About the Journal

Focus and scope

The GEOGRAPHICAL JOURNAL OF CENTRAL AMERICA is a printed and online publication, directed by the School of Geographical Sciences (Faculty of Earth and Sea Sciences) of the Universidad Nacional, Costa Rica and periodically edited by the Editorial de la Universidad Nacional (EUNA) since 1974. The focus and scope is to disseminate research and geographical and related work carried out nationally and internationally, as well as promote discussion and the contribution of geographers to today's society. The publication is aimed at students and professionals interested in geographic studies, territorial planning, natural resource management, regional studies and the technologies associated with these fields. The journal publishes articles in Spanish, English and Portuguese.

Peer review process

The peer review process involves the following phases:

  1. Once the manuscript is received, it will be sent for evaluation by external peers to the journal, who use the article assessment instrument established by the Journal, which includes criteria of scientific rigor, originality, structure, coherence and quality of the text and final observations and recommendations. The ruling is carried out under the double-blind modality; that is, the evaluators will not know the name of the author or authors of the manuscript, the authors will know the names of the evaluators. The person who evaluates has a period of no more than 30 calendar days to evaluate and deliver the pertinent opinion to the Journal.
  2. Once the observations of the external evaluation have been received, they will be sent to the corresponding author so that they can be evaluated and incorporated according to consideration. If the person evaluating the document recommends corrections, the author(s) will be responsible for making them and delivering the final document in digital format within a period not exceeding 30 calendar days. In the event that the evaluator does not agree with the publication of the document, it will be subject to review by a second person who evaluates, whose opinion will serve to make a decision in this regard.
  3. Once the editorial team receives the manuscript again from the corresponding author, they will assess the publication of the article in the journal. The final decision for the publication or rejection of a document corresponds to the Editorial Board of the Geographical Journal of Central America.
  4. The process of evaluating the manuscript from its reception to approval for publication takes approximately three months.

Frequency of publication

The magazine is published biannually, with the first semester covering January to June and the second semester from July to December each year. The publication is available on the first business day of the first month of each period.

Open Access Policy

The Journal offers “Open Access” to its content under the principle of making information freely available to the public to foster greater knowledge exchange.  Access to all articles is free of charge after publication.

Starting with publication numbers 62-2 and 61E-3 special edition, works published by the Geographical Journal of Central America are governed by the terms of the Creative Commons License Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International,  CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/deed.es), to favor exchange of knowledge and secure greater visibility of published works.

The Geographical Journal of Central America (RGAC) and each of the articles that are published therein are under license CC BY-NC-SA which implies the possibility that users can download, store, share-copy and distribute (in any media or format), adapt-rearrange, transform and build new content upon the final approved and published version of the work, free of charge, as long as it is done without commercial purposes, and the source and authorship of the work is mentioned. Users must also provide a link to the terms governing the license and indicate if any changes have been made.  If content from the original work is rearranged, transformed, and/or if the user builds upon the original work, the user must explicitly disclose the distribution of his/her contribution according to the governing terms of the original license.  There are no additional restrictions. The user may not apply any legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict future users from employing the new work under the same CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license terms.

Publication fees

The submission of manuscripts and the publication of works in the Geographical Journal of Central America does not require the payment of any fees by authors, that is, there is no monetary charge for submitting, processing or publishing works.  Additionally, access to the Journal’s content is free of charge for all users. Beginning with publication number 56, a DOI identifier is assigned to each article.

Sources of funding

The Journal is financed with resources from the following academic bodies:

  • School of Geographical Sciences, Universidad Nacional, Costa Rica
  • Editorial de la Universidad Nacional (EUNA), Universidad Nacional, Costa Rica
  • Office of the Vice President for Research, Universidad Nacional, Costa Rica

 

Journal history

The GEOGRAPHICAL JOURNAL OF CENTRAL AMERICA was born as a printed publication under the direction of the School of Geographical Sciences (Faculty of Earth and Sea Sciences) at the Universidad Nacional, Costa Rica, and periodically edited by the Editorial de la Universidad Nacional (EUNA), Costa Rica, since 1974.