The journal História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos turns 25 in July 2019. It is unquestionably a significant milestone. For 25 years, it has been making the history of science and of health legitimate, relevant, fundamental activities. It was created by the Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, a techno-scientific unity of Fiocruz founded in 1986, which published the Cadernos de História e Saúde from 1989-1992; this valuable publication, which appeared at irregular intervals, was the precursor to ours. From the outset, our journal showed the institution’s commitment to history, and to science writing, as well as to preserving documentary and material resources related to the sciences and health. In one of the first Editor’s Letter, Jaime L. Benchimol explained that it was not a vanity publication and that it would be “much more than mere decoration on the rhetorical cake” of scientific events (Benchimol, maio-ago. 2002, p.257).
The achievements of the last 25 years have not followed a linear trajectory. Over time, through a series of advances and setbacks, the journal came up with professional manuscript processing systems, consistent editorial policies, and clear instructions for authors. There were some landmark years along the way. For example, it took us until 2006 to establish that the journal would be published quarterly, and, although the first annual supplement appeared in 1998, it was not until 2001 that it became customary for us to publish at least one supplement a year. In 1998, we launched a digital version, and the number of downloads rapidly exceeded the number of print copies. In 2013, our articles were assigned the essential DOI (Digital Object Identifier), which identifies them anywhere in the world. In 2000, we joined the ambitious and successful Scientific Electronic Library Online, known as SciELO, and two years later we were added to the prestigious Medline database, created by the US National Institutes for Health. This was an addition to Sociological Abstracts, the first international indexing system to include the journal, in 1996, followed by many others such as Thomson Reuters, based on a project designed by the American Eugene Garfield in the 1950s. More recently, in 2015, we joined the Mexican database Redalyc, the Network of Scientific Journals of Latin America and the Caribbean (Red de Revistas Científicas de América Latina y el Caribe). Also in 2006, we began translating some of the articles into English, whilst also receiving increasing numbers of articles in Spanish and English from various countries (currently, almost half the articles published in each issue are written by authors from other countries or researchers at foreign institutions). In 2007, Qualis, the Brazilian journal classification system, gave us the coveted “A” ranking in various disciplines in addition to history – for which we held it already.
In 2013, we were proud and excited to launch our blog, Facebook and Twitter accounts. Now we have thousands of followers and bilingual versions of our social media accounts. Also in 2013, in a development whose importance other publishers will fully understand, we began using the eXtensible Markup Language (XML) to mark up articles so they can be accessed internationally and transferred into other formats; this raised the journal’s global profile considerably. We pioneered that technological advance, because our journal was the one of first human sciences journals in SciELO to use XML in Brazil. In 2015, we began licensing our articles under Creative Commons, and three years later, we adopted a broader version of it. There were other developments also in 2015: that year, we began using the modern electronic platform ScholarOne to manage all our articles and peer reviews – which meant we could cease relying on the vicissitudes of email and erratic document attachments. Thus, by 2016, we were ranked the seventh most frequently consulted human sciences journal on SciELO. Equally important is our use, in recent years, of antiplagiarism systems and our increasing dialogue with authors. We devote a great deal of attention to clarity, originality, relevance, order, and consistency in their arguments and evidence, as well as to formatting in their references, abstracts and keywords. It is particularly noteworthy that in that same year, we were awarded a major grant by Britain’s Wellcome Trust, which boosted the internationalization of the journal and the writing of historical review articles. With the support of the British Academy, we organized the international workshop “Challenges of Interdisciplinary Journals.” The 2016 workshop was part of an ongoing initiative to hold meetings on the work of scientific journals. At the 25th International Conference on the History of Science and Technology, held in Rio de Janeiro in July 2017, we co-hosted a symposium, along with the editor of Medical History, Sanjoy Bhattacharya, on “21st Century Challenges for History of Science and History of Medicine Journals.” Participants included well-known editors of journals such as Circumscribere: International Journal of the History of Science, Dynamis, Centaurus, Journal of the History of Biology, Social History of Medicine, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, as well as experts from other journals