The first issue of Investigaciones Regionales (Regional Research) was published in autumn 2002. After 17 years, nearly five hundred pieces have been published, including articles, notes, book reviews, etc. The journal today enjoys a high international prestige: it is indexed in the most important international scientific repositories, such as Clarivate Analytics, Scopus, Latindex, Redalyc, to name a few. The impact factors place the journal at outstanding levels, which makes it a space to consider for authors of Spanish and international institutions that aim to gain recognition of their academic productivity, including accreditations and other official recognitions.

The level achieved is the result of the effort and dedication of many people. First of all, its founder and director, Juan Ramón Cuadrado Roura; then the secretaries, the members of editorial boards and teams, the authors and reviewers, and obviously people like Julieta Llungo, who have made the whole effort worth it. Be these lines a big thank you from the regional science scientific community to all this human team.

Since January 2019, the journal’s management has been assigned to a team of some members of the previous editorial team, and new ones, including myself. I should say that it’s not going to be easy to maintain such a high level, but I honestly think that the journal’s trajectory and prestige make it much easier for it to be so. Therefore, and since there is always room for improvement, we only have to consider growing. When this new team took over the journal, three main objectives were set: to facilitate the transition to a new, open-published online model; to continue with the current trajectory, improving the quality and volume of articles; and to get to include the journal in the Social Science Citation Index of the Journal Citation Report of Clarivate Analytics, the most prestigious list of impact indexes of academic journals.

To achieve these objectives we have moved to use the Open Journal System (OJS) portal of the Spanish Science and Technology Repository (RECYT), reorganized the technical secretariat and continued to improve in the description of publication standards, ethical principles governing the magazine, or copyright, by using the Creative Commons CC BY-NC license, which allows authors to retain maximum control over their work.

The journal publishes now three annual volumes, which may or may not be special volumes.[1] In the last twelve months, a total of 134 works have been received, which have been divided between the generic articles section, two special volumes that will soon see the light, and the notes section. The level of demand of the journal is high: with the vast majority of works not being able to complete the review process, 64% of the works have already been rejected, and almost half of those received do not reach evaluation. Most articles are received in Spanish (60%), because 76% of the works come from Spain (73% of those works are in Spanish) or from American Spanish-speaking countries (85%). The vast majority of jobs are done in co-authorship (50%) and it is not small the volume of articles with more than 3 authors (10%).

Analyzing the figures, we have not found any special association between the rejection rate and the language or geographical origin of the authors, and there is no editorial guideline in this regard. Among the works received so far are those related in a direct or indirect way with tourism, European policy, local or sectoral development; also the European aspects being a constant in the journal.

We want to improve the technical quality of the journal, getting the authors of the journal to be able to link their personal identifiers to their articles (ORDIC, Researcher ID, etc.), as well as to give greater dissemination to the work through the twitter account (@JRR_ InvRegs) and the AECR Blog, La Riqueza de las Regiones (The Wealth of Regions).

Continuing to improve the quality of the journal, its dissemination and scientific and social impact, is the chosen path for Investigaciones Regionales / Journal of Regional Research to maintain its prestige and achieve the proposed goals. We hope that you will continue to consult the contents of the journal and that, if the opportunity arises, you will publicize it in your own works. We believe that it is worth bringing to the rest of the world the valuable experiences that we acquire by studying the regional and local environment that surrounds us, and the impact that global processes have on it, and the economic and social changes we are going through.

Vicente Royuela

Editor in Chief

References

1. Royuela, V. (2017) “Special Issues at REGION”, REGION, 4 (3), pp. E1-E5 doi: https://doi.org/10.18335/region.v4i3.201.
2. ORCID Vicente Royuela https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7647-0063