About the Journal

Focus and scope

The International Relations Journal (Revista Relaciones Internacionales) sponsored by Universidad Nacional and associated with the School of International Relations is a continuous and biannual publication (two issues per year, from January to June and from July to December) with respective open publishing windows for each publication closing on June 30th and December 31st each year. The journal receives and publishes original articles with the themes of International Relations and International Business and Trade throughout the entire year.

The Journal is published by the International Relations School with the aim of addressing themes from a diversity of authors regarding the international context with direct or indirect consequences on International Relations and International Business and Trade.

The target audience of the Journal is public, private, and university sectors on the national and international levels.

The Journal publishes the next publication modalities: theoretical articles, scientific articles, critic articles, interviews, and book reviews.

Procedure for selection and approval of the articles

Double-blind external peer review

All the manuscripts will be subject to a reviewing process that consist of a double-blind external peer review, which implies all the evaluators must be external to the editorial organization and ensures the anonymity of both, authors and reviewers.

When the article is assigned for review, the process will take about five weeks.

Requirements for peer reviewers

The evaluator must be a specialist in the manuscript-related topic and with a recognized academic status (licenciatura^[1] or post grade), with experience in research and with articles published in scientific journals.

Stages of the review and editorial process

Verification of the journal topic and norms: The manuscript must be related to the journal topic and scope and requirements established in the norms for authors.

Plagiarism free: The article must not contain any sort of plagiarism or self-plagiarism and any taken information must be cited according to the APA (7th version)

Acceptance of the manuscript: After overcoming the first stages of the process, the acceptance of the manuscript will be extended, and then, the double peer review process starts.

Double-blind peer review: After the acceptance, the Editor in Chief will assign the evaluators according to their expertise. For evaluation, the manuscript will be sent to two external reviewers, and they will fulfill the Evaluation Form available in the website for consults.

Reception of double-blind peer review: The peer reviewers will extend their opinion; either publish, publish with observations that must be applied either to the form or background or do not publish. If publication with observations is recommended, all the observations must be applied by the author who will be sending the new version of the manuscript in two weeks via electronic mail.

Judgment discrepancy: If one of the two peer reviewers considers the manuscript must not be published, the manuscript will be submitted to a third evaluator to settle the discrepancy. In case of a non-predicted conflict about the process, the editorial council of the Journal will make a decision.

Adjustments reception and acceptance:  When the author sends the version of the manuscript including all the comments within the assigned time-frame, adjustments will be verified and, in case of not included comments, the manuscript will be returned until all the comments are included. After this stage, the manuscript is considered an approved article.

Release and publishing: Approved by the editorial organization and surpassed the external blind-peer review and proofreading, the article will be published as post-print, which means an accepted and proofread version of the manuscript before the final process of edition and final version. This post-print will be published on the Journal website. When the final document is ready, the post-print is replaced by this version including the other formats of the final article. 

In total, the whole process can last from 3 to 4 months, approximately. 

Open access policy

The International Relations Journal has an open-access policy, allowing users a full and free access to its electronic content. The users have the possibility of reading, downloading, storing, printing, searching, indexing, using the content for data analysis, and establishing direct links to this journal, all this without any cost as long as the source is visible and acknowledged. 

Also, the distribution of the article in post-print and official versions are allowed without the previous authorization from the author or the editor, as long the authorship and source is being mentioned and the purposes of the distribution are not commercial, according to the License Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

Plagiarism and self-plagiarism detection policy

The International Relations journal has a plagiarism and self-plagiarism detection policy. The aim of this policy is that authors and actors involved accomplish the international ethical norms that ensure a transparent process of publication.

The Journal verifies the manuscripts submited in the first stage of the edition, right after the reception of the article by using Turnitin® plagiarism detection services and the editor or a member of the editorial team's support.

Also, the reviewers must inform the Editorial Board of any kind of plagiarism detected in the manuscript. 

 If any kind of plagiarism is detected, the article presented is rejected immediately and authors are informed about the situation (if the article is already published, a retraction statement will be made by the Journal on its website and the article will be identified as retracted). Before the rejection of the manuscript when plagiarism or self-plagiarism is detected, the Journal will ask for detailed explanations from the authors.  

Digital preservation policy

The journal has developed and applied strategies for the digital preservation of its archives, among them:

Local digital archives: The journal preserves its archives and internal documentation in its computer equipment. 

Online resources: Recently, the Journal has copied and moved its archived and internal documentation on cloud services using both; Google Drive and Microsoft Office, both sponsored and protected by Universidad Nacional.

Institutional repository: The journal deposits its published articles in the institutional repository, the Repositorio Académico Institucional (Academic Institutional Repository).

Interinstitutional Coordination: The Journal shares a folder with the Department of Publication of the Universidad Nacional through the university-owned cloud platform of Google Drive.

Long-term digital preservation throughout international initiatives: The Journal preserves its publication through the initiative  PKP-PLN which allows the deposit and preservation of its articles via LOCKSS, registered by the e-ISSN 2215-4582.

Legal archive: The Journal accomplishes the mandatory legal deposit via the Specialized Library of International Relations Luis y Felipe Molina of Universidad Nacional, this library makes the legal deposit in the National System of Libraries of the Republic of Costa Rica.

Privacy policy

The names and e-mail addresses introduced in this platform will be used exclusively for the declared purposes exposed by the journal and will be not available for any other purpose or person.

Policy of frequency and continuity in publishing

The Journal works according to the international continuous publication policy, which means the journal receives articles proposals and publishes them throughout the year. The Journal publishes two editions per year, which means that its modality is biannual (closing on  June 30th and December 31st, respectively).

Free-cost publication policy 

The submission, review, and publication processes are free of charge for the authors, who do not assume any cost along the editorial process. Those charges are sponsored by Universidad Nacional,  Republic of Costa Rica. The Journal does not charge any cost for digital subscriptions as part of this policy.

The printed edition is only available for the legal repository according to Universidad Nacional policies, and two copies will be sent to the authors of the articles once current the number is closed and if they request so. 

License of author rights, cultural, scientific, and educative works

The International Relations Journal is under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License, which means that the user is free to copy and redistribute the material in by any means or format.

The journal cannot revoke these freedoms as long as the user follows the license according to Creative Commons regulations. 

Attribution: The user must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. Also, the user may do so in any responsible manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses the use.

Noncommercial: The material must be never used for commercial purposes.

Non-derivatives: The remix, transformation, or building upon the material impede. In other words, the modified material is not distributable.

No additional restriction: Legal terms and technological measures cannot restrict users from doing anything allowed by the license.

Notice that users and authors do not have to comply with the license regarding public domain purposes or if the use is allowed by an exception or limitation.

Otherwise, the license may not give all the needed permissions for the user's intentions, and other rights such as publicity, privacy, moral rights, and journal policies and procedures limit how the material could be used if they do not contradict the license.

 

[1] Equivalent to grade with specialization.