About the Journal

Focus and Scope

The Journal Signos do Consumo, based on the Department of Public Relations, Advertising, and Tourism of the School of Communications and Arts (ECA) of Universidade de São Paulo, arises from the initiative of part of the School’s Faculty, which specializes in studies on marketing and advertising, public relations, and market and consumption phenomena. Moreover, these professors accumulate a history of over 40 years in knowledge production on this communication field, being also responsible for much of the training of Master and Ph.D. researchers acting in several Higher Education Institutions nationwide. Thus, the merit of ECA/USP is acknowledged nationally and internationally, especially in Latin America.

From that, we understand this electronic publication is a bold answer and proposal, led by the School of Communications and Arts, to the lack of specialized journals in the field of advertising and consumption. Thus, the Journal Signos do Consumo of ECA/USP arrives at the most appropriate moment. Its launch aims to create a forum for the exchange of knowledge in a network, through scientific articles and book reviews, for the national and international scientific community interested in disseminating the results of its researches, essays, and reflections concerning studies in Communication that have marketing, advertising, and consumption phenomena as object of research.

Therefore, hoping to expand without prejudice the reflections and discussions on media advertising communication, marketing, public relations, and studies on the effect of consumption in contemporary cultures, the Journal Signos do Consumo aims to open new horizons of dialogue among researchers of Brazil and of other countries in its biannual editions.

Counting with the support from the Department of Public Relations, Advertising, and Tourism of ECA/USP and the Association for Supporting Art and Communication (ARCO), the journal intends to be a space for dissemination of media phenomena of advertising, marketing, and public relations, as well as of their consequences on consumption and in the contemporary social-cultural life, in their complex and interdisciplinary status, seeking to bring from these objects theoretical and methodological contributions to the hybrid epistemic field of Communication Sciences.

Article languages for publication: Portuguese, Spanish, and English.

ISSN: 1984-5057

Peer Review Process

I. Evaluation by the Editorial Board

The submissions will initially be evaluated by the Editorial Board, which appraises the pertinence of the submission in relation to the scope and norms of this journal. Then, the approved papers are sent, in a blind evaluation system (without reference to the authorship), for the evaluation of two external referees.

II. On the work of members of the Technical-Scientific Council and Referees

Professors and researchers of the journal Signos do Consumo, which make up the Technical-Scientific Board and the body of Referees, shall exercise this activity voluntarily, without remuneration, respecting the publication standards of the Journal. Members of the Technical-Scientific Board and Referees will evaluate two articles per year, at maximum.

The journal Signos do Consumo has a group of Referees, made up of Ph.D. professors from several other universities in Brazil and abroad. Articles submitted for evaluation will be forwarded to two evaluators in the Technical-Scientific Council and/or to Referees, who will have up to 30 days to evaluate them. Referees will be invited by the Editorial Board and must fill out a registration form containing information about their areas of research and interests. The evaluation form will be approved by the Editorial Board of the journal Signos do Consumo.

III. Article evaluation process

The Signos do Consumo performs an evaluation process in all articles submitted (peer-review) for publication. Upon arrival, the articles are saved in a folder with numeric identification and, at that moment, an anonymous copy is made. This is the copy sent to evaluators. In case of approval in the first evaluation of the Editorial Board, the articles are sent to two evaluators, without author and institution identification (double blind review). In cases of controversies between evaluators, the final decision is made by the Editorial Board. Authors will be notified of the acceptance or refusal of their articles. In case of acceptance of works that require specific modifications, the Editorial Board will contact the author, and the article must be reworked within a maximum of thirty days. The author’s names will only be disclosed when the article is published.

IV. Evaluation-publication deadline

The whole process has an average duration of six months, varying according to the number of articles submitted in the same period and area.

V. Rejection rate

In 2022, the rejection rate for submissions was 50%.

Publication Frequency

Semiannual

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its full content. This initiative is based on the principle that making scientific knowledge freely available to the public supports a broader global democratization of knowledge. The journal follows the definition of Libre Open Access, ensuring that material is available at no cost with clearly defined usage rights. All published content is governed by the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Authors retain copyright and publishing rights, maintaining ownership of their work.

Ethics and Plagiarism Policy

The journal follows the recommendations of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and standard ethical codes for scientific journals to maintain academic integrity among authors, reviewers, and editors. All parties must adhere to the following requirements:

Author(s):

Authors are responsible for the work submitted and must respect ethical standards in research and scientific communication. This includes properly crediting all researchers who contributed significantly by listing authorship in order of contribution.
Studies involving human subjects must be previously evaluated by an ethics committee, and the formal approval must be presented within the article.
Any conflicts of interest (personal, commercial, political, academic, or financial) must be clearly declared to the editors during submission and in a footnote, along with all financial support received for the study.
Previous versions of the work must be indicated in a footnote.
Authors must correctly cite all references and sources and are committed to the accuracy of the data presented.

Reviewers:

During the peer-review process, findings must be objective and free of conflicts of interest. Any relevant conflicts must be reported to the editors.
Manuscript evaluation is confidential; the material cannot be copied or cited by the reviewer before formal publication.
Reviewers must provide prompt, accurate, courteous, and impartial responses. If unavailable to perform an evaluation, the reviewer should inform the editors immediately.
Reviewers must notify editors of any suspected misconduct, such as plagiarism, data falsification, duplicate submissions, or conflicts of interest.
Reviewers should suggest relevant works that were not cited and could improve the manuscript.

Editors:

Submissions are screened using anti-plagiarism software. If plagiarism is identified, editors will request clarifications. The journal will not publish any text with confirmed plagiarism.
Reviewers are selected based on their expertise and knowledge in the field, avoiding conflicts of interest that might compromise the evaluation.
All cases of suspected misconduct reported by reviewers or readers will be investigated. In serious cases of ethical violation, editors will seek external consultancy.
If a complaint is verified, the Editorial Committee will take necessary measures, ranging from corrections or document removal to a formal letter to the director of the author’s sponsoring institution.

Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools in scientific publications

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, such as ChatGPT and other Large Language Models (LLMs), in academic publishing is expanding. In line with organizations like COPE, Signos do Consumo states that such tools cannot be listed as authors.

Authors using AI tools for manuscript writing, image production, or data analysis must transparently declare this in the Materials and Methods section (or equivalent). This disclosure should specify which tool was used and how it was applied. Full responsibility for the content, including AI-generated segments, remains with the authors, who are also accountable for any ethical breaches.