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Context: just like people and organizations, journals also have an identity. Thus, thinking about the identity of a scientific journal leads, first of all, to an understanding of how its trajectory has shaped the journal's preferences about what its members understand regarding science and academia. Second, journals refer to how they project themselves in the scientific community, both in terms of rules for judging what is considered valid as research and of the intensity and ways of impacts that they have over scientific knowledge and social reality. Objective: given this context, we seek, in this article, to recover distinctive elements of the Journal of Contemporary Administration (RAC) in its genesis, highlighting how this period left a lasting imprint on its identity. Method: we use historical texts and testimonies to support our arguments, triangulating the qualitative material with citation, reference, and scientific writing standards to highlight the identity and impact of RAC. Results: the analyzes show that RAC, since its genesis, has been differentiated by theoretical, methodological, and empirical rigor. This reflected, over time, its impact and centrality in the academic community. Conclusion: we argue that the effectiveness in the construction of RAC's identity has led it to be the most influential journal in the administration area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]