Editorial Policy

1. Focus and scope

Sarance is an academic journal established in 1975 by the Otavalo Institute of Anthropology (Instituto Otavaleño de Antropología, IOA). Its mission is to foster critical and interdisciplinary dialogue in the fields of Social Sciences and Humanities, addressing social, cultural, political, and epistemological issues.

In addition to serving as a platform for disseminating research conducted by the IOA, Sarance is aimed at the broader scientific community and all those interested in exploring, expanding, and updating theoretical debates and discussions in the Social Sciences and Humanities. Sarance welcomes contributions in Anthropology, Archaeology, Musicology— including Ethnomusicology, Sound Studies, and Historical Musicology—, History, Sociology, Philosophy, Art History and Studies, Gender Studies, Political Science, Decolonial Studies, and other related fields.

Sarance is a peer-reviewed journal that uses a double-blind peer review system. This protocol ensures academic rigor and has enabled the journal’s inclusion in directories and databases such as Latindex, LatinRev, ROAD, CrossRef, and MIAR.

2. Publication Frecuency and Modality

Sarance is currently published biannually. Since 2019, the first issue of each year has been dedicated to a thematic dossier, released in June, while the second is an open-topic issue, published in December. This model ensures that the peer review, editorial process, and issue preparation are conducted within an appropriate timeframe, maintaining a high standard of publication.

Thematic Dossier: Each Sarance dossier explores debates, theories, and reflections on key issues necessary to understand contemporary society from various Social Science perspectives. Calls for papers for the dossier are held during a specific time each year; therefore, it is essential to consult the Call for Papers section to stay informed of relevant deadlines.

Open Issue: Open issues include articles on various topics derived from research in disciplines related to the Social Sciences. Submissions for open issues are accepted throughout the year.

3. Editorial Process

Sarance uses the Open Journal Systems (OJS) platform to manage its editorial process, from submission to publication. All manuscripts must be submitted via this platform. Authors will receive confirmation of receipt by email and may track the progress of their submission through OJS.

Acceptance Stage

Each submission undergoes a preliminary review to ensure compliance with Sarance's formatting and style guidelines, which can be found in our Style Guide. If the manuscript meets these criteria, it will be checked for originality using Turnitin software. If it does not comply, the authors will be asked to make the necessary corrections. Failure to respond at any stage of the process will result in automatic rejection of the manuscript.

Review Stage

Manuscripts that pass the initial screening are subject to internal editorial evaluation, where the relevance, originality, and quality of the proposal are assessed based on Sarance's guidelines. If approved, the authors will be notified, and the manuscript will be sent for peer review.

Peer Review

Sarance applies a double-blind peer review process, which guarantees anonymity between authors and reviewers. Each manuscript is evaluated by at least two external reviewers selected based on the topic of the submission.

Reviewers assess the following criteria:

The review process is guided by Sarance's Reviewer Evaluation Form, which indicates whether the article is:

In the event of discrepancies, a third reviewer will be consulted. If revisions are required, authors have up to 14 days to submit the corrected version of their manuscript.

Evaluation Times

Acknowledgment of article receipt

7 days

Initial decision by the editor

15 days

Peer review process

30 days

Acceptance, editing and layout of the article

90 – 120 days

Article publication

150 days

Editing and Publication Stage
In the final stage, the manuscript undergoes final revisions and copyediting prior to publication. This task is handled by the journal’s Copyeditor. Authors must also approve the suggested edits before the final version is prepared for layout. Once complete, the article is published in PDF, ePub, HTML, XML, and print formats.

4. Open Access Policy

In accordance with Open Access principles, Sarance does not charge authors any fees for publication, nor does it impose any costs for accessing its articles. All issues are available free of charge with no embargo period.

5. Digital Preservation Policy

Sarance uses digital preservation methods to ensure the integrity, authenticity, immutability, originality, and accessibility of its archived electronic documents.

Updates

The OJS platform administrator is responsible for keeping the journal’s content, notices, presentation, and calls for papers up to date.

Preservation

Sarance carries out preservation practices that include storage, preservation strategies, encapsulation, self-documentation, and self-sufficiency. The journal also plans to create permanent archives for long-term conservation and restoration.

The OJS platform is backed up incrementally by the IT Unit of the University of Otavalo as part of the IOA’s internal support system. In addition, the journal maintains a digital repository (Archivo Sarance) on the website of the publishing institution, ensuring a complete and up-to-date backup of all published issues. This task is carried out annually in accordance with each new publication.

6. Copyright Notice

Articles published in Sarance are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) license, which permits free use of the work as long as proper credit is given, it is not used for commercial purposes, and the terms of the license are followed.

Authors retain the copyright of their work, granting the journal only the right of first publication. They may republish their work in other venues with prior authorization from Sarance and with appropriate credit acknowledging that the text was originally published in this journal.

These conditions are detailed in the “Assignment of Rights and Distribution” section of the Authorship, Good Practices, and Rights Assignment Declaration.