Description, Focus, and Scope

The journal El Outsider is an annual, free, and open access academic publication of the Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ, founded with the objective of promoting the production, research, and analysis of International Relations and Political Science.

The journal follows rules of format, selection, evaluation, and publication of articles submitted through peer review using the double-blind method. These processes are developed by the Editorial Committee and specialized external reviewers belonging to the Academic Committee, according to the nature of the articles submitted.

The journal is compiled, edited, and reviewed by students of International Relations and Political Science (Editorial Committee), together with collaborators from the College of Social Sciences and Humanities (COCISOH) and other institutions (Academic Committee). The journal accepts submissions that present original information (see Submissions section) and seeks to improve its processes according to the highest ethical and editorial standards.

The journal supports its authors by taking charge of peer review, style and spelling correction, design, generation of galleys and print proofs, cataloging in indexing systems (LEXIS, Archive, ROAD, Crossref, Dialnet), and dissemination in social networks. All these services are provided free of charge thanks to the support of Universidad San Francisco de Quito, USFQ.

The layout and design process of the journal is carried out by the USFQ PRESS publishing house and is supervised by the journal's Editorial Committee. Before publication, the final design and content of the journal receive the approval of the Editorial Committee and USFQ PRESS. Due to its open access policy, all content is available immediately and free of charge after publication, thanks to the financial support of USFQ PRESS and the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, USFQ.

The articles and components of the journal El Outsider have a DOI code that facilitates their identification after publication.

 

Peer Review Process

El Outsider complies with the peer-review system through the double-blind method to maintain international quality standards in the editorial process. Each submission is evaluated generally by a member of the Editorial Committee and in detail by a specialized reviewer of the Academic Committee. The specialized reviewers of the journal are experts in the areas of study of the publications, with postgraduate degrees belonging to the faculty as well as external to the Universidad San Francisco de Quito, USFQ. The reviewers work with the Rúbrica de Aceptación.

The journal aims to inform its authors about editorial decisions as quickly as possible. However, response times depend on the availability of specialized reviewers in the Academic Committee.

Specific selection and publication criteria appear in the Submissions section.

 

Periodicity

As of 2020, El Outsider publishes digitally a volume once a year. Starting in 2023, the journal publishes at the beginning of June.

 

Archiving Policy

The journal El Outsider is preserved in its digital repository in Internet Archive and in the serial archives of the library of the Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ. The articles and components of the journal are available in PDF format in its Archive account.

 

Open Access Policy and Licensing

The journal adopts the open access policy based on the principle of supporting and disseminating knowledge to the public for greater global exchange, promoting freedom and the development of our countries and facilitating access and dissemination of science and research.

1. As of 2020, all articles and components of El Outsider are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Under this license, the authors retain copyright on the material but allow any user to share, copy, redistribute, transmit and adapt the material in any medium or format for non-commercial purposes without providing additional permissions, provided that the credit of the original authorship of the work is adequately recognized, providing a link to the license, and indicating whether changes have been made.
2. This license supports El Outsider's mission as an open access journal. The license appears on all individual websites of the journal's articles and components.

 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

The journal does not charge any type of fee for access to its contents, nor is there any charge for authors.

 

Publication Ethics and Plagiarim Detection

El Outsider adheres to the code of conduct of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and its Guidelines of Good Practices. In addition, the journal is also subject to the USFQ Code of Honor and Coexistence. The journal expects authors to comply with its provisions, including issues of authorship, plagiarism, and image manipulation.

All manuscripts submitted for peer review in the journal El Outsider are inspected by anti-plagiarism programs, which are based on the Code of Honor and Coexistence of the Universidad San Francisco de Quito USFQ and COPE policies, which ensure the originality of academic and scientific works.

Therefore, programs such as Turnitin or Similarity Check are used, which analyze and compare the similarity or grammatical and orthotypographic coincidences of other works. This process guarantees that the papers are unpublished and ensures compliance with the journal's quality standards.

Likewise, the journal makes available to its authors, reviewers and members of the scientific community specific tools for plagiarism detection: Grammarly, Turnitin, iThenticate, Urkund, which make up a set of free and paid access interfaces that monitor the originality of any manuscript and allow plagiarism control. 

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