Letras (Lima) is the investigation journal of the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences of the National University of San Marcos founded in 1929 by Jose Galvez Barrenechea. The dean at the time. The journal is a publication that tells about the communication of investigations and studies in the area of human studies.

It is a biannual journal that appears in June and December, it is address to the scientific community of researchers in Human Sciences. Its target audience is also the same target audience of the researchers in Social Sciences given the multidisciplinary character of the developed investigations.

1. Objectives

• To publish the scientific production in the area of humanities and arts, product of the research word developed nationally and, it is added the international collaboration.
• To strengthen the presence and social value of human science from the construction of knowledge supported in instruments of scientific value.
• To contribute to the consolidation of a scientific community of humanists nationally and internationally.
• To encourage the investigation in the area of humanities in a way that it promotes the reflection of crucial aspects of our daily, social and political life.
• To encourage the multidisciplinary investigation from the area of humanities.
• To spread an academic journal of open access and to fulfill with the rules and quality standards required by the services of international indexing
• To foment good practices of investigation and academic ethics.
• To favor the spaces of reflection proper of the literary studies, linguistics, arts and humanities in general.

2. Editorial board

The director, editors or editor’s assistants develop the management of received manuscript, check the fulfillment of formal aspects and supervise the adoption of good practices when publishing the results of investigation works. The Editor Committee, organized by national and foreign academics, evaluates the appropriateness of the themes of the sent manuscripts and the Arbitrator Committee assures the quality of investigation, appropriateness of the methodology and scientific strictness. The acceptance or rejection of a manuscript is responsibility of the editor from the decision of the evaluation of their academic peers. 

Letras (Lima) offers filiation data of the authors (institution, email, among others). Additionally, it informs to its collaborators about the process of estimation (a month maximum) evaluation, (two months maximum) acceptance of manuscripts, as well as, criteria and procedure to follow (checklist, previous check, manuscripts structure and citation rules)

3. Peer review

The revision (peer-review process) implies that the evaluation of manuscripts and the validation of the investigation, go to experts or external arbitrators or unconnected to the editorial institution.

The mediation by peer reviewers guarantees the rigidity in the evaluation of the manuscripts and applies quality, credibility, appropriateness, and feasibility criteria to the investigation that will be published by the journal.

The journal is in process of transition towards open science, therefore the type of mediation that it adopts may be double blind (double-blind review) when the manuscripts do not have the preliminary versions (preprints) put and simple blind (single-blind review) when they do have them.

4. Principles for revision

• Evaluation of manuscripts, they are evaluated by the specialized arbitrators in the matter.
• Impartibility, people who intervene in the process of evaluation respect values and the intellectual liberty of the authors. The works that present negative results in an investigation must not be ruled out.
• Honesty, people who intervene in the process of evaluation must show transparency and objectivity when evaluating the manuscripts.
• Confidentiality, the obligation of keeping confidentiality of the manuscript content and of the authors exists.
• Validation or rejection of manuscripts, they must answer to the required principle of quality, they must fulfill the lines of investigation or scientific objectives of the journal, and they must fulfill the originality and not show evidence of scientific fraud.
• Retraction of published articles, by lack of reliability of the results, mistakes, omission of the sources or references, scientific fraud (data manipulation, text plagiarism or duplicated publication, among other) the journal will publish the retraction news, although the article will be kept in the journal.
• Conflict of interest, people who are involved or have any kind of academic or personal relationship with the author of the manuscript must inhibit themselves from the evaluation.
• Originality, the manuscripts must be submitted to a process of evaluation of authenticity (similarity) through the informatics software.

5. Instruction for authors

Authors must assure that the data and results presented at work are original and have not been copied, invented, distorted or manipulated. Plagiarism in all its ways, multiple publication or redundant, as well as the invention or manipulation of data are severe ethics offenses and they are considered scientific fraud. Authors that send original copies to the journal must commit not to send them to another journal for its consideration, as long as the manuscript is being evaluated.

The journal requires the authors to be adhered to the ethics standards required for the investigators and the scientific redaction. Specifically, the journal requires that all authors adhere themselves to the ethics standards prescript by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).

6. Bibliographic references

The manuscript must recognize the publication that incorporates in the work through quotations and uses original sources, it must not include irrelevant sources.

If the author does not write textual quotes of the sources but considers that the consulted documents can contribute to the manuscript, the not quoted references are includes as notes.

The journal does not restrict the quantity of references used in the manuscripts, but it limits the excess and abuse of inclusion of quotes of the own authors, that are not justified and relevant to the investigation.