About the Journal

Focus and Scope

The Bolivian Studies Journal is an international, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, open access journal published by the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh. While interdisciplinary in scope and publication, the journal particularly aims to disseminate research knowledge produced in Bolivia and make it widely accessible. The journal also welcomes original and innovative research that will stimulate critical thought on the current and future role of Bolivia in the new millennium. The journal publishes in Spanish, English, Portuguese and indigenous languages.   

We welcome research articles, review articles, case studies, discussions and interviews in the areas of Andean Studies, Amazonian Studies, Anthropology, Archaeology, Cultural Activism, Cultural Studies, Education, Ethnography, Feminism, History, Indigeneity, Law Studies, Linguistics, Literature, Philosophy, Political Sciences, Psychology, Queer Studies, Sociology, and Visual Arts. The criteria for acceptance and publication of a manuscript will be originality, theoretical rigor, analytical capacity, and interest to a wide audience of readers.

BSJ does not charge submission or article processing fees.

Peer Review Process

Papers submitted to BSJ will be reviewed by three anonymous reviewers (Editorial Board members, Section Editors, and/or invited reviewers with expertise in the subject matter). Authors will remain anonymous to referees.

The typical time taken to conduct the reviews is four months.

Reviewers and editors are obliged to retain the contents as privileged and confidential until publication. The Editor(s) will have final authority over an article's suitability for publication.

Open Access Policy

This journal provides immediate open access to its content. Our publisher, the University Library System at the University of Pittsburgh, abides by the Budapest Open Access Initiative definition of Open Access:

“By “open access” to [peer-reviewed research literature], we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.”

Researchers engage in discovery for the public good, yet because of cost barriers or use restrictions imposed by other publishers, research results are not available to the full community of potential users. It is our mission to support a greater global exchange of knowledge by making the research published in this journal open to the public and reusable under the terms of a Creative Commons CC-BY license.

Furthermore, we encourage authors to post their pre-publication manuscript in institutional repositories or on their Web sites prior to and during the submission process, and to post the Publisher’s final formatted PDF version after publication. These practices benefit authors with productive exchanges as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.

There are no article processing charges, submissions fees, or any other costs required of authors to submit articles to this journal.

Statement on Publishing Ethics

Adherence to ethical standards for the dissemination of research results is critical to the research process. The Bolivian Studies Journal is committed to meeting high standards of ethical behavior at all stages of the publication process. The journal adheres to the Code of conduct and best practice guidelines of the Committee On Publication Ethics (COPE), the Code of Conduct of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA), and the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). These guidelines outline the publishing ethics responsibilities of authors, peer reviewers and editors.

Articles

Articles submitted for publication must not have been previously published, or be before another journal for consideration.

Articles should offer original and innovative research.

All articles must include references and citations of the respective sources. Where available, URLs for the references should be provided.

Articles must adhere to the stylistic and bibliographic requirements outlined in the Author Guidelines

Authors

The Author represents and warrants that:

  • the article is the author’s original work,
  • the article has not transferred, and will not transfer, exclusive rights to any third party,
  • the article has not previously been published and is not pending review or under consideration by another publisher,
  • the article contains no unlawful statements, does not infringe the rights of others, and that any necessary written permissions to quote from other sources have been obtained.

The Author retains copyright of the article.

Peer Reviewers and Peer Review

Works submitted will be reviewed anonymously by three reviewers.

Reviewers will be identified by their expertise on the subject, from among the members of the Editorial Board, the Section Editors, and/or invited scholars.

Authors will remain anonymous to referees.

The typical time taken to conduct the reviews is four months.

Reviewers must report any conflict of interest they detect in the review process.

Authors will be notified about the acceptance, modifications and/or rejection of the article. In case of modifications, the article will be returned to the author to make modifications within the deadlines stipulated by the journal

Reviewers are obliged to retain the contents as privileged and confidential until publication.

Editors

Editors will evaluate articles without regard to race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, nationality, ethnicity, or political beliefs.

Editors will decide which articles will be designated for peer review.

Editors are obliged to retain the author’s data and work contents as privileged.

Editors will avoid any conflict of interest with accepted or rejected articles and promote rectifications and apologies when errors are made.

Editors will have final authority over an article's suitability for publication.

Journal History

Founded in 1990, the Bolivian Studies Journal was published by the University of Akron until 2000 and by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign until 2008. Beginning in 2009, the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh, assumed the publication of this important annual journal. Under the University of Pittsburgh's editorship, and with the support of the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS), the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and the University of Pittsburgh Press, the journal was physically re-designed and intellectually re-conceptualized to meet the challenges that Bolivia is facing in the new millennium.