Photo: Svitlana Unuchko | Last update | June 2024

The "Arturo Peña Lillo" portal, created in 2014 by Superior Council Resolution No. 002/14, brings together the scientific journals published within the framework of the National University of Lanús (UNLa). Its name is a tribute to the great editor Arturo Peña Lillo (Valparaíso 1917 – Buenos Aires 2009).

Its purpose is to enhance the visibility of the content published by the journals that make up the portal, promoting the consolidation of a community of practice composed of those involved in the direction, review, editing, publication, and distribution of scientific journals, as well as the areas responsible for supporting technological infrastructure, the directive areas that design research policies, and the academic-scientific community that legitimizes this joint effort.

In line with the Sara Network, bringing together an institution's scientific journals on a single portal allows, among other aspects:

• Designing consensual institutional policies related to the principles of open access and open science.
• Integrating multiple forms of knowledge that enable the understanding and implementation of complex technological developments, editorial policies, and new notions related to scientific editorial practice.
• Conducting joint training and sharing experiences.
• Reducing the costs of editorial services.
• Facilitating the adoption of new technologies through the implementation of a single editorial management platform.

Therefore, the portal is proposed as an organizational and collaborative node within the National University of Lanús.

As an editorial management system, the portal adopted the Open Journal Systems (OJS), an open-source software created by the Public Knowledge Project (PKP). This program allows each journal to configure and manage the processes of review, editing, publication, and distribution of its content in a decentralized manner.

The online implementation of this platform is the result of a collaborative project between the Directorate of Informatics; the Virtual Campus; the Institute of Collective Health; the Department of Productive and Technological Development, through the Bachelor's Degree in Systems; and, particularly, the journals Salud Colectiva, Perspectivas en Políticas Públicas, and Perspectivas Metodológicas.

With the aim of agreeing on criteria within the portal, as other national universities[1] have already done, were drafted the «Guidelines for scientific journals that are part of the UNLa Scientific Journals Portal "Arturo Peña Lillo"», approved by the Superior Council of the National University of Lanús, and agreed upon by the editorial boards of the journals that make up the portal. This document recovers definitions proposed by various entities, such as:

• Principles of Transparency and Best Practices in Academic Publishing of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)
• Quality characteristics of the 2.0 Catalog of the Regional Online Information System for Scientific Journals of Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain, and Portugal (Latindex)
• Resolutions of the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET)
• Guidelines of the National Committee on Ethics in Science and Technology (CECTE)
• San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment
• Helsinki Initiative on Multilingualism in Scholarly Communication
• UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science
• Diagnosis and guidelines for an open science policy in Argentina, from the Advisory Committee on Open and Citizen Science

[1] See, for example, the "Guidelines for Scientific Journals Edited in the Scope of the National University of La Plata," and the "Frequently Asked Questions" of the UNR Journals Portal.