FOCUS AND SCOPE

Edition and financing.

 The journal is edited and financed by the Colegio de Profesionales en Orientación.

Character and format.

It is a peer-reviewed, scientific publication with open access. Its format and publication is electronic, which uses the OJS system.

Purpose.

Its purpose is to disseminate the theoretical, methodological, and practical knowledge developed from the discipline of Guidance, to contribute to the professional and academic development of this area of knowledge.

Subject coverage.

It receives articles related to:

1.Guidance intervention from different contexts (family, educational, community, prison, national employment system, organizational, or other).

2. The training processes of the professional in Guidance.

3. The theoretical-practical perspectives of the profession.

4. Disciplinary and professional identity.

5. Ethical responsibilities in the exercise of Guidance.

6. Construction and validation of instruments for intervention processes in guidance

7. Other related topics.

Target audience.

 It is aimed at professionals in Guidance, researchers, and university students at the national and international level.

Types of articles.

 It original and unpublished manuscripts, which have not been simultaneously submitted to another journal or editorial body. Among the types of articles:

1. Scientific article derived from:

• A basic investigation.
• An applied investigation.
• A bibliographic review (Theoretical works that merely provide a summary of the literature on a topic without specific research objectives or methodological details will be rejected).
• A systematization of experiences.

2. Essay.

3. Review.

 

 

Language.

 It publishes articles in Spanish, English and Portuguese.

Publication formats.

PDF, HTML, XML, Audio (for the abstrac).

CITATION AND REFERENCING MODEL.

The magazine uses the seventh edition of APA, in English.

RECEPTION AND FREQUENCY OF PUBLICATION.

The reception of articles is throughout the year and has a semi-annual periodicity.

OPEN ACCESS.

This is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author.

CHARGES.

The journal does not charge for the entry, processing, and publication of articles.

IDENTIFIER OF EACH PUBLICATION.

All articles have a digital object identifier (DOI), which is registered in the Crossref system database.

EVALUATION AND PUBLICATION TIME.

The estimated time between the application, evaluation, and publication of the article is approximately 6 months.

PREPRINT

ARBITRATION PROCESS.

As of 2024, the journal uses the "single-blind peer review" procedure, in which only the identity of the reviewers is kept secret, even after the article's publication.

The reviewers will be national and foreign professionals (external to the organization) whom the journal will propose based on their expertise in the topics the article submitted addresses. Those with the interest and availability to evaluate must complete a declaration of not having any conflict of interest with the authors (e.g., family ties, personal relationships, academic rivalry, others), which may inappropriately influence the evaluation of the assigned article.

For the evaluation, these people will be provided with the following support guides:

1. Scientific article:

• a basic investigation.
• an applied investigation.
• a bibliographic review.
• a systematization of experiences.

2. Essay.

This evaluation will issue one of the following recommendations:

• Accept the article.
• Accept the article with modifications.
• Reject the article.

In the event that people issue contradictory criteria (example: one accepts, and another rejects an article), the journal will proceed to ask a third reviewer for their recommendation. However, the final decision to publish or reject an article will be made by the Editorial Committee.

It is important to mention that, in the case of reviews, these are not part of the refereed section of the journal, so their evaluation will be overseen by the editor, who will issue any of the recommendations mentioned in the previous paragraph, from the following support guide:

1. Review.

Like the other articles, the final decision to publish or reject a review will be made by the Editorial Committee.

Rejection criteria:
1. There is little to no originality or impact in the field of study and the scientific community.
2. There is little to no bibliographic evidence to support the assertions and arguments, compromising credibility and academic integrity.
3. There are serious methodological errors, compromising the quality of the study.
4. The analysis of the information is superficial, merely descriptive.
5. The writing is deficient, implying a total or partial article rewriting.
6. There are serious ethical problems, such as plagiarism, and data manipulation, among others.

AUTHORSHIP.

The journal assumes the criteria established by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors for the recognition of authorship and contribution, which are detailed below:

1. The person has contributed substantially to the conception or design of the article or to the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of the data.

2. The person has participated in the writing of the paper or in the critical review of its intellectual content.

3. The person has participated in the approval of the final publishing version.

4. Be responsible for all aspects of the work to ensure that questions regarding the accuracy or completeness of any part of the work are properly investigated and resolved.

5. Additionally, the journal implements the taxonomy of academic collaboration roles (CRediT) that allows us to differentiate and recognize the contribution of each co-author in a scientific article.

The authors are responsible for identifying compliance with the mentioned criteria, as well as indicating to the journal the order of their appearance, in the credits of the article.

