About the Journal

Ánima is a student-run academic monographic series of the Liberal Arts Department and the College of Social Sciences and Humanities (COCISOH) at Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ. It publishes research, reflections, and creative works in Spanish and English in the areas of Philosophy, Literature, Art History, and Creative Writing. It is an Open Access publication and uses a peer-review arbitration system through a double-blind review methodology. The objective of Ánima is to provide a space for undergraduate and graduate students to publish their research, reflections, poems, and short stories in these four disciplines.

ISSN: 2953-6340

Focus and Scope

Ánima is an annual open-access academic publication that uses the peer-review arbitration system through the double-blind review methodology. This publication aims to be a space for undergraduate and graduate students to publish their research and reflections about Philosophy, Literature, Art History, and their creative works in the Creative Writing section. In addition, the journal has an annexed section, dedicated to the publication of opinion or educational articles by experts in the first three aforementioned disciplines.

As for our authors, we hope to capture the attention of those students with initiative, and critical and investigative character, who want to share their academic and creative works, giving them greater visibility and reach. On the other hand, the monographic series focuses on its readers, whether they are experts interested in learning about the debates generated in the student academic context within the humanities or curious amateurs of the subject. In this way, unpublished texts of excellent reflective, investigative, and literary quality are provided.

The evaluation of the texts is based on a determination of their quality and not on subjective parameters such as “impact” or “relevance.” For the review processes, we rely on internal and external reviewers to USFQ. We have the support of experts from universities in Ecuador and abroad, depending on the current volume and the topics of the texts received.

Ánima oversees the editorial processes that include peer review, copyediting, typographic design of the text, and social media promotion. The editorial processes have no cost for the authors due to the financial support of the publishing house USFQ PRESS, Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ, and the College of Social Sciences and Humanities (COCISOH).

Thematic

The publication aims to be the lens through which the various phenomena of the contemporary world are observed through the perspective of Philosophy, Literature, Art History, and Creative Writing. Furthermore, it seeks to foster discussion about the current role of the humanities in the global context, based on reflections, academic research, and creative works.

Section Policies

For this reason, Ánima is divided into four sections: Philosophy, Literature, Art History and Creative Writing. The publication seeks diversity in terms of perspectives, methodologies, and interpretations for each of the sections, always supported by intellectual rigor and academic quality.

  • Philosophy: This section is a space for the exchange of philosophical ideas of undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in academic research in all areas of philosophical research: political theory, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, ontology, epistemology, philosophical theology, etc. Each text for this section will be approximately 3000 words long.
  • History of Art: This space reflects on how different cultures throughout history have built, conceived, and shaped the different dimensions of their existence in their historical and present context through visual art forms. This section publishes investigative texts about any period in history of art. These texts will have an approximate length of 3000 words, and their authors will be exclusively undergraduate and graduate students.
  • Literature: This section promotes the flow of academic reflections by undergraduate and graduate students about how the complexities of human experiences have resulted in the creation of literary fictions. These discussions will revolve around thematic axes that cover topics such as the study, analysis, interpretation, and proposals for the reading of texts from the global literary genre. The approximate length of each text will be 3000 words.
  • Creative Writing: This section showcases original short stories and poetry, providing a platform for unique voices of undergraduate and graduate students. Submissions must be unpublished manuscripts, between 150 and 3000 words, and must demonstrate strong literary quality and depth. Works generated with artificial intelligence will not be accepted. Authors must ensure they own the rights to their work and that it does not infringe on any third-party intellectual property.
  • Contributions from experts: This space encourages the publication of opinion or educational articles that are related to Philosophy, Art History and/or Literature. This section is intended only for texts whose authors are experts in any of the aforementioned disciplines, and they will not be peer-reviewed. Each article will have an approximate length of 3000 words.

Publication Criteria

Ánima publishes original texts, which have not been published previously and are not currently under consideration for other calls for submissions. However, we consider manuscripts that have been published as theses in institutional repositories or works that have been presented in academic contexts such as classes or conferences, as long as they comply with the format detailed in the Author Guidelines. We accept texts whose conclusions are based on appropriate and justified interpretations of the philosophical, literary, or art history bibliographic material. They must adhere to the international regulations of each discipline.

