What you can expect to find in the archive
FASOC issues typically bundle research articles, policy analysis, documentary extracts, and editorial material. In practice, that mix is valuable: it lets you track how concepts like “hemispheric security”, “democratic oversight”, “military autonomy”, or “public security” were framed at the time - not retroactively rewritten.
Many archived issues circulate through institutional libraries and repositories. The same issue may appear in more than one place (for example, as a library-hosted PDF and as a scanned copy elsewhere). That redundancy is normal for legacy journals. Your job is to cite the correct year/issue and verify pagination inside the PDF.
Title history and why it matters
If your search results look inconsistent, it’s usually because of title history and indexing splits. FASOC is commonly recorded with print ISSN 0717-1498, and catalog/index entries may reference the journal by its abbreviated title (“Rev. fuerzas armadas soc.”) or by its earlier title Defensa y desarme for the 1985–1988 period.
Bottom line: when you cite or build an issue list, don’t rely on a single directory entry. Always confirm the journal title printed on the issue, the year, the issue number, and the date range shown in the PDF itself. That is what prevents broken citations and “ghost references” that can’t be verified later.
How to archive properly (no fluff, just workflow)
- Capture minimal metadata: journal title, year (Año), issue number (Nº), month/date range, place of publication, ISSN, and page range.
- Tag by problem, not vibes: use stable tags like civil–military relations, democratic oversight, defence policy, security sector reform, regional security, arms control, peace operations.
- Write a 2–3 sentence abstract: state the question, the claim, and the evidence type (case study, comparative, documentary extract, interview, etc.).
- Verify inside the PDF: tables of contents, page numbers, and publication details must match your record.
This is how an archive becomes a research tool. Anything else is just a list of files.
Example: one full issue PDF you can cite immediately
Use this as a template for how your issue records should look. It’s a complete issue scan with clear issue metadata in the filename and inside the document:
- Fuerzas Armadas y Sociedad - Año 15, Nº 3 (Julio–Septiembre 2000) - Full Issue (PDF): Download PDF
Practical tip: when you cite a legacy scan, add the access source (repository name) in your notes, but keep the bibliographic core (year/issue/pages) strictly tied to what’s printed in the issue.