In addition, they are responsible for identifying and mentioning the name of the people who collaborated in the preparation of the article (non-author collaborators). For this identification, they must meet at least one of the authorship criteria of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors.

LICENSING AND INTELLECTUAL PROTECTION.

The publication of the articles will be done through the principles of the Creative Commons license.

ETHICS AND PLAGIARISM DETECTION.

The journal has a Code of Ethics and Good Practices, in which the principles of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) are assumed.

Additionally, there is a plagiarism policy for the evaluation of the articles postulated in it. The American Psychological Association (2020) defines self-plagiarism and plagiarism as:

• Self-plagiarism: is the presentation of your own previously published work as an original; like plagiarism, self-plagiarism is unethical.
• Plagiarism: is the act of presenting the words, ideas, or images of another as if they were your own; it denies authors or content creators the credit they are due. Whether deliberate or unintentional, plagiarism violates ethical standards in scholarship.

Therefore, it is the duty of the author, the editor, the reviewer, and the Editorial Committee to promote academic integrity by ensuring that the content of the articles is original, as well as ethical compliance in disclosure. scientific.

The RCO uses the PlagScan tool to detect similarities in the content of the articles submitted with other sources (websites, theses, articles, books, among others), this software will provide a percentage of similarities found (if any) with the respective sources for their respective verification, therefore each case will be analyzed.

The journal, when it deems it appropriate, will request the author to correct the detected case or cases of content similarities (this will be mandatory) or will proceed with the rejection of the article when it considers that it does not comply with the originality requirement.

In the case of identifying plagiarism in published articles, the Editorial Committee will analyze the situation and may prepare an erratum or remove them from the journal (see Code of Ethics and Good Practices).

DIGITAL PRESERVATION.

The following actions are performed:

1. The legal deposit of articles published in the National Library System, protected by the Printing Law No. 32, and the Copyright and Related Rights Law No. 6683. For more information, you can consult the following link: Formulario-Deposito-legal-de-publicaciones-digitales (sinabi.go.cr)

2. The journal participates in the PKP-PN initiative, which allows the deposit and preservation of its articles in KEEPERS. For more information, you can refer to the following link: https://portal.issn.org/resource/ISSN/2215-6615

INTEROPERABILITY.

The OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative–Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) interoperability protocol is implemented, which is used for the transmission of metadata (Dublin Core) on the Internet.

BACKGROUND OF THE JOURNAL

The Costa Rican Association of Professionals in Guidance – ACPO, by its acronym in Spanish – (promoter of the creation of the College of Professionals in Guidance), created, in the 90s, the informative bulletin "Updates in Guidance", which was distributed in print among the members of this group with a semi-annual periodicity.

Over the years, this bulletin became the magazine Actualidades en Orientación ISNN 1659-0406, which became the first magazine specialized in Orientation in the country. In it, articles related to the work of the professional in Guidance were published and the activities carried out by the Association were communicated.

With the creation of the College of Guidance Professionals in 2010, the Costa Rican Association of Guidance Professionals was dissolved and the publication of the magazine Actualidades en Orientación was discontinued.

During the First National Congress of Guidance "50 years of Guidance in Costa Rica: achievements and challenges" and the First International Congress of the Latin American Network of Guidance "Guidance in Latin America: in search of new perspectives", held in 2014, the urgent need to have the appropriate means for professional exchange, the dissemination of work, and the research carried out by professionals in Guidance was discussed. This was analyzed on multiple occasions by the Board of Directors of the College. There was a suggestion of three strategies to achieve such objectives, one of which was the creation of an electronic journal.

Therefore, in the ordinary session number #11 held on May 23, 2019, the Board of Directors of the College of Professionals in Guidance, established a commission made up of the following collegiate people with the purpose of preparing the proposal for the creation of the electronic magazine of the CPO:  M.Sc. Gioconda Mora Monge, M.Sc. Jorge Ballestero Rojas, Lic. Pablo Sibaja Mojica, M.Sc. Osvaldo Murillo Aguilar, M.Ed. Carmen Frías Quesada, Lic. David Chavarría Venegas and the M.Sc. Josué Jiménez Ulate.

The current Revista Costarricense de Orientación (RCO) emerged from the work of this commission, which was approved by the Board of Directors in the ordinary session #30 held on November 21, 2019. However, it was not until November 2020 that it began this project, managing to publish its first issue in January 2022.  

In August 2023, the RCO achieved its indexing in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). Later, in November 2024, the journal was indexed in SciELO.

To access some of the copies of the Newsletter and the journal Actualidades en Orientación, predecessors of the RCO, you can enter the following link:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1abIkNJxdzGSmPrOH3NsAX3ZYyAyLPYdD?usp=sharing