Editorial of the 30th issue of Ambiente & Agua jornal

Editorial da 30ª edição da Revista Ambiente & Água

Abstracts

This editorial discusses the Ambiente & Agua journal's efforts to adjust to new criteria in order to remain in the SciELO Brazil collection. Special emphasis is given to efforts intended to meet the anticipated levels of internationalization, professionalization, and sustainable funding models in order to maintain the journal's high quality and increasing impact. The Editorial Board identified the need to raise publication fees beginning on July 15, 2015. However, since we have a hybrid approach that includes public support and publication fees to cover article processing charges (APC), the new rates will be much lower than the average international APC.

APC; environment; publication cost; water resources

Neste editorial são discutidas ações tomadas pela Revista Ambiente & Água para satisfazer os novos critérios para permanência na coleção SciELO Brasil. Especialmente para atender aos níveis esperados de internacionalização, profissionalização e de financiamento sustentável para manter a revista com qualidade e aumentar o fator de impacto, o Conselho Editorial identificou a necessidade de aumentar as taxas de publicação a partir de 15 de julho de 2015. No entanto, como temos uma abordagem híbrida para cobrir o custo de processamento de artigos (do Inglês APC), que inclui apoio público e taxas para publicação, as novas taxas serão muito menores do que a média internacional de APC.

APC, ambiente; custo de publicação; recursos hídricos

1. Discussion

Now in its tenth year of continuous and timely publication, the Ambiente & Agua journal has continuously gained the confidence of the scientific community, as reflected by the increasing number of article submissions, insertions in several indexing agencies including SciELO and Scopus, and the increased number of international members on the Editorial Committee. The journal now faces fresh challenges as it seeks to comply with the new SciELO criteria for inclusion and permanence in its collection that we expect will further foster the journal's growth. The new SciELO rules require, among other things, that indexed journals strive to make improvements in professionalization, internationalization and sustainable funding models. These goals imply increased operational costs in order to meet internationalization goals, which include supplementing the editorial board with international members and increasing the number of submissions and peer reviewers from abroad. They also require that increasing number of articles be written in English, which raises the article processing charge (APC) for English review and editing. In fact, SciELO has established minimum percentages of active foreign associate editors based on thematic areas; these will take effect in January 2016 (SciELO, 2014).

Since the beginning of 2015, SciELO has also required that all indexed journals have full texts of articles structured in XML according to the SciELO Publishing. The XML format of various types of documents sent to the SciELO must accompany the high-definition images associated with the article's graphics and the PDF file. The generation of a XML file requires a great deal of hands-on-work which in turn increases cost.

In addition to publishing predominantly original and review articles, which are defined as scientific research articles in the thematic area, the journals are required to publish an established minimum number of items. This required us to increase the journal's staff in order to process additional articles for publication. Ranking in the SciELO Citation Index is based upon the number of citations in the previous two years divided by the number of articles published in the current year. Since the minimum number of articles has increased, under the SciELO's ranking formula our ranking will decline unless we also increase the quality of the articles we accept in order to increase the number of citations, based upon the journal's impact on the scientific community. For these same reasons, we will also limit the number of case study articles of local or regional concern which, although of localized social importance, would not result in citations from the international community.

SciELO journals are required to have the respective Digital Object Identifier (DOI) recorded in the CrossRef Agency, and when the journal registers the DOI, as it is the case of Ambiente & Agua journal, it should be specified in text and sent in XML to SciELO.

As of July 2015, it is also expected that the indexed journals begin disseminating new research on the most relevant social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook, and other systems, and also in academic networks such as the Academia.edu, Mendeley, ResearchGate, etc. Ambiente & Agua journal is currently quite active in these media, except in ResearchGate, which is oriented more to individual authors rather than to journals.

Detailed description of the new SciELO criteria can be seen in SciELO (2014) and in posts in the "Blog SciELO em Perspectiva" (http://blog.scielo.org/). We are pleased to state that Ambiente & Agua journal is in complete compliance with the SciELO recommendations and is strictly following the established criteria. However, in order fully implement the new requirements, we will increase APC rates beginning on July 15, 2015. We believe that conformity with the new SciELO criteria will put us in a good position to be indexed by the WoS in the near future. We are completely committed to the golden open access policy, as this seems to be the future of scientific communication.

• SCIENTIFIC ELECTRONIC LIBRARY ONLINE - SCIELO. Critérios, política e procedimentos para a admissão e a permanência de periódicos científicos na Coleção SciELO Brasil. São Paulo, Setembro 2014. 30p. Available in: http://www.scielo.br/avaliacao/20141003NovosCriterios_SciELO_Brasil.pdf. Access in: June 18 2015.
  » http://www.scielo.br/avaliacao/20141003NovosCriterios_SciELO_Brasil.pdf.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  Sept 2015