Instructions and Norms for Authors

You can download HERE the instructions in PDF format.

a) Basic Information

The International Relations School presents the International Relations Journal, their continuous and biannual publication (from January to June and from July to December) with respective publishing periods for each publication closing on June 30th and December 31st each year. The journal receives and publishes original articles on International Relations and International Business and Trade throughout the entire year.

The Journal is published by the International Relations School with to address 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 can be found in the following informational services:

  • Directories: Latindex (digital and printed), DOAJ, ERIHPLUS, Directory of Research Journals Indexing, WorldCat
  • Data Bases: Scielo, CLASE, REDIB, MIAR, LatinRev, JournalTOCs
  • Social Networks: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn
  • Website: Revistas Académicas de la Universidad Nacional Website
  • Archive: Repositorio de la Universidad Nacional

Types of Articles: The Journal publishes the following types of articles: theoretical articles, scientific articles, critical articles, interviews, and book reviews.

Evaluation Format: The Journal provides the document “Evaluation Form”, which contains the criteria considered in the double-blind peer review process. 

Frequency of Publishing: The International Relations Journal is continually published each semester (January to June) (July to December), and the publishing period for each publication continues until June 30th and December 31st every year. The journal will receive and publish original articles with the themes of International Relations and International Business and Trade throughout the entire year.

Editorial Committee: The Journal has an Editorial Committee integrated by members of the International Relations School, from Universidad Nacional, Costa Rica; and other external institutions.

International Committee: The Journal has an International Committee integrated by international representatives.

Peer Review Committee: The Journal works with national and international specialists (peer reviewers) which are experts in the field of the articles. These reviewers are external from the editorial board of the Journal. They work under the condition of double-blind peer reviewers. 

b) Policies

Open Access: The International Relations journal is open access, which allows users to have full and free access to the online content. This means that users are always able to read, download, save, print, search, index, use data for software, and create links to the complete texts from the Journal. All this is possible if commercial purposes are not involved,  derivative works are not produced, and sources and authorship are recognized. 

Licensing and Intellectual Protection: The Journal works with the Creative Commons 4.0 License which indicates the following: “Attributed, Non-commercial, Original”; the material created by the author may always be displayed by third parties which give credit and indicate if they have made changes. The material may not be used for commercial purposes and may not be distributed if it has been transformed, or manufactured (see more details here License of author rights, cultural, scientific, and educative works). 

Plagiarism and Self-plagiarism Detection Policy: The International Relations Journal enforces a plagiarism and self-plagiarism detection policy which requires authors to subscribe to the required ethical norms to ensure transparency in the publishing process.

Cost-Free Publishing: The processes of submitting, evaluating, and publishing are FREE for authors. They do not assume any costs regarding the editorial process of their approved articles. The initial processing fees are covered by Universidad Nacional, Costa Rica. The Journal does not charge for digital subscriptions either.

The printed version of the Journal is only available in the legal archives which are kept by Universidad Nacional. Two hard copies of the Journal can be mailed to the authors if they requested it. 

Authors: The Journal’s open access policies allow the distribution of the post-print and official versions of articles without asking for permission from the editor or author, as long as it is not for commercial purposes and the authorship and sources are recognized. The Journal submits the final versions of articles in their third-party archives right after their publication. If someone submits more than one original article and both articles are accepted, they will be published in different years (one year-waiting period). 

DOI: Each article published in our journal has a DOI (unique and permanent identifier for electronic publications).

ORCID: Authors must provide their ORCID both, in the submitted manuscript and the article reception form. 

Privacy Statement: The names and email addresses used in this journal are used exclusively for informational purposes and they will not be used for any other purpose. 

Formats: The Journal publishes full articles in PDF, HTML, EPUB, XML, and audio (only abstracts).

Language of the articles: The Journal receives original articles in the mentioned fields written either in Spanish, English and more recently in Portuguese. 

For articles written in English or Portuguese the author(s) has the responsibility to, once the article is reviewed by the external reviewers and accepted for publication, present certification by a translator or philologist. The Journal does assume the costs related to this certification. 

Preservation of Digital Archives: The International Relations Journal uses the  LOCKSS system to create an archive that is distributed to all the participant libraries which creates permanent archives of the journal following processes of preservation and restoration. 

References: The International Relations Journal provides references for each published article.

Citations: The articles must use the latest edition of citation rules from the American Psychological Association’s Manual of Publication (APA).

General Guidelines:

The articles must be unpublished, research articles, scientific works, and/or original creations about diverse topics related to the broad field of International Relations and International Business and Trade, that have not been previously published.

