The Centre for Political and Constitutional Studies was created by Royal Decree 2761, of 28 October (Official State Gazette, no. 267, of 8 November), upon the restructuring of the Presidency, as an autonomous body within the Ministry of the Presidency seeking to promote constitutional, administrative and social research. In 1997, Royal Decree 1269/1997, of 24 July regulating the organisation and function of the Centre for Political and Constitutional Studies (Official State Gazette, no. 188, of 7 August) repealed the former arrangements. Its objectives also include research into social and political systems, in keeping with the tradition of the former Institute of Political Studies, which was so closely linked to this institution.
In compliance with the provisions of the governing regulation, especially Article 2(2) of the aforementioned Royal Decree, the Sub-Directorate for Publications and Documentation is responsible for publishing the research regarding priority fields and subject areas.
The publishing house “Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales” is a longstanding publisher whose work began in the 1940s, with the former Instituto de Estudios Políticos. Since then, it has undergone several transformations so as to respond to the new political and social context of our country, but always in line with the goals the Government set up for this institution. The publishing house is now part of the UNE (the Spanish University Presses Association) and has been awarded a number of prizes acknowledging the quality of its publications.
It is therefore a specialised publishing house currently offering eleven monograph collections, which include works related to research on social, political, constitutional and administrative systems, both at the national and international level. Incoming publication proposals are subject to a rigorous selection process and must pass the double-blind peer review procedure before they can be included in our publishing list Best practices in academic publishing are followed at all times.
Besides monographs, the Centre publishes eight journals, all of which with a significant impact in their fields of specialisation. Six of them have been awarded the FECYT (Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology) quality seal. It also collaborates with other academic and professional institutions in the publication of two other journals.
Nowadays, the Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales publishing house is one of the 25 best publishers of scientific literature in Spain, according to the conclusions of a research carried out by the EC3 Group of the University of Granada, which compiles the Publishers Scholar Metrics (PSM) index, and by the Research Group on Scholarly Books (ILIA) of CSIC, which compiles the Scholarly Publishers Indicators (SPI). Both indices measure the quality of Spanish publishers, with the PSM taking into account the number of citations and the SPI the opinion of scholars.
In the light of the results obtained in the aforementioned studies, PSM and SPI, it can be said that the Editorial del Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales is among the best in our country, as it ranks well both in the speciality charts and in the general rankings, where it performs at the same level as houses publishing in all scientific fields.