From 1955 until his death in 1991, Revista Iberoamericana was directed by Professor Alfredo A. Roggiano. Professor Roggiano’s foundational work helped to define, academically and editorially, the intellectual structure and scope of the publication. In addition to miscellaneous volumes on literature and Latin American criticism, many special editions of Revista Iberoamericana have been dedicated to monographic studies on authors, works, and periods of Latin American letters. Revista Iberoamericana has been fundamental in the development of the Latin American literary canon, and in its international dissemination.

The special volumes on Rubén Darío, César Vallejo, Vicente Huidobro, Miguel Ángel Asturias, Pablo Neruda, Jorge Luis Borges, Octavio Paz, Julio Cortázar, Domingo Faustino Sarmiento, José María Arguedas, as well as "national volumes" dedicated to the Literature of Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Uruguay, Chile and Venezuela, among others, are essential to the knowledge and understanding of the cultural development of Latin America. In the same sense, the volumes dedicated to Hispanic Indigenism, Modernism, Vanguard, writers, literary movements of the Twentieth Century, and literary ideology and criticism are essential approaches to the study of Latin American letters and thought.

Revista Iberoamericana publishes articles, bibliographical reviews and notes on literature, Latin American theory and literary criticism in Spanish and Portuguese. Four issues of RI are published each year.