Publication Guide
Società editrice il Mulino is the leading Italian academic publisher in the humanities and social sciences. Based in Bologna since its founding in June 1954 - it grew out of the cultural-political magazine il Mulino, launched in April 1951 - the house published 84 scholarly journals in 2025 alongside a book catalog of more than 8,600 titles. Its journals cover sociology, political science, contemporary history, economics, law, psychology, linguistics, and cultural studies, and are distributed digitally through Rivisteweb, il Mulino's own platform for Italian-language scholarship.
Il Mulino is not an APC-driven open-access publisher: most of its journals run on a traditional subscription model with no author-facing fees, which makes it a distinctive route for scholars - especially those writing in Italian - who want an established, reputable venue without publication charges. This guide covers how to pick the right il Mulino journal, what the open-access picture looks like, how peer review works, and how to submit.
Which il Mulino journal fits your paper?
Il Mulino's portfolio maps closely onto the Italian humanities and social-science disciplines. Use the table below to shortlist a venue.
| Your paper is about... | Consider these il Mulino venues |
|---|---|
| Political sociology, public opinion, social research in Italy | Polis - il Mulino's peer-reviewed journal of sociological and political research |
| Economic sociology, capitalism, labor and welfare | Stato e Mercato - a leading Italian journal of political economy and economic sociology |
| 19th-20th century history | Contemporanea and Ricerche di Storia Politica - contemporary history and political history |
| Early modern and social history | Quaderni Storici - one of Italy's most influential historical journals |
| Italian linguistics and philology | Lingua e Stile - linguistics, history of the Italian language, and stylistics |
| Marketing, consumer research, management | Micro & Macro Marketing - marketing scholarship with an Italian and European lens |
| Broad cultural-political debate (non-peer-reviewed essays) | il Mulino magazine - the house's founding periodical, aimed at an educated general readership |
Note that the Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica (Italian Political Science Review), historically an il Mulino title, has been published by Cambridge University Press for the Italian Political Science Association since the mid-2010s - submit there via Cambridge, not il Mulino.
What il Mulino publishes
- 84 scholarly journals (2025), almost all in the humanities and social sciences. Core fields: sociology, political science, history, economics, law, psychology, linguistics, education, and media studies.
- Language: predominantly Italian, though many journals accept English-language submissions and publish English abstracts; a few titles are fully bilingual.
- Books: roughly 250 new titles a year, plus the Darwinbooks e-book platform and the Pandoracampus textbook platform.
- The magazine il Mulino: the 1951 founding periodical remains a prominent voice in Italian public debate; it is a magazine of ideas, not a peer-reviewed research journal.
Editorial direction sits with an independent Editorial Council organized in disciplinary working groups - a governance model that has kept the house's academic reputation high for seven decades.
Open access and fees at il Mulino
Il Mulino is subscription-first. There is no publisher-wide APC price list, and most authors pay nothing to publish.
| Route | How it works at il Mulino |
|---|---|
| Subscription (default) | Most journals are paywalled on Rivisteweb; institutions and individuals subscribe. No author fee. |
| Fully open access | 2 fully open-access online journals in the 2025 catalog; Rivisteweb also flags OA titles and articles. |
| Hybrid / per-article OA | Available on some titles - Rivisteweb filters journals by "Open Access" and "Hybrid access". Terms and any fees are set per journal; check the journal's own page. |
| Self-archiving (Green OA) | Policies vary by journal and are typically agreed in the author contract; ask the editorial office and check your funder's requirements. |
| Read & Publish | il Mulino has no large transformative-agreement portfolio of the kind common among Anglophone publishers; institutional access is handled through Rivisteweb subscription packages. |
If your funder mandates immediate open access, confirm the specific journal's OA terms with the editorial office before submitting - policies are journal-level, not publisher-level.
Peer review
- Model: double-anonymized peer review is the norm across il Mulino's scholarly journals; the magazine il Mulino publishes commissioned and editor-reviewed essays instead.
- Ethics framework: il Mulino journals follow COPE-based publication-ethics guidelines (peer-review integrity, plagiarism, authorship, retractions).
- Turnaround: varies by journal; expect roughly 2-4 months to a first decision for most titles, and check each journal's published statistics or ask the editors.
How to submit
- Pick the journal on Rivisteweb (mulino.it/rivisteweb) and read its scope statement - fit with the journal's disciplinary and often national focus matters.
- Read the author guidelines on the journal's page. Most titles follow Italian editorial conventions or Chicago-style referencing; requirements differ by journal.
- Prepare the manuscript with a formatted template from SciSpace where available, anonymized for double-blind review, with an abstract (English abstracts are commonly required even for Italian papers).
- Submit as the journal directs - il Mulino has no single portfolio-wide submission portal; journals use their own editorial-office channels (online forms or editorial email) listed on their Rivisteweb pages.
- Respond to reviews through the editorial office; accepted papers are published on Rivisteweb and in the print edition where one exists.
Ethics and integrity
Il Mulino's journals operate under COPE-aligned publication-ethics statements covering plagiarism, duplicate submission, authorship criteria, and corrections/retractions. The publisher's long-standing academic governance - an independent Editorial Council drawn from the Italian scholarly community - and its role in ANVUR-classified journal lists make it a trusted, low-risk venue for HSS scholarship. As always, verify the individual journal's indexing (Scopus, Web of Science, ANVUR class A) if that matters for your evaluation requirements.
