History

Our History
The International Relations Journal published its first issue in 1980. The issue opened with the article Evolution of Costa Rica's Foreign Policy, written by Gonzalo Facio. The introduction of this article states: "In today's interdependent world, international affairs have an increasing gravitation over national affairs: None of the great internal problems of a country can be studied, much less solved, without a global perspective" (unofficial translation; Facio, 1980, p.9). These lines analyzed the context of the bipolar confrontation between the world powers of the time, which keeps protagonism in today’s world, characterized by dispersed power, interconnection, and constant change. All these elements are part of the raison d’être of our Journal, aiming to address issues about various authors regarding the international arena with direct or indirect effects on International Politics and International Trade and Business.
With the first 15 articles in this issue –each one analyzing the tense situation that would soon become the Central American Crisis– the Journal introduces itself to the academic world as a window to see the region in the context of the Cold War and the changing geopolitical landscape in the Western hemisphere and Latin America. During the 1980s, the Journal participated in the conceptual debates with studies about the realist paradigm in Latin America, popular participation and democracy, the neutrality statute for Costa Rica, the common market, displaced people during the Central American conflicts, and Costa Rica's relations with the Soviet bloc states. Subsequently, the contributions to the new political trends in Development would begin in the 1990s, linked to the themes of regional integration, the condition of women, and the international protection of human rights.
Later on, by 2010, the volumes of this last decade were concerned with the continuation of international environmental policies, the law of the sea and natural resources, the reconstruction of Central America, bi-regional relations with Europe, the rise and influence of Asian nations, and new approaches on identity politics.
All these publications over time would not have achieved the democratization of knowledge desired by the Journal without the open-access alternative and other efforts related to international indexing, digital preservation of archives, and the consolidation of free publication policies. Evidence of this hard work all these years is our presence in Latindex, CLASE, and Scielo. In 2022, the Journal's website reached 29,636 visits and published 19 original documents, of which 12 were articles authored by 47% of women and 53% of men, of different nationalities and professional paths in International Relations and other Social Science disciplines.
In its 43 years of history, the Journal has published 94 volumes distributed in 102 issues. It has published thematic issues on the emergence and consolidation of Asia on the global stage, as well as articles related to the Central American Bicentennial of Independence, to mention two examples. Currently, there are more than 700 PDF documents published on our website. Publications by our Journal not only include scientific and academic articles but also speeches, book reviews, and foreign policy chronologies, among others. In addition, to diversify the access by users, different electronic formats have been implemented: HTML in 2017, E-PUB in 2018, XML in 2020, and MP3 in 2021 (in the case of abstracts).
Thus, in a journey that exceeds four decades, our Journal has been transformed and consolidated with the clear motivation of offering rigorous, relevant, and open-access academic inputs. Through this mission, both, the academic community, and those interested in the fascinating and complex field of international affairs would have scientific information to make decisions and form opinions in their daily lives.

Written by: Sophia Roldán Soto

References
Facio, G. (1980). La Evolución de la política exterior de Costa Rica. Revista Relaciones Internacionales, 1(1), 9-20. https://www.revistas.una.ac.cr/index.php/ri/article/view/6987/7210
Revista Relaciones Internacionales. (2022). Actual. https://www.revistas.una.ac.cr/index.php/ri/index