About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Il Castello di Elsinore is a scientific journal of theatre and performing arts deeply rooted in Italian academia, but with an international outlook. Founded in 1988 and edited by the Department of Artistic, Musical and Performing Arts at the University of Turin, since 2026 it has been published by the Department of Arts at the University of Bologna.

The journal is divided into three sections: ‘Essays’ comprises scientific and historical-critical studies on the history of theatre and the performing arts; ‘Materials’ features documents and reflections on ancient and modern poetics; and ‘Reviews’ publishes analyses of books on theatrical and para-theatrical subjects, as well as reviews of significant events from the Italian and international theatre seasons. This section brings together material that was previously divided into ‘Performances’ and ‘Books’ in the journal’s previous series. In some issues, a monographic ‘Dossier’ section is also included, comprising essays linked by a common theme.

The topics covered by the journal span the entire history of the performing arts in Europe and beyond. The approach of the new series aims to maintain continuity with the historical series, thus giving priority to essays of a historiographical nature, and is predominantly devoted to theatre from the more or less distant past.

The target audience is primarily specialists in the field: scholars and artists.

Il Castello di Elsinore is a rated “Classe A“ journal recognized by ANVUR (Italian National Agency for Evaluation of Universities and Research Institutes) for disciplinary area 10 (Antiquities, philology, literary studies, art history).

History of the Journal

The theatre studies journal Il Castello di Elsinore was founded in 1988 by Roberto Alonge, Umberto Artioli, Siro Ferrone, Silvana Sinisi, Roberto Tessari and Claudio Vicentini.

Initially published by Rosenberg & Sellier (1988-1996), it was then published by Costa & Nolan (1996-2001), the DAMS editions of the University of Turin (2001-2004) and Carocci (2004-2008). Since 2008, the journal has been published by Edizioni di Pagina in Bari. Since 2018, Roberto Alonge and Franco Perrelli have been the scientific directors. Originally published quarterly, it subsequently became biannual. Initially in paper format (ISSN 0394-9389), since 2020 it has also been published online (ISSN 2036-5624).

Since 2026, it has been published online once a year by the Department of Arts of the University of Bologna under the scientific direction of Elena Randi and Elena Cervellati, with the aim of continuing the path undertaken over the years.

Section Policies

Essays

Peer Reviewed

Materials

Not Peer Reviewed

Reviews

Not Peer Reviewed

Dossier

Peer Reviewed

Peer Review Process

The review process consists of a double-blind peer review. Authors intending to propose a contribution must send their article as indicated in the call for papers published every year. Once the article is received, the Direction decides if it is eligible for review. If so, the article will be sent anonymously to two external experts. Preliminary checks include anti-plagiarism verification using iThenticate software

Based on the review reports, the editors will be able to choose one of the following options:

  1. The article is rejected.

  2. The article can be published only after the modifications suggested by the referees. In this case the author can send a new version of the article, modified according to the reviewers’ comments. This version is submitted anonymously to the referees for further evaluation and possible approval.

  3. The article is accepted in its current form.

In all cases, authors will receive an anonymous evaluation sheet containing the reviewers’ comments and suggestions.

The whole review process will take not more than six months.

Interviews, artists’ writings and book reviews will not be peer reviewed.

Publication Frequency

The journal is published once a year and comes out in June.

Until 2025, it was published twice a year.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge.

It releases its articles under the terms of Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This license allows anyone to download, reuse, re-print, modify, distribute and/or copy the contributions. The works must be properly attributed to its author(s). It is not necessary to ask further permissions both to author(s) or journal board, although you are kindly requested to inform the journal for every reuse of the papers.

Authors who publish on this journal maintain the copyrights.

Publication Fees

The journal has neither article processing charges nor submission processing fees.

Ethics

Il Castello di Elsinore adopts the AlmaDL Journals Code of Ethics.

The code is inspired by the guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), in particular to the COPE Core Practices and its Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing.

All parties involved in the editorial process, editorial staff members, authors, reviewers must know and apply the ethical principles of that document.

Data Policy

When relevant, authors are encouraged to follow Open Science and FAIR principles by publishing the research data associated to their articles in trusted data repositories, according to the international best practices and data management guidelines.

Detailed information is reported in the AlmaDL Journals Data Policy.

Authors who are affiliated to the University of Bologna can publish their data in AMSActa, the institutional research data repository.

Indexing and abstracting

The Journal is indexed in the following databases and search engines:

  • ACNP – Catalogo Italiano dei Periodici
  • BASE – Bielefield Academic Search Engine
  • DOAJ – Directory of Open Access Journals
  • EBSCO - International Bibliography of Theatre & Dance
  • ERIH PLUS – European Reference Index for the Humanities and the Social Sciences
  • EZB – Elektronischen Zeitschriftenbibliothek
  • Google Scholar – Academic search engine
  • IATJ – International Archive of Theatre Journals
  • MIAR - Information Matrix for the Analysis of Journals
  • MLA - Directory of Periodicals
  • ROAD – Directory of Open Access scholarly resources
  • ScienceOpen
  • Ulrichsweb – Global Serials Directory
  • Worldcat – The world’s largest library catalog
  • ZDB - Zeitschriftendatenbank

Archiving Policy

As part of AlmaDL Journals, the Journal adopts a strategy to ensure long term preservation of the published content. Please see the archiving policy of the publishing service AlmaDL Journals.

Publisher

Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna
Alma Diamond – open scholarly communication

Via Zamboni 33,
40126 - Bologna (Italy)

Ownership

Dipartimento delle Arti
Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna Via Barberia, 4
40125 - Bologna (Italy)