4th Editorial Meeting – November 20, 2020

Introduction

The committee responsible for Bras-J met online on Friday, November 20th, 2020 at 2 pm (Berlin time) to discuss the next steps to the first publication of the journal and general matters BRaS. The meeting was conducted by Matheus Zago and Giovanna Imbernon was in charge of the minutes. Professor Doctor Thomas Kestler, Matheus Hebling, Cláudia Pires, Anna Bennech, Eric Nogueira, Thais Cavalcanti, and Lucas Fraga also attended the meeting.

The meeting started with a general discussion on the tasks assigned in the previous meeting (on November 6th) and proceeded to discuss the following agenda:

• Guidelines
• Submission Checklist
• General

Before starting, some information on previous activities and updates were mentioned: a. Matheus Hebling presented the group with some news on the internship position; the selection process had 60 candidates applying and Anna Bennech will gather all the information and share it with the group so they can proceed with the selection; b. Anna Bennech will present the group with three proposals of new members for BRaS (by Monday) as well as a document containing an RG proposal.

Guidelines

As the first topic under discussion on this monthly meeting, Matheus Zago proceeded to BRaS-J Guidelines that were not set during the last meeting. He shared with the group the file with the draft and with the comments added by the other members during the last week. Following the order in there, the discussion and decisions made were:

1. Citations: The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) and author-year style. Also, a discussion on how this could be presented in the guidelines arose and the group voted and decided to provide some examples for the authors using real references from authors related to the journal, group, and institution.
2. Peer review: keep as it is.
3. Types of publication: As decided in previous discussions, the journal would only work with two types of publications (articles and book reviews) and the current guideline mentions a third type, dossiers. On this matter, the group decided to accept dossiers only when having special issues.
4. Ethics: regarding this topic, the majority decided to add the Helsinki protocol. On this, Matheus Hebling asked the group if this does not partially overlap with the other protocols/ guidelines. Matheus Zago asked the group to send more suggestions and Matheus Hebling will be responsible for rewriting the text.
5. Page and section numbers: the group discussed whether is necessary or not including page numbers and/or the number for each section of the text. Professor Kestler pointed out that this could make the review process easier as well as reading and analysis. Giovanna Imbernon commented that this is not something crucial and can be discussed later and Lucas Fraga said that this is not common in Economics.
6. Format, size, and supplementary material: Cláudia Pires commented that the group has not discussed yet what to do with the supplementary material when receiving the text and/if BRaS-J will accept it and under which conditions. Professor Thomas Kestler stated that the author will decide to include or not tables and/or images but also suggests that it would be better to be included in an appendix, i.e., not in the main text so it can be easier to read. He also outlined that any considerations on the size or conditions of this material will be of entire responsibility of the Desk Review process; if it does not comply with it, the text should be sent back to the author or rejected. After the discussion, the group voted in favor of including this in the guidelines and that any supplementary material should be included in the appendix. The members also decided to discuss it better so all the points are clear for the authors and to avoid any conflict. The topic will be reintroduced at the next meeting.

Submission Checklist

Matheus Zago presented the group with the Submission page layout and commented on some points that need more opinions. Also, he wanted to know the impressions on how the checklist should be displayed to the authors and what should it contain. Matheus Hebling reiterated that this process is important, so the authors are aware of all the conditions upon the submission process and that they acknowledge that all measures and requirements were met. Thaís Cavalcanti supported that this is essential so no complaints about the guidelines/conditions are made.

General

During the last part of the meeting, two topics were mentioned. First, Anna Bennech asked Matheus Zago about the work and follow-up of all tasks that the group has already accomplished. He answered that there is no document, nor a follow-up list but that he will present it soon.

Second, Eric Nogueira asked the members about the size of the articles and if the maximum of words was already decided. On this matter, the group has already discussed the conditions, but no agreement was reached. To decide these conditions, the members voted for articles containing a maximum of 10,000 words with references.

After all the aforementioned subjects the next meeting was scheduled for December 4, 2020.