Mission Statement

Palma’s mission is to disseminate and promote quality academic research for the benefit of the university’s development and society at large, in line with the University’s mission.

Vision

As a refereed journal, Palma’s vision is to become a journal of choice for researchers in and outside of Notre Dame University – Louaize.

Palma Journal, a Refereed NDU Publication

After a three year hiatus in the late nineties, Palma Journal was revived by Dr. Rihani during the academic year
2000-2001. It reprinted various papers published by NDU faculty members in conferences and/or journals. Discussions were also ongoing about the possibility to make Palma a fully refereed journal.

Based on a decision on the part of the Palma Journal editorial board in October 2001, NDU's periodical scholarly journal was redesigned and developed into a fully refereed publication as of volume 9, issue number 1, 2003 (see editorial, pp. 3-4). The editorial board prepared a mission statement and various guidelines to allow it to proceed with such an endeavour. Formatting guidelines, refereeing and submission procedures were prepared and advertised to all faculties during Fall 2002. The Board also agreed to publish in Palma abstracts of Master’s thesis published at NDU between two issues.

The Refereeing Process

Palma adopts a double-blind review process that involves two external referees, including scholars working outside the Middle East. Neither the author nor the referee knows who the other party is. All references or indications thereof are completely deleted from the documents sent to the authors or reviewers.

Palma’s Targeted Contributors & Objectives

Palma's declared goal is to act as a platform for the community of scholars and researchers in Lebanon in all fields of academic endeavour. It also welcomes articles from around the world dealing with topics related specifically to the Middle East. Thus Palma serves as a scientific bridge between Lebanon (and NDU in particular), on the one hand, and the international academic community, on the other.

Palma encourages both scholars and advanced research students at NDU as well as outside NDU to submit the results of their ongoing work to the editorial board on a regular basis. The Journal aims also to serve as a platform of choice to initiate and train our advanced students in the peer-review process, the major means of evaluation in the academic community.

Publication Frequency

Palma will be published twice a year. One issue will be devoted to Arts in its broadest sense. The other will be devoted to Sciences. Arts include, but are not limited to, Design, Humanities, Business and Social Sciences, while Sciences include Engineering, Natural and Applied Sciences, Mathematics, Finance, and Economics.

Palma has also recently considered introducing topic-oriented issues of the journal in order to focus the publication and better serve its academic mission. The first such issue will deal with Lebanese migration and has already received a large number of abstracts from scholars around the world.