About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Actualidades en Psicología (Current Trends in Psychology, CTP) is an official, peer-reviewed journal of the University of Costa Rica (UCR). The journal, sponsored by Instituto de Investigaciones Psicológicas (IIP), also a part of the University, has as its main purpose the dissemination of scientific production in every branch of the psychological sciences and related subjects. This is achieved through the publication of original, hitherto-unpublished articles that show and explain results both from empirical research and methodological contributions. The journal is available in Spanish, English and Portuguese, and is aimed mainly at students and professionals in Psychology and related fields. From 2018 onwards, article publication in Current Trends in Psychology will be continuous; that is, articles will be published until the journal issue is complete. The full issue of the journal is published every six months (january-june, july-december). The journal’s call for papers is likewise open and permanent; thus, authors are welcome to submit their manuscripts throughout the year. The submissions should reflect the guidance provided under “Authors Guidelines.” Submission, revision and processing of manuscripts is free of charge.

The journal currently ranks high in the UCRIndex. Furthermore, it is indexed in:

SCOPUS
PsycINFO, the American Psychological Association database
SCIELO, Scientific Electronic Library Online-Brazil
REDALYC, journal network for Latin America, the Caribbean, Portugal and Spain
PEPSIC, Electronic Psychology Journals – Brazil
DIALNET, Spanish and Latin American journal database
DOAJ, Directory of Open Access Journals; Lund University, Sweden
Latindex, Regional online information system for scientific journals in Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal
REDBIB, Ibero-American Innovation and Scientific Knowledge Network
CLASE, Latin American Citations in Social Sciences and Humanities
Google Scholar
ESCI, Emerging Sources Citation Index

Peer Review Process

All documents presented to Current Trends in Psychology are submitted to an arbitration and assessment process called "double-blind peer review," which is carried out by national and international scientific peers with no affiliation whatsoever to the journal. The reviewers are not acquainted with the authorship of the articles, nor do the authors know about the reviewers in charge of their works. This is done so as to avoid potential bias in favour or against the manuscript, thus ensuring a transparent process.

Articles submitted to the journal undergo a preliminary review within the Editorial Team, where it is ascertained whether the manuscript meets the Authors Guidelines and follows the editorial line of the journal. All incoming documents are treated confidentially by our team, and are assigned a code until their publication.

Having completed this stage, the article is sent to at least two research professionals specialised in the field. The manuscripts are prepared in such a way that the authors’ identities are concealed from the reviewers, thus ensuring that the reviewer will remain objective and assess the article based solely on its quality.

In order to carry out the assessment, CTP possesses an Article Evaluation Tool. The article is then sent back to the journal with the appropriate annotations made by the reviewers.

These comments are in turn assessed by the Editorial Team. There are four types of decision: (a) unchanged approval and publication, (b) approval on condition of revision, (c) resubmission of the presented version on condition of a thorough reworking, (d) refusal.

Under condition (a), authors are informed of the article’s approval and it is immediately sent for a review for philological accuracy. If the article is (b) approved on condition of minor revisions, a reasonable period of time is given so that the article may be revised and subsequently included in the ongoing issue of the journal. When the article (c)operates under condition, where the manuscript version is refused on condition of major revision, authors are informed and asked to resubmit the revised paper, which will in turn be submitted for peer review once again. Authors will be informed if the paper (d) is rejected .

A list of the issue’s reviewers is presented at the end of each issue with no indication of the articles that they have reviewed.

The journal’s rejection rate in 2023 was of 71% of the articles.

Publication Frequency

Actualidades en Psicología is a continuous publication that puts articles in print as soon as they are ready, adding them to the contents chart of the next issue. The journal is published twice a year; publication periods are January-June and July-December.

In terms of publication times, the average wait time for a decision based on the referees criteria is six months; and the estimated period for publication of articles is twelve months.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content, based on the principle that making research available to the public fosters a greater exchange of global knowledge.

This means that users can read, download, store, print, search, index, and create links to other journal’s full texts. This also allows for the distribution of previous issues, non-published issues and non-official issues without previous authorisation from the authors or editors, provided that this is carried out without commercial purposes, that it should not turn into derivative or second-hand work, and that the original source and its author are cited. (Licence: Creative Commons Atribución-No Comercial-Sin Derivadas 3.0 Costa Rica).

Subsequent to the publication, authors can file their article in the institutional repositories and, if applicable, on their personal websites.

The authors do not bear any cost for the articles’ editorial process or publication.

Digital preservation policy
This journal uses the LOCKSS system, created by Stanford University, to create an archive distributed among participating libraries. The system allows these libraries to create permanent archives of the journal for preservation and restoration purposes. Further information...
The journal is also part of the PKP Preservation Network, which provides preservation for any OJS journal.
Finally, articles are preserved at the Psychological Research Institute of the University of Costa Rica.

Ethical Guidelines and publishing best practices

Current Trends in Psychology (CTP) will only disseminate original and hitherto-unpublished work. Neither papers that have already been fully or partially published, nor those under consideration for publication elsewhere will be submitted for review, regardless of the original language in which they were written. We will not publish papers carried out without the appropriate permissions o where it can be proven that there has been a breach of ethical and / or legal guidelines previously defined by the scientific community (scientific misconduct) and documented in either national (Costarican) or international norms.

