About the Journal
1. Purpose of the journal
Letras Históricas is an open access scientific and humanistic journal with a continuous publication periodicity, organized into one annual issue. It is published by the Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico, through the Department of History, the Division of Historical and Human Studies, and the Centro Universitario de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades (CUCSH).
The journal’s central concern is history as a discipline; nevertheless, it is open to the dialogue between historical research and the social sciences and humanities. In this sense, Letras Históricas publishes original and unpublished articles resulting from high-level academic research. Its purpose is to foster dialogue and debate on the constant construction of historiographical knowledge through the reflective contrast of different perspectives, approaches, and research problems.
Letras Históricas is composed of two sections: Entramados, which includes works of historical interpretation, historiographical criticism, or theoretical-methodological proposals; and Testimonios, which presents works whose research focuses on a specific primary source, or the edition of an unpublished document preceded by a detailed analysis.
2. Scientific community addressed
Letras Históricas is addressed to a diverse audience of academic specializations, including historians, researchers, and students across the broad spectrum of the social sciences and humanities.
3. Scientific fields covered
Letras Históricas has history as its central disciplinary concern; nevertheless, it is open to the relationship between historical research, the social sciences, and the humanities. The journal publishes works on remote, modern, and contemporary temporalities, as well as on local, regional, national, transnational, and global historical processes.
4. Type of peer review and procedure followed
Letras Históricas receives submissions of research articles, historiographical review articles, theoretical or methodological reflection articles, and documentary testimony works. Every submission is subjected to a double-blind peer-review process, in which at least two reports must be favorable for the editorial process to continue, ensuring the anonymity of authors and reviewers.
Once the work has been received through Open Journal Systems (OJS), the editorial team conducts a preliminary review to verify its thematic relevance, originality, compliance with editorial standards, formal adequacy, and correspondence with the journal’s focus. Manuscripts approved at this stage are sent to specialist reviewers.
The journal maintains a policy that prevents assigning as reviewer a person belonging to the same institution of affiliation as any of the manuscript’s authors. Likewise, the journal seeks to ensure that reviewers belong to different academic institutions. Letras Históricas refrains from requesting the participation of a reviewer again if they have already collaborated within a period of less than one year.
If the article receives one negative and one positive review, or if there are substantial discrepancies between the evaluations received, a third review will be requested. The Editorial Board and the editorial team will ensure throughout the process that the article complies with the editorial guidelines, addresses the relevant observations of reviewers, and follows the journal’s academic and ethical policies.
For more information, see the section Procedure and peer review.
5. Code of ethics, malpractice, and use of artificial intelligence
Letras Históricas is committed to promoting ethical conduct as a scientific journal and takes as a reference the principles published by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors. The journal assumes an ethical commitment to neutrality regarding the contents of articles submitted to the editorial office, without prejudice based on religious, political, ethnic, gender-related, or any other ideology or position that may generate controversy or dispute.
The editorial process is governed by good faith, academic integrity, confidentiality, editorial transparency, and the responsibility of all persons involved. The Editorial Board of Letras Históricas will ensure that editors, reviewers, and authors respect ethical principles throughout all phases of the editorial process.
The journal has a specific policy on the use of generative or assisted artificial intelligence tools. Authors must declare their use when applicable, and reviewers must not upload manuscripts, substantial fragments, or unpublished materials to external artificial intelligence tools without express authorization from the editorial team, in order to protect the confidentiality of the evaluation process.
For more information, see the Statement on ethics, malpractice, and the use of artificial intelligence.
6. Institutional diversity policy
No more than 20% of the articles published in each issue of Letras Históricas may be written by authors affiliated with the Universidad de Guadalajara. The journal seeks to avoid the concentration of authorship in a single institution, department, academic group, or editorial body, in order to strengthen the plurality, independence, and openness of its contents.
7. Types of documents published
Letras Históricas accepts the following types of articles:
- Scientific research article: the product of original research, completed or in progress, whose structure is generally composed of introduction, methodology, results, and conclusions. It must provide a novel contribution, whether empirical, methodological, interpretive, or documentary.
- Historiographical review article: the result of research that analyzes the historiographical production of a specific period or problem, systematizing and integrating the results of research by other authors, whether published or unpublished, in order to offer a balance or state of the question on the topic analyzed. As a requirement for publication, this type of submission must be presented as an original contribution, whether as a research proposal, critical balance, or methodological critique.
