webinar

Author, A. A. (Year). Title of webinar [Webinar]. Institution. https://url.com/xxxxxxx

Podcast

Author, A. (Host). (Date-present). Title of Podcast [Audio podcast]. Spotify. https://open.spotify.com/xxxxxxx
Author, A. (Host). (Year). Title of episode (Season No., Episode No.) [Audio podcast]. In Title of Podcast. Spotify. https://open.spotify.com/xxxxx

Social Network

Author, A. [@username]. (Year, month day). Content of the post up to the first 20 words [description of audiovisuals] [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/xxxxx
Author, A., Name of group. [@username]. (Year, month day). Content of the post up to the first 20 words [description of audiovisuals]. Facebook. https://facebook.com/xxxxxxxx