Mission
Portales is the undergraduate journal of the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures at Columbia University. Founded in 2015, Portales publishes academic and creative work to foster interest in Latin American and Iberian cultures and celebrate undergraduate academic research.
Aim
Portales increases our understanding of the Iberian, Hispanic, Lusophone, Latin American, Latinx, Indigenous, or Caribbean experience and amplifies these voices and perspectives to enhance multicultural dialogue within the academic community.
Scope
Portales welcomes scholarly and creative content that relates to Latin American, Indigenous, and Iberian cultures. The Editorial Board encourages submissions of academic or literary pieces as well as illustrations and photography. Textual submissions may be in Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, or English. The average academic submission ranges from 1,500 to 5,000 words.
Open Access Policy
Portales 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 in this journal without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. Authors retain their copyright and agree to license their articles with a Creative Commons "Attribution" 4.0 license (CC BY). You can read more about Creative Commons licenses at creativecommons.org.
Portales is a no-fee journal. Authors are not charged for the publication of their articles.
Archiving Policy
Portales is distributed through Columbia University’s Academic Commons. Academic Commons is Columbia University’s institutional repository, offering long-term public access to research shared by the Columbia community. A program of the Columbia University Libraries, Academic Commons provides secure, replicated storage for files in multiple formats. Academic Commons assigns a DOI and accurate metadata to each work to enhance discoverability.
Files uploaded to Academic Commons are written to an Isilon storage cluster at Columbia University and replicated to an identical system at a secure, offsite facility. The local cluster stores the data in a "best protection possible" policy which provides, at a minimum, guaranteed protection against the loss of any two disks or any one node. When sufficient capacity is available, this is increased automatically. Multiple snapshots are replicated to our disaster recovery site every two hours. The secondary cluster employs the same protections as the primary cluster and both conduct integrity scans to validate that data has not been altered at any point during rebalancing, snapshot, or replication processes.
Editorial Policies
Confidentiality
The assumption of trust and honesty in the editor-author relationship is a crucial expression of respect. We commit to the legitimacy of the peer-editing process by acting carefully and responsibly in maintaining the confidentiality of personal information to safeguard the trust of all parties.
Bias and Competing Interests
An integral value of our community is a willingness and effort to think and act free of any biases based on personal identity. Our editors commit to evaluating all works without bias toward religious, racial, gendered, or national identity. Eschewing prejudice, we engage all texts with intellectual honesty and open-mindedness.
Ethic Standards
If someone involved in the peer-editing process of Portales has concerns regarding a violation of any aspect of the formulated policy, they may contact the Editor-in-Chief, Alejandra Quintana Arocho (acq2116@columbia.edu), the Editorial Advisor, Eunice Rodríguez Ferguson (erferguson@columbia.edu), or the Digital Publishing Librarian, Michelle Wilson (mew2232@columbia.edu). All inquiries will be addressed with an earnest effort to correct any wrongs and ensure a working environment of tolerance and respect.
Policy on Inclusive Language in Spanish
Regarding text submissions written in Spanish, authors are welcome to use either the linguistic guidelines as established by the Real Academia Española (RAE), to opt for explicitly inclusive language (including the use of ‘x’ or ‘e’ to replace gendered words, as exemplified in this guide) or to consult the United Nation’s strategies on gender inclusivity in Spanish. Portales does not endorse or recommend any of the aforementioned options in particular. Authors are encouraged to contact members of the Portales Editorial Board or the Editorial Advisor for advice on these linguistic policies.