- Theoretical or methodological reflection article: the product of research from an analytical, interpretive, or critical perspective on a specific or general topic, drawing on original sources or relevant classic and recent authors. To be considered, it must contain an original contribution, whether theoretical, methodological, or historiographical.
- Testimonial articles: the result of research in which original documentary bodies of importance for historical knowledge of a given period, problem, or topic are presented and analyzed. These materials may include paintings, photographs, maps, inventories, plans, private letters, unpublished documents, or other historical testimonies.
Reviews: Letras Históricas, as an indexed research journal, no longer publishes reviews in its regular and continuous publication. Nevertheless, given the usefulness of these exercises for academic discussion and updating, it maintains an open invitation for the reception of reviews. These contributions are published in a specific section of the journal’s website. Reviews are critical readings of recently published books, no more than two years old, and must be between 1,000 and 2,000 words in length.
8. Languages of publication
Letras Históricas publishes articles in Spanish and English, according to the original language in which they were written and accepted for publication.
9. Publication frequency
Letras Históricas has a continuous publication periodicity and organizes its contents into one annual issue. Articles are published as their peer-review, editing, and copyediting processes are completed, without waiting for the full annual issue to close.
10. Open Access Statement
Letras Históricas adopts a diamond, non-commercial, non-profit open access model. All academic contents published by the journal are offered in immediate open access, without embargo periods, economic barriers, subscription requirements, or prior registration for consultation.
The journal does not charge any fees to authors, readers, institutions, or libraries. It does not apply charges for submission, editorial processing, peer review, copyediting, layout, publication, consultation, download, or reading. It does not apply article processing charges (APCs), page charges, color charges, manuscript withdrawal fees, or publication fees.
Published contents are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0), unless otherwise expressly indicated. For more information, see the Open Access Statement.
11. Repository policy
The repository policy of Letras Históricas allows authors to retain their rights and freely archive the submitted version, the accepted manuscript, and the published version of their articles, always acknowledging the journal as the original place of publication, including the full citation of the work, and, whenever possible, linking to the official version published on the journal’s website.
Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0), which allows distribution and adaptation for non-commercial purposes with proper credit. For more information, see the Repository policy.
12. Publishing institution
Letras Históricas is published by the Universidad de Guadalajara, through the Department of History, the Division of Historical and Human Studies, and the Centro Universitario de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades (CUCSH). The journal has an operational editorial team consisting of a Direction, an Editor-in-Chief, a Technical Secretariat, and Editorial Assistance.
13. Preservation, metadata, and interoperability
Letras Históricas preserves its published contents, final files, and editorial metadata through the Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform, as well as through institutional archiving procedures of the Universidad de Guadalajara, the Centro Universitario de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades, and the Department of History.
The journal keeps digital preservation and distributed archiving mechanisms enabled in OJS, including PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN), LOCKSS, and CLOCKSS. These mechanisms allow the journal to declare and facilitate preservation processes for published contents through services, publisher manifests, and networks aimed at safeguarding academic journals in digital environments.
The PKP PN module is part of the preservation tools available for journals managed in OJS and allows published contents to be prepared for preservation in accordance with the technical criteria established by PKP. Likewise, enabling LOCKSS and CLOCKSS allows the journal to provide publisher manifests aimed at the storage, distribution, and preservation of its contents in participating networks and libraries.
In addition, the journal preserves final publication files, PDF versions, editorial metadata, dates of receipt and acceptance, authorship data, institutional affiliations, abstracts, keywords, bibliographic references, usage licenses, and other information necessary for the identification, retrieval, citation, indexing, and preservation of its contents.
Letras Históricas promotes the use of complete metadata, persistent identifiers, visible editorial dates, clear licenses, interoperable files, and editorial practices compatible with indexing systems, academic repositories, specialized catalogues, databases, and open access platforms.
14. Funding model
Letras Históricas belongs to the Department of History of the Division of Historical and Human Studies of the Centro Universitario de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades of the Universidad de Guadalajara. As such, its funding comes from resources allocated for this purpose by the Universidad de Guadalajara, which makes it possible to cover the costs of editing, digital publication, and dissemination.
