About the Journal

Focus and scope

 

Perspectivas Rurales, Nueva Época, is the journal of the School of Agrarian Sciences of the National University, Costa Rica. Its objective is to be a meeting point for critical reflection on the complexity of the dynamics that shape rural areas and rural life in the contemporary world, with a special interest in the case of Latin America and the Caribbean.

In this sense, the journal is open to receiving contributions that address various topics, from the dimension of agri-food systems and regimes to the challenges of climate change, poverty, inequality, and violence that still prevail in rural areas. The magazine also looks at the dynamic relationship between rural and urban areas based on cleavages such as food sovereignty and security, debates on rural development from a territorial perspective. It highlights the need to give visibility to the demands and struggles of actors such as women and youth, indigenous peoples, traditional rural communities, and social movements, among others. These actors define their agendas in disputes for recognition, inclusion, and social participation and the building of public policies that allow the full realization of the potential of rural populations based on their self-determination.

In addition, as a corollary to all of the above, the journal Perspectivas Rurales, Nueva Época, is open to reflections on the urgent transition towards sustainable food regimes based on agroecology as a paradigm. This calls for interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives for the construction of knowledge and the relationship of the latter with transformative practices.

Public goal

The journal is open to academics, professionals, undergraduate and postgraduate students linked to agrarian, environmental, and/or social sciences, whose central concern revolves around the aforementioned issues. It is also open to receiving contributions from actors, whether individual or collective, whose ways of building knowledge do not necessarily coincide with academic and Western standards. Nevertheless, these contributions constitute valuable inputs for transdisciplinary dialogue, which is necessary today to glimpse horizons before the magnitude of contemporary challenges.

The journal receives articles in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. 

Arbitration system

The arbitration system begins when an article enters for its application, in the first instance it is evaluated by the Editor, which defines that it meets minimum requirements, such as the relationship of the subject with the focus of the journal, compliance with the format. Once the editorial evaluation is finished, the article is transferred to a member of the editorial board for an internal review, to be submitted to external review. It should be noted that the language of the journal is Spanish, but it is possible to admit articles in English or Portuguese by authors who are not Spanish speaking. 

Peer evaluation process

The Magazine of Perspectivas Rurales, Nueva Época is evaluated by the evaluation system by blind peers, who, upon approving the work, confirm its good quality and verify that it meets the necessary elements to strengthen scientific knowledge on the subject in question. 

The external evaluators (2 at least per article), are based on a form with criteria to qualify, based on the options: acceptable, correct or insufficient, considering the coherence in the development, rigor in the treatment of the topic, relevance of the theme and content structure. The evaluation is done anonymously by the author of the article and its evaluators.  

Each external pair must be a specialist in the subject to be evaluated, and must exercise an objective verdict with respect to the content, and may issue three different criteria that are:  

Accepted for publication:

• It is accepted for publication
• It is returned to incorporate corrections
• Forwarded for review once corrections are executed (requires major changes)
• It is rejected because it does not sufficiently comply with the criteria evaluated. 

If there is a tie of criteria, it is submitted to the editorial committee for evaluation to define the tie-breaker.  

Once the result has been obtained, we proceed to communicate it to the authors, so that the observations may be applied if required. Once the author returns the corrected article is sent to philological revision and translation, the author will receive the final version for a final revision, once the author approves this version sed proceeds to the publication. 

Frequency of publication:

Perspectivas Rurales Nueva Época receives articles on an ongoing basis and has a biannual periodicity, covering the months of January-June and July-December of each year.

Policy on receipt of complete articles in English and Portuguese

The journal receives complete articles in English and Portuguese, once the article is evaluated and corrected according to the observations of the peers, the authors must commit to provide the journal with a proof of style revision made by an expert (philologist or translator), this document must be stamped and signed by the professional who prepared the review, the document must be accompanied by the article with the corrections executed in Word format. 

Open access policy

This journal provides immediate free access to its content under the principle that the research is freely available to the public, which encourages a greater exchange of global knowledge.

In addition, Rural Perspectives is Open Access, allowing users to have full and free access to electronic content. This means that users can read, download, store, print, search, index, use as data for software and make links to the full texts of this magazine. It also allows the article to be distributed in the pre-print, post-print and official versions published by the magazine, without asking the publisher or the author for permission, as long as it is carried out without commercial purposes, derivative works are not generated and mention is made of the source and author (s) of the work (Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 4.0 Internacional License) 

Free publication

The publication process is FREE; the sending, review, publication and discarding do not require any payment by the authors. This applies to the complete articles in Spanish. All expenses incurred during each process are paid for by the National University. In addition, no subscriptions are charged, the contents are in open access. 

Digital preservation system

The Perspectivas Rurales magazine has the LOCKSS digital preservation system (http://www.lockss.org/), to create a secure and permanent archive of the magazine distributed among the participating libraries, allowing these libraries to create permanent archives of the magazine for preservation and restoration purposes. To amplify information...

In addition, as an internal preservation system, each of the numbers are stored in the Google Drive account of the Journal. 

Plagiarism detection policy and ethical standars

The magazine Perspectivas Rurales requires that all the actors involved in the publication process of the articles whether they be editorial staff, review or authorship, follow international ethical standards in the publication of the articles. Services of the Turnitin platform for the detection of plagiarism are also used.

Rural Perspectives adheres to some of the responsibilities established by the COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics), which involve the participants in the publication process according to the role they play:

Editors: must adopt the best standards and methods of peer review, in such a way that all articles are reviewed by specialized and qualified editors. Clarify which sections are not peer-reviewed and clearly defined, that reviewers contribute to the detection of plagiarism and potential ethical anomalies, ensure that the journal has clear publication standards. Finally, editors should advise on all publication processes both authors and reviewers in order to promote appropriate research and publication behavior.

Authors: must develop original research in a responsible and ethical manner, also, the results will be presented honestly, completely and transparently, so that the scientific community can corroborate or replicate the data. They should not send the manuscript simultaneously to other journals for evaluation. In addition, it must give attribution to the studies on which they relied to develop their research, the entities that financed it, as well as to declare if there is a conflict of interests. Finally, the authors must assume responsibility for the published research.

Reviewers: they must communicate to the editors about possible frauds or plagiarism of the researches evaluated. Disseminate the articles objectively and in the established time. They must also provide reasons for rejecting an article or provide suggestions that may strengthen the publication.

License

Revista Perspectivas Rurales. Nueva Época is under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. 

Sponsors

Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica. http://www.una.ac.cr/