Scientific journals made by Universities have played diverse roles in the identification and characterisation of production in academic communities, especially in the institutions that edit those journals. In particular, in Latin America, knowledge production in the Universities has gone from books by university publishing houses, to institutional journals, and then to University scientific journals that change due to institutional process redesign, incorporation of international scientific editing practices, and demands made by databases working as control systems. These changes involve the acquisition of new practices such as peer-review, exogamy, standardisation of editorial criteria, and the demand of making the journals more visible, which in turns enhances the visibility of knowledge carried by them. These demands have transformed the practices of researchers, editors, peer-reviewers, institutional boards, and production assessment systems such as accreditation agencies.

Nowadays, university scientific journals must, due to quality demands made by indexing systems, be independent from the institutions that edit them. Editorial, scientific, and peer-reviewing committees, and the Editor, must ensure that the knowledge published goes through peer-reviewing processes and that it is of the best quality.

In that sense, accreditation systems and reviewers consider journals to be more than an instrument for publishing the institution's own production, and regard them as elements of visibility, network building, and knowledge transfer. Today, our journal has a different value, and that is to deliver institutional visibility and to become an instrument for knowledge network building and a resource for knowledge transfer.

This year, the Faculty of Psychology and the Santo Tomas University have undergone accreditation processes, and the journal has played, in our understanding, a critical role in them. It is very important for the whole editorial team to know that our work has made a positive contribution in these processes. Nevertheless, we understand that our journal faces new challenges and increasing demands for improvement made by indexing systems. We expect to continue to count on the support of authors, reviewers, and of course, our readers.

María Constanza Aguilar Bustamante
Editora