Forma Revista d'Estudis Comparatius. Art, Literatura, Pensament is a digital publication created and managed by the members of the Revista Forma Cultural Association and is linked to the University Institute of Culture and the Department of Humanities at Pompeu Fabra University. 

Born in 2009 and conceived as part of academic research, Forma seeks to be a space for the confluence of a range of critical proposals developed in the field of comparative and interdisciplinary studies as well as general humanities, such as literature, images, thought, art, history, cultural studies, etc. We accept original articles in English, Spanish, Catalan, French, Italian, and Portuguese, as well as interviews with relevant intellectual personalities and book reviews of academic publications published during the past year. All the texts, as specified in the Editorial Policies, have to pass rigorous quality guidelines chosen by the entities in charge of indexing scientific journals, with regard to the plurality of the editorial and scientific committees as well as the selection process and revision of published texts.

After ten years of operations, in 2019 the magazine underwent some changes in its mission and methodology of work. We are now in a process of transformation that seeks to engage with academic thought in a more dynamic and innovative way and aspires to build bridges between tradition and experimentation, expanding the possibilities of Academia from within. This change stems from the realization that most academic thought does not reach readers beyond the already established academic circles. In light of the contemporary situation of globalized crisis, we want to advocate for academic thought as a crucial point of convergence for our ideas and ways of living, and to make the argument that it is Academia’s responsibility to find its way back to the forefront of the cultural arena. Only by debunking its insularity and holding hands with other kinds of discourses will Academia be able to perform such a role.

Forma’s transformation goes very much in this direction. We have now moved from the insular one-topic-per-issue model to a broader scope that will allow us to look at specific problems for a duration of four to five years, and engage with them in various ways. Honoring our tradition as an academic journal, we will maintain one strictly academic issue per year (as always, with an interdisciplinary and comparative approach, and subjected to a strict peer-review process), each one of them focusing on a specific perspective within our broader subject matter. But adding to this tradition, we will create a platform for thought, creation, and collaboration through CaraB, which will welcome contributions of all kinds that further expand the reflection on our given topic. Forma and CaraB are two separate but complementary spaces, the two sides of an ongoing dialogue with which we hope to address the complexity of our contemporary world. We believe that there is still a place in this world for rigorous academic thought, but that it needs to establish a conversation with other equally rigorous forms of thought and creation. We welcome contributions that explore the given topic from spaces that generally do not pass the academic filter: From the personal, to the intimate, to the speculative, and more, we see these contributions, in conjunction with the academic articles, as the way to establish a fruitful, more comprehensive conversation, a way to underline the relevance of academic thought in our contemporary world, a tangential translation of otherwise obscure ideas. 

Forma is a Green Open Access Journal, which means that the full final author version is published on our website, ready to be downloaded with no additional charges. We reject abusive lucrative practices carried out by other academic journals, and we guarantee that Forma will not demand any payment at any point during the publication process (submission, revision, edition, publication, and diffusion). We consider that there is already an important injection of money —whether it comes from private or public funds— for the production of articles, and it is therefore unreasonable to take profit of this monopolist academic system.

Our crew is composed of professionals who participate as volunteers in a two-fold project. On the one hand, Forma seeks to spread multidisciplinary academic production through an open access platform. On the other hand, the journal has a strong instructional goal. Our ultimate aim is to help authors to improve their texts via stylistic, linguistic, and scientific revisions, and to introduce students to the workings of journal publishing.