Peer Review Process:

Authors who want to publish in Ánima must send their text through the Open Journal System (OJS) platform. The texts received will be reviewed through the following stages:

  1. During the first stage, the texts are reviewed by a group of reviewers who are Liberal Arts students from Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ, who are members of the Editorial Committee of the monographic series. In this first round of review, it will be decided if each text is a) accepted, b) accepted with minor corrections, c) temporarily accepted with major corrections, or d) rejected.
  2. In the second stage, the texts that were accepted in the first stage, accepted with minor corrections, or temporarily accepted with major corrections are reviewed by a group of experts from various universities that make up the Academic Committee of the Monographic Series.
  3. In the third stage of editorial review, the editors-in-chief will ensure that all pertinent corrections have been made to each of the texts to ensure their quality.
  4. Finally, all accepted texts will undergo a proofreading and formatting review.

In the first two stages of review the form and substance of the received texts will be evaluated, and special attention will be paid to the following categories: correspondence of the subject with any of the three disciplines of the monographic series, mastery of the contents, text structure, adequate use of academic sources, and clarity in writing.

In addition, all the observations that the members of the Editorial Committee or the Academic Committee make to the texts will be shared with the authors so that they can make the pertinent amendments. The authors undertake to make the necessary edits in accordance with the observations made by the reviewers at each stage of the review. To guarantee the quality of the publication, the Ánima monographic series reserves the right to reject the texts at any stage of the editorial process.

Conditions for Collaboration

  • All articles, other than undergraduate thesis or works developed in academic contexts such as classes or conferences, must be unpublished and cannot be part of another publishing process.
  • After the first revision stage, Ánima reserves the right to assign the article to the section in which it will be published if accepted.
  • After each review stage, the authors undertake to make the corrections requested by the reviewers.
  • Authors must present an abstract and keywords that summarize the content of their text, except for the Creative Writing section.
  • All quotes and references must follow the MLA norms.
  • Ánima reserves the right to make any stylistic corrections, provided they do not change the content of the article.
  • Ánima reserves the right to accept or reject articles at any stage of the editorial process.

Frequency of Publication

Ánima is published annually in July of each year.

Open Access Policies

All Ánima content meets what is required to be an Open Access publication. The articles published by Ánima are subject to the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, which empowers the authors to retain the right to their texts, but frees any user from special permissions so that, for non-commercial purposes, they can share, transmit, redistribute, copy and adapt the material to any format, as long as the correct mention is made of the original authorship of the text, the changes made are indicated, and a link to the license is provided.

The Ánima monographic series adopts this Open Access policy because it is founded on the principle that the free exchange of knowledge fosters freedom and beauty, encourages intellectual production, and facilitates the dissemination of the humanities in the country and the region.

Code of Ethics in Research and Publication

Ánima adheres to the Code of Honor and Coexistence of Universidad San Francisco de Quito. For more details, visit the following link (in Spanish).

Access to Content

The contents of the publication will be available in the OJS Archive.

Collaborators

The Ánima editorial team requests new members each year.

Active USFQ students from COCISOH and COCOA can be part of the team.

Those interested in participating must meet the following requirements:

  • Be an active student of any career at COCISOH or COCOA.
  • Be in the second semester or greater of their degree.
  • Possess a minimum average of 3.2 in their accumulated GPA up to the last semester.
  • Have an interest in at least one of the areas of specialization of the journal.
  • Have passed a Humanities class (FIL, LIT, ARH) with an A.
  • Have passed the Academic Writing class (ESP-1001) with an A.
  • Provide an updated curriculum vitae.
  • Provide a motivation letter about their interest in participating as a member of the editorial team between 500 and 1000 words.
  • Have available time and commitment to carry out the editorial tasks stipulated in the editorial calendar of the monographic series.

The monographic series Ánima accepts articles throughout the year. Additionally, calls for submissions open annually between January and March, with an announcement on our social media profiles. Articles submitted during these months will be considered for publication in that year’s volume.

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