Binghamton University has partnered with EAFIT Colombia, a university located in the city of Medellín, to create an online bilingual journal.

Gobernar: The Journal of Latin American Public Policy and Governance will focus on the policy decisions that have helped, and continue to shape, Latin America. Meaning “to govern” in Spanish, the journal plans on putting its inaugural issue out in January 2017.

“[The purpose of the journal is] to contribute a Latin American regional perspective to the debate on the rationale, design, implementation and evaluation of public policies, as well as the effectiveness, quality and good orientation of the intervention of the State in this process,” the journal’s mission statement reads.

It will be an open-access journal, meaning that it can be accessed by any member of the public without payment. Leonardo García Jaramillo, a professor of government and political science at EAFIT Colombia, will serve as the managing editor for the journal and will be paid for his work. All other editors will serve as volunteers. In addition, articles in the journal will be published in both English and Spanish, with abstracts translated into both languages.

The idea for the journal came about during the SUNY Conversations in the Disciplines conference in the fall of 2015. BU professor Nadia Rubaii, an associate professor of public administration and co-editor for the journal, and Jaramillo first met while Rubaii was working under a Fulbright grant in Colombia in 2014. They began speaking about collaborating on an academic venture at the conference.

“The first day was a regular conference; we had about 100 people who attended, we had the media and then the second day was just for the participants, those who actually presented,” Rubaii said. “And so we sat around small tables and asked, ‘What would you like to collaborate on?’”

Shortly after the conference, one of Rubaii’s colleagues from EAFIT, Santiago Leyva Botero, a doctor of public administration and a co-editor for Gobernar, reached out to Rubaii with the idea of starting the journal.