Submissions

Author Guidelines

FORMAT AND CONTENT NORMS FOR THE PUBLICATION OF PAPERS IN REVISTA DE CIENCIAS ECONÓMICAS (RCE)

Updated on March 16^th of 2023 

Revista de Ciencias Económicas (RCE) covers the areas of Economics, Business Administration, Statistics, and Public Administration. The journal is published online .

The journal’s target audience is international academics interested in Economics.

RCE publishes research papers and technical notes from national and international researchers in Spanish and English. Any paper submitted to RCE must be original, unpublished, and not submitted to other publications simultaneously.

Manuscript Submission:

Manuscripts can be submitted via the journal portal (Portal de Revistas de la Universidad de Costa Rica) https://revistas.ucr.ac.cr/index.php/economicas. To submit a document through this portal, the author must register by completing this form (https://revistas.ucr.ac.cr/index.php/economicas/user/register). Upon completing registration, the author will see a screen from which they will be able to send the document they wish to submit for publication in the link “Make a New Submission”. Follow the step-by-step instructions provided by the system. If the author has any difficulties with this, you may contact the journal’s editor to the email revista.iice@ucr.ac.cr

Form requirements for the manuscripts

• Manuscript in Microsoft Word or Writer (OpenOffice) format.
• The manuscript cannot have the name of the authors.
• The spacing must be single.
• The lateral, top, and bottom margins must be 2.5 cm (0.98 in).
• Maximum length is 25 pages, including appendixes.
• Font size: pt. 12.
• Font type: Times New Roman.
• The pages of the document must be numbered.
• The title must be included in Spanish and English.
• The document must include Abstracts in Spanish and English, and include keywords in both languages. Minimum 5 and maximum 10 keywords per language.
• The JEL codes assigned to the document must be listed. You can find the classification and the list of codes at: https://www.aeaweb.org/jel/guide/jel.php
• The manuscript must have a structure that includes sections such as: 

• I.  Introduction
• II.  Methodology
• III. Results
• IV. Conclusion
• V.  Acknowledgements (if any)
• VI. References
• Appendix (if any)

In case that within the sections of the manuscript there are any subsections, the subsections should not be numbered. Within subsections, titles must be in bold, and subtitles must be in cursive. Appendixes must be numbered using Arabic numerals.

Appendixes must be numbered using consecutive Arabic numerals independent from the numbering of the rest of the manuscript.

• The journal uses figures, graphics, and photos, which must be numbered consecutively and referred to by their number within the text. The same applies to graphics and figures included in the Appendixes. Figures include maps, diagrams, and others, and they must be included within the manuscript. Additionally, they must be submitted in separate files, in formats such as OpenOffice Calc, Microsoft Excel or jpg, png or bmp format with a minimum resolution of 300 dpi. Graphics must be presented as tables of Word and Excel or, in any case, their OpenOffice equivalents. Tables must not be created with tabulations (Tab button) or with the space bar. The ‘insert table’ function must be used. The titles to the graphics and figures must be outside of the graphic or figure and above them. Every graphic, figure, and photo must have a source, even if the source is the author’s own creation. The format for graphics or tables is as follows:

• Sources, citations, and references:

Citations, sources, and references must be adjusted to the latest version of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) format. Each citation must have its reference, and each reference must have its citation.

Regarding quotes or paraphrasis, the corresponding authors must be included, even for sources of the authors’ own creation, to respect intellectual property and avoid plagiarism and self-plagiarism issues. Editors must be able to differentiate between the authors’ and the sources’ contributions.

• Writing:

The paper’s writing must be clear without any possibility for misinterpretation. All the statements must be backed by citations or the research’s results, and no assumptions or conjectures can be included. The paper must have a clear argumentation line.

• Target readers:

Revista de Ciencias Económicas is oriented toward an international audience. As such, the papers published in the journal must get the interest of international readers. Therefore, the paper must be clear regarding the contextualization of its contribution to the international literature. Additionally, conclusions drawn must refer to the differences or the similarities the paper has with pertinent international literature mentioned in the Literature Review.

• Authorship:

In case there are multiple authors, the authors’ names will be placed in the order that the parties agreed upon previously. RCE will publish the papers with the order established on the submission paperwork.

• Abstract:

The abstract must be written in present tense stating only the concrete contributions, the methodology used, and the results obtained, without mentioning any initial expectations of the study. The abstract must be understood independently from the rest of the paper. It cannot include quotes, tables, figures, or references, and it must be structured into one paragraph that does not contain more than 150 words.

• Keywords:

Remember that using appropriate keywords increases the likelihood that the paper will be found in search engines and specialized databases that also capture the information in the title and abstract. Therefore, the keywords should not be terms found in the title or abstract. Furthermore, the keywords used must be normalized terms, as such we recommend the ones included in UNESCO’s thesaurus: https://vocabularies.unesco.org/browser/thesaurus/en/.

• Footnotes:

In the footnotes, include any clarification notes if needed. The notes must be brief and used for additional information, to strengthen the argument, complement it, or expand important ideas, even to state the intellectual rights’ permissions, among others. Footnotes should not be used to include references, and they must be numbered consecutively using Arabic numerals.

• Introduction:

It must explain what the paper is about and mention the methodology used. The author must explain the hypothesis, the facts or data behind the results, and background information that allows the reader to evaluate the contributions of the investigation. What this research contributes to what is already known must be very clear. This section must be written in the present tense.

• Methodology:

The methodology must explain the method, concepts, and variables with a precision that explains how, when they are applied to the information, they arrive at the results obtained. In this section, the author must define what will and will not be studied and clarify how the results were obtained.

• Results:

Only include the results that allowed the author to reach their conclusions in this section. Graphics or tables that are hard to read due to their size or complexity must be included in the Appendix.

• Conclusions:

The goals established in the introduction must be resumed in the conclusion section. The contributions must be specified in the following format: this paper originated from questions “a, b, and c” and proves “x, y, and z.” The claims made must derive from what is presented in the paper. The evidence that supports the conclusions must be summarized, and the author must point to how similar their results match with previously published work. Additionally, the limitations of the research must be made explicit, and possible future research angles and academic or political implications must be mentioned.

• Acknowledgements:

This section of the paper should be used if the author wishes to thank an institution or person for their contributions to the research process.