Any paper under consideration, whether subsequently published or not, must meet international ethical guidelines (American Psychological Association, https://www.apa.org/ethics/code/index, Declaration of Helsinki, https://www.wma.net/policies-post/wma-declaration-of-helsinki-ethical-principles-for-medical-research-involving-human-subjects/)

All manuscripts sent to Current Trends in Psychology will be evaluated based on the compliance of the ethical principles of the declarations and legislations on intellectual property and specific copyright of the country where the research was conducted. Authors must therefore sign the declaration of originality, transfer of rights and full compliance with ethical principles and the laws that apply to the country of origin.

This journal is guided by international standards on intellectual property and copyright, particularly by Law No. 6683 and its amendments, Law Act 7979 Copyright and Related Rights of the Republic of Costa Rica.

Authors bear full responsibility for acquiring the rights to the reproduction of any material presented in their manuscript. The journal follows the norms of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in all ethics-related issues regarding publication, so as to ensure respect for the author’s identity and to avoid the fabrication of results, data forgery or oversight; and, above all, plagiarism. This is why, if necessary and after a proven ethical fault, Current Trends in Psychology reserves the right to retract an article and offer the necessary clarifications

Current Trends in Psychology employs the Turnitin system to detect textual copy of resources available on the internet. Plagiarism will be understood as the identical copy of a part of a text in which the source is not specifically identified. In the same way, paraphrasing should be properly cited as set out in the Authors Guidelines of the journal, the reference from which the idea mentioned was obtained.

Should any ethical misconduct be detected during the review process, including the post-publication period, it is within the purview of the journal to take appropriate action in order to penalize said misconduct. For this reason, the authors of our articles should be willing to offer retractions or corrections of errors in case any are identified.

A declaration of adherence to the pertinent ethical guidelines must be included in the “Methodology” section of the manuscript.

Under the journal’s Authors Guidelines, requested file no. 2 includes a statement on the compliance with ethical guidelines: “…must include a declaration of authenticity of authorship and manuscript originality, an assurance about the fact that the paper hasn’t been concurrently submitted to another journal and a declaration of concession of copyright over the manuscript to Current Trends in Psychology. A declaration of the sponsorship under which the research was carried out must also be included in this file; as well as a clarification in case the results have been presented beforehand at academic events. ”

Regarding animal experimentation and testing, Actualidades en Psicología follows the regulations stated by the Comité Institucional para el Cuidado y Uso de los Animales (CICUA) de la Universidad de Costa Rica: Reglamento para el Cuido y Uso de Animales de Laboratorio en La Universidad de Costa Rica. Also, AP follows Costa Rican national regulations stated in the Ley No 7451: Ley de Bienestar de los Animales and the rules described in the Decreto Ejecutivo 26668 which is also part of the aforementioned law.

Actualidades en Psicología also considers relevant to be as inclusive as possible and avoid any type of discrimination. Therefore, to follow guidelines for gender inclusive language use is recommended when writing manuscripts. To this end, authors can find general guidelines in the Guías académicas de LiG de Costa Rica.

The opinions expressed within the manuscripts are the sole responsibility of the author(s) and do not represent the opinion and / or scientific policy of the journal.

Plagiarism Detection Policy

Current Trends in Psychology takes steps to ensure regulatory compliance with national (Costa Rican) and international ethical norms during its publication process. The journal therefore strictly adheres to the norms of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and employs the Turnitin plagiarism detection system.

Should plagiarism be detected, CTP will proceed to comply with the information provided by COPE in the following link: https://publicationethics.org/files/All_Flowcharts_Spanish_0.pdf

Some of the responsibilities of the participants are as follows:

Editors oversee the publication processes following the highest ethical standards. Editors must make sure articles are reviewed by subject specialists. In addition, they must relay the Authors Guidelines clearly.

Authors present the results of their research process in a transparent, rigorous and ethical manner, assuming the responsibility for said published investigation. Authors will also be required to describe their methods of investigation in such way that the scientific community can corroborate or replicate the data. Authors will refrain from submitting the manuscript to two or more journals simultaneously. Authors should disclose their sources of funding and relevant conflicts of interest, if any, and declare the nature of said conflict. Authors must be willing to offer corrections or retractions if necessary.

Reviewers undertake to inform about possible fraud or plagiarism regarding the evaluated investigations. In addition, reviewers will abstain from using the information in the manuscripts assigned to them until these are published by Current Trends in Psychology. They will evaluate the articles rigorously, objectively and within the previously-established time. They will substantiate their observations and, whenever relevant, offer their observations so as to improve the quality of the manuscript.

Copyright

Those submitting articles of their authorship to Current Trends in Psychology for evaluation retain their copyright and have the ability to grant the journal permission for publication, in digital format, under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license. Being part of many indexers, databases and reference systems, articles published by CTP will be accessible and available for download from these websites. The articles will always show author, publication date and the journal issue to which they belong. Furthermore, all documents published by Current Trends in Psychology can be downloaded from the journal webpage (http://revistas.ucr.ac.cr/index.php/actualidades/index) and from the databases where the journal is indexed.

The journal follows and avails itself to Copyright Law Nº 6683 Ley de derechos de autor y derechos conexos of the Republic of Costa Rica; including its reform, the 7979 Act. Lastly, the Creative Commons License for Costa Rica applies to all of CTP’s publications (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/cr/).

Publishing process

Exemption of liability

The opinions and data published in every article are the sole responsibility of the author.

Redalyc statistics for download

The journal’s Redalyc statistics for download can be accessed here.

Sources of Support

Universidad de Costa Rica

Journal History

At this moment we are updating the information in this section.