SciELO and the future of journals

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ISSN 2318-1958

Issue 30, December 22nd, 2016

SciELO and the future of journals

The joint participation of journals and SciELO in overcoming problems that affect scholarly communication in the national and global contexts was the central topic of the 2016 annual SciELO Brazil meeting. The advances in professionalization, internationalization and sustainability of SciELO journals are improving their key functions on research validation and constitute a new stage in the evolution of SciELO. [Read more]

Highlights

What’s the deal with preprints?

Preprints enable scholarly communication more quickly, complement traditional publication in academic journals and determine priorities. This procedure may change the peer review system and focus on the role of academic journals. [Read more]

Is the reproducibility crisis exacerbated by pre-publication peer review?

A lack of scrutiny of articles published in peer-reviewed journals on the basis of a belief that pre-publication peer-review provides sufficient scrutiny, may well add to the relatively high number of articles in which results are presented that cannot be replicated. [Read more]

Study shows that articles published in English attract more citations

Among the many factors that influence citation practice in scholarly communication, the language of publication plays a key role. A study by Argentine researchers showed that English articles receive more citations than those published in other languages. Despite being perceived by many as of lower quality and relevance, articles in Spanish from two Latin American journals were blind evaluated and were not, in fact, underqualified. [Read more]

Open Access article processing charges: a new serial publication crisis?

The financial and ethical implications that emerge from open access publishing through article processing fees in India are analyzed in a study that proposes the creation of a national open access journal platform such as SciELO in order to reduce costs, increase efficiency and facilitate the sharing of metadata among repositories. [Read more]

Is it possible to normalize citation metrics?

Bibliometric indicators represent much more than an indication of the visibility, relevance and impact of an article. A researcher’s entire career profile can be summarized in one or more numerical productivity and impact indicators of his research. However, citation metrics vary considerably according to the area of knowledge, the publication age, the type of document and the coverage of the database where citations were accrued. Is it possible to normalize them? Here we discuss the challenges of this practice. [Read more]

Usage improvements and system’s new features were the main topics of the II SciELO-ScholarOne Updating Course

The II SciELO-ScholarOne Updating Course is a continuity of the SciELO Program’s commitment to raise the level of professionalism of its journals. The event took place at FAPESP’s Auditorium in São Paulo and brought together about 150 representatives of 81 SciELO journals seeking improvement of their editorial managements. [Read more]