Editorial
Iván Felipe Medina Arboleda*
* Editor general. Acta Colombiana de Psicología.
revistaacta@ucatolica.edu.co;
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3209-9204
First of all, we must emphasize the tenacity of the people who have made health care their profession: nurses, doctors, assistants, psychologists, auxiliaries, etc., protagonists of a stoic abnegation even when we have not been up to their commitment. At the same time, those who have been directly exposed by the confinement measures and who have suffered the major part of mortality in Latin America: the workers in the sectors that have never stopped, or those for whom stopping their activities has not been an option. We know that the mortality of the virus in Latin America has been associated with the complex relationship between health and social conditions, where the lower the incomes and the presence of informal labour conditions, the greater the comorbid conditions and severity of the affectations of the virus.
Second, we know that the implications of current and future containment measures must be addressed. As we have seen, labour uncertainty has increased working hours and deteriorated dignified living conditions in private spaces for a large part of the population, forced to live with professional work, teleworking, remote teaching and coexistence within their residences; conditions which are in themselves unusual and overwhelming, that are even more challenging for those who have low-quality digital connectivity and even so persisted in continuing to be linked in digital synchronicity.
The educational sector, which employs most of the psychology researchers in the region, deserves a special mention, since the training was kept afloat based on the good will of the students and the integrity of those who faced this challenge, either as teachers or as support staff for this activity.
In this context, we saw how in the scientific edition, which depends on the internal and external reviewers of the publications, these researchers and university professors - those guarantors of the academic demand and rigor-, in these times of extra-ordinary, double shifts undercover -especially for women- and conditions of national and institutional evaluations, never stopped; on the contrary, they dedicated their hours to keep the journals working in these complicated conditions.
But in no case is this a thank you dedicated only to those who evaluated the articles since it is also extended to those who declined to do it - an option that is always valid and, in these circumstances, more than fair-. This recognition is a necessary public acknowledgement of the conditions faced by academic publications in the region and is reflected in the systematic delays in all phases, which, outside the will of the publishing teams, also show us how interconnected and vulnerable we are as actors in the knowledge society.
In the different sectors, including the publishing one, despite the difficulties of the pandemic, we hope, we continue and now we wait for the fruits of the enormous effort of the year 2020. And such is the case of this Volume 24 Issue 1 of the journal Acta Colombiana de Psicología, since here we present the result of recent unparalleled coordination for the academic community in terms of the exceptionalities that surrounded the editorial process.
If we look back, it is worth asking how our societies and communities went forward and did not decline to reach these small, big peaks. We know, through research, that hope keeps us going, and that hope, in science - among other reasons- has given and continues giving us motives to face the future.
The promise fulfilled by biochemistry is a confirmation that the wait and the hope were worth it. However, it is not the only field called upon to contribute in this age of hope in science. The social transformations, both positive and negative, present and future, have challenged the disciplinary limits of psychology in its different specialities: societies expect and have their hope placed in the scientific community of our discipline, and it is a historic moment not to disappoint such expectations.