About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Porta Linguarum aims to publish empirical studies, critical revisions, and theoretical models that relate to the many factors that influence the FL teaching and learning processes:

  • Innovation in language teaching and learning
  • The social and school context: the family’s social and cultural influence as well as student L1 and its influence on the L2 learning process, etc.
  • The students: their personal characteristics (age, gender, personality traits, etc.) as well as their attitudes, motivation, cognitive styles, etc.
  • The FL teacher: teacher mental representations, attitudes, motivation, individual characteristics, teaching methods, etc.
  • Learning conditions and the learning process, variables that influence the teaching and learning processes in the classroom: efficiency of teaching strategies, teaching methods and techniques, second language acquisition processes, student and teacher interaction, effect of teaching resources and materials, etc.
  • Learning outcomes: evaluation of procedures as well as the evaluation of the students’ communicative competence at different academic levels, etc.

High quality state-of-the art articles may be published, although preference will be given to data-driven papers and empirical studies. Articles in this journal normally deal with majority languages and are generally written in standard British English. A limited number of articles may be written in other languages provided that the contents are directly related to the language in question (i.e. articles in Spanish must deal with the teaching and learning of Spanish as L2).

The journal accepts proposals for book reviews of high interest related to the subject matter of the journal.

Peer Review Process

 

Porta Linguarum is a double-blind review journal. Manuscripts are evaluated following a two-phase process:

After the reviwing process, the possible decisions regarding your manuscript are:

  • Accepted: your article was accepted as submitted.
  • Revisions are needed (minor revisions): your article requires minimal revisions and will be accepted once these changes have been made. The author must resubmit his/her revised manuscript within 2 weeks.
  • Resubmit for review (major revisions): your article requires considerable work. You need to submit the revised file for a new round of review. The author must resubmit his/her revised manuscript within 4 weeks.
  • Rejected: your article was not accepted for publication in the journal, either because lack of quality is considered, because it does not meet the journal formal requirements, or because the subject matter does not match the scope of the journal.

Publication Frequency

Porta Linguarum publishes two regular issues per year (January and June). Besides, monographs are considered for its publication according to this special issue regulation.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate free access to its content under the principle of making research freely available to the public in order to foster the greatest possible exchange of knowledge at the global level.
Our journal complies with the recommendations for the implementation of this type of publication, according to Article 37 of the Science, Technology and Innovation Law on Open Access Dissemination:

  • Authors whose contributions are accepted for publication in this journal will retain the non-exclusive right to use their contributions for academic, research and educational purposes, including self-archiving or deposit in open access repositories of any kind.
  • Preferably, the use of the published version of the scientific contributions (editor's post-print version) or, if not available, of the author's post-print version already evaluated and accepted, that will be accessible in open access as soon as possible, since the journal does not impose any period of embargo.

Journal Indexation

  • Arts & Humanities Citation Index and Social Science Citation Index from the Web of Science (Clarative Analytics)
  • SCOPUS/Scimago-SJR
  • EBSCO
  • Latindex (sheet 15312, from 2006)
  • The Linguist (Eastern Michigan University-Wayne State University)
  • MLA International Bibliography
  • the ISOC (by the IEDCYT of the CSIC)
  • DIALNET (La Rioja University)
  • UCUA

Impact:

  • Impac Factor JCR: (2023) 0.9; 5 years: 1; LINGUISTICS: Q2; EDUCATION: Q3.
  • Journal Citation Indicator JCI: 2023 citation indicator: 0.63; EDUCATION & EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH: Q3. LANGUAGE & LINGUISTICS: Q2. LINGUISTICS: Q3.  
  • SCOPUS/Scimago-SJR: Lab: 2023 CiteScore 1.7; Subject Area and Category: Arts & Humanities: LINGUISTICS & LANGUAGE: Q1. Social Sciences: EDUCATION, Q3.

Sources: Clarivate Analytics©, Journal Citation Reports®

                                              

                           

Excellence Award from FECYT (2024)

Ethics Code

PORTA LINGUARUM Journal adopts the codes of ethics of the Committee of Ethics for Publications (COPE).

Sources of Support

  • Universidad de Granada - Sección de Granada
  • Universidad de Granada - Sección de Melilla
  • Universidad de Granada - Sección de Ceuta
  • Universidad de Murcia
  • Universidad de Valladolid
  • Universidad de Málaga
  • Universidad de Burgos
  • Universidad de Huelva
  • Universidad Complutense de Madrid
  • Universidad de Córdoba
  • Universidad de Oviedo
  • Universidad a Distancia de Madrid - (UDIMA)

Journal History

Porta Linguarum is an interdepartmental and interuniversity journal that was born in 2004 and specializes in foreign language didactics and bilingual education, and which emerged from the Spanish Language Teaching and Philological Departments in conjunction with other Research Groups interested in these fields. Through this publication, we aim to develop foreign language didactics and bilingual education research and promote these areas within the international scientific community.

Evidently, the journal title has been taken from Comenius’ work Porta Linguarum Trilinguis Reserata et Aperta and, in a way, is a homage to this respected author. In the seventeenth century, Comenius had already emphasized the practical orientation of foreign language teaching and the importance of teaching languages as a means of communication. He was one of the first authors that recommended the use of iconic symbols in order to facilitate learning and to make real the Baconian principle in intellectu autem nihil est, nisi prius fuerit in sensu (there is nothing in our brains that has not passed though our senses first). Though Comenius proposed didactic principles based one the grammar-translation method, which can be summarized in the sequence presentation, translation, repetition and memorization, he was also a pioneer in giving paramount importance to content and context when teaching vocabulary and in adopting a natural approach in his classes that tended to be learner-centered.