Information For Authors

Copyright

The authors retain their moral rights and, in terms of property rights, agree that the journal may publish and disseminate their document. The author(s) grant(s) a license for publication, understood as a permission where the owner of the intellectual property right gives the Centro de Investigación y Capacitación en Administración Pública (CICAP) permission for publication.

Therefore, the sending of the manuscript by the author(s) is interpreted as the understanding and acceptance of the conditions of the publication regulations to edit the article, where the authors grant CICAP the right to reproduce and disseminate it. CICAP cannot modify the work without the authorization of the authors. 

Regarding the licensing aspects of the ALP Journal's production, the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA) open-source license is used for published articles.

Publication standards

The journal's standards for writing academic manuscripts for publication purposes include the guidelines and requirements for publishing in the Journal. CICAP has ISSN publisher codes.

These standards correspond to the CICAP Publications Process, and are intended to contribute to the communication mechanisms for the dissemination of research, social action and teaching results, regulated by the guidelines and policies of the Vice-Rector's Office for Research, without detriment to those that may be formulated by other university bodies in the legitimate exercise of their powers. The regulations for publishing journals of the University of Costa Rica (UCR) require a high academic level.

Authors are obliged to verify that their submission complies with all the elements shown below and those requested in the publication standards:

  • The manuscript must be original, that is, it cannot have been previously published, nor has it been simoultaneously submitted to other journals.
  • The file sent is in editable format in a word processor (.txt, .doc or .docx)
  • Web addresses have been incorporated into the references where possible.
  • The text meets the requirements of the documents according to the format required in the publication standards.
  • The text complies with the required citation styles and elements such as tables and figures have a title, source, are referenced (they are named before being presented), are legible, original or adapted, are not complex or extensive, and their resolution is of high quality.
  • Submission to a peer-reviewed section of the journal implies knowledge that the review will be blind and that the document requires anonymization processes.
  • We accept manuscrips in three different languages: English, Spanish, and Portuguese.

All articles that do not comply with these guidelines will be returned. See: Publishing guidelines for authors

Are you interested in publishing in the journal? Visit the About the Journal page to review the journal's section policies, as well as the Author Guidelines. Authors must register with the journal before publishing or, if already registered, they can simply log in and begin the five-step process.

Self-Archiving

The ALP Journal permits the self-archiving of the preprint version of the manuscript; that is, the version submitted for evaluation prior to peer review and formal acceptance. Once the article has been accepted, authors are encouraged to disseminate the post-print version (the evaluated and accepted version) through their personal website, institutional repository, or thematic repository, including a clear reference to its acceptance by the journal and indicating the volume and issue number in which it will be published.

Once the final version of the article is published, the author must replace the self-archived text with the official PDF available on the journal's platform. No embargo period is established; authors have full freedom to publicly share the final published version in PDF format through any digital medium immediately after publication.

Data Archiving

The ALP Journal recommends that authors deposit the data generated or used in their research in recognized repositories, whether discipline-specific or general-purpose. The aim of this practice is to promote scientific transparency, facilitate the verification of results, and encourage the use, reuse, and replication of data in future studies.

The selected repository must comply with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) and offer open access to the data. It is recommended to consult the Registry of Research Data Repositories (re3data): https://www.re3data.org, where suitable repositories and their respective archiving policies can be found.

At the end of the manuscript, before the reference list, a section titled Data Availability Statement must be included, with the following information:

  • Name and URL of the repository used.
  • Unique and permanent identifier (DOI or other).
  • Usage and distribution license.

Example: The data supporting the results of this study have been deposited in the Zenodo repository and are available via open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. The dataset includes anonymized survey responses and the final database used for the analysis. The data can be accessed at the following link: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1234567

Authorship

Authorship or co-authorship shall be recognized for those who have substantially contributed to:

  • The study’s conception or design.
  • The acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data.
  • The drafting of the manuscript or its critical revision for significant intellectual content.
  • The final approval of the version to be published.

Individuals who do not meet these criteria—for instance, those who assist with technical editing, copyediting, or statistical analysis—must be recognized in the Acknowledgments section as contributors.

Regarding the declaration of contributions, the journal adopts the CRediT Taxonomy (Contributor Roles Taxonomy), which recognizes 14 distinct roles of participation (such as conceptualization, formal analysis, writing, etc.; see https://credit.niso.org/). Each author must declare their specific contribution using the manuscript submission template.

Once the manuscript has been submitted, no changes to the number or order of authors will be accepted. All matters related to authorship must be resolved prior to the initial submission. Any conflict between authors shall be the responsibility of their respective affiliated institutions, as established by COPE (https://publicationethics.org/resources/guidelines).

Article Versioning Policy

Articles pass through three stages: the submitted version, the accepted version, and the published version.

Submitted Version: This is the initial version uploaded by the author to the OJS (Open Journal Systems) prior to the preliminary editorial review. If it passes the initial editorial screening, this is the version sent for external peer review.

Accepted Version: This is the version of the article once corrections have been submitted based on the General Editor's request (including both editorial and peer review requirements).

Published Version: This is the final version of the article, already typeset and formatted according to the Journal's official design.

ISSN 2215-6909

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