The submitted articles  must consider the following aspects: 

Table 1

Content of the Articles

Content

Format

Title

o   Concise

o   No more than 15 words

o   Must be in English and Spanish

Identification of Authors

o   Below the title

o   In a footnote: first name, last name, academic degree, city and country, email, and if they are part of a doctoral or postdoctoral program

Abstracts and Keywords

o   Max. 400 words

o   Must be in English and Spanish

o   Written in a concise and clear way

o   At least 6 key words and separated by a semicolon (;)

Subdivide the text into necessary parts for your comprehension and exposition

o   See table 2 regarding the structure of an empirical, scientific; and theory-based article.

Explicative notes

o   They should be placed in numerical order, referring to the footnote. 

Charts, maps, graphs, and illustrations

o   Copies in digital version

o   Chronology and Scale as part of the figure

o   Avoiding graphs that are too extensive or too small

Bibliography

o   Located at the end of the manuscript, references must be in alphabetical and numerical order

o   No distinctions regarding the types of documents

o   References must follow the American Physiological Association (APA 7) guidelines. 

Length and design

o   Maximum length: 20 to 30 computer pages

o   Page size of 8.5 x 11

o   Text size: Arial 12

o   Interlining: 2cm (double space)

o   Margins: Top: 3cm, bottom: 4cm, left: 4cm, right: 3cm

 

Table 2

Structure of the articles

Empirical or scientific article

Theory-based article

o   Title in Spanish and English

o   Summary and keywords in Spanish and English

o   Introduction

o   Methodology

o   Results/findings

o   Discussion

o   References

o   Appendix

o   Title in Spanish and English

o   Abstract and key words in Spanish and English

o   Introduction

o   Development of the topic that contributes to a critical analysis

o   Conclusions

o   References

 

  1. Process of admission of the articles
    1. The articles are submitted to revistarrii@una.cr to the editor-in-chief of the journal M.Sc. María Fernanda Morales Camacho.
    2. The article should be sent in Word format according to the general guidelines requested by the journal, if these guidelines are not accomplished, the article will not be received. Besides, when submitting the article  the ¨Letter of Originality and Right's License¨ and the "Article Reception Form" must be completed and attached.
    3. The manuscript should be grammatically correct, if not, it will be returned to the authors for corrections.
    4. Once received, the author will receive a letter of confirmation with the title of the work, author, and date.
  2. Process of selection and approval of the articles.
    1. If the article fulfills the established requirements by the journal, a plagiarism check is done to identify plagiarism or self-plagiarism.
    2. If the article overcomes the plagiarism check, it will be submitted for the blind-peer review process.
  • Peer review process

The received manuscripts, once the plagiarism check is done, will be submitted to an external blind peer evaluation. Authors and peer reviewers are anonymous to ensure transparency and objectivity in the process. The external peers are national and international experts in the manuscript's topic and independent of the Editorial Committee of the Journal. 

The peer review process of the articles could last 1 calendar month and, if it is accepted by the journal, the author will be informed about having 7 calendar days for including corrections to the manuscript (if it is the case) and submitting the new version. 

The author can consult the evaluation criteria by downloading the document ¨Evaluation Form¨. 

The peer review process entails the following steps: 

  • The article is sent to two reviewers external to the journal and experts in the article's topic. 
  • The reviewers should verify that the articles accomplish all specific requirements in the Evaluation Form and they must indicate if: the article is published if it is published with observations to make; or if it is not published at all. 
  • In the case that one of the two reviewers does not agree about the article's publication, the article will be submitted for evaluation to a third reviewer.
  • In the case that the reviewer makes comments or observations, corrections must be made. The author must include the observations in the document in a 7-day term and submit the document again to the journal.
  • When the article overcomes all the previous steps, the editorial board will accept the document and it will be submitted for proofreading and final editing.

i. The process of plagiarism detection

The International Relations Journal has a Plagiarism and Self-plagiarism Detection Policy. The articles are checked in Turnitin once they are formally received.  If plagiarism is detected by a reviewer, he/she must immediately inform the journal. 

When plagiarism is detected the  article will be immediately rejected and authors are informed about it. 

ii. Process of the final format and publishing

When the articles complete the whole process of plagiarism check, peer review, and philology, they will be released as a post-print version, which means an accepted and proofread version of the manuscript before the final format. 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 HTML, EPUB, and XML versions of the final article, besides the audio version of the abstract. 

c) Contact

For more information, you can send an email to: revistarrii@una.cr

Dr. Marco Vinicio Méndez Coto, Director

M.Sc. María Fernanda Morales Camacho, Editor in Chief

 

International Relations Journal
International Relations School
Universidad Nacional, Costa Rica
+(506) 2562 4165
http://www.revistas.una.ac.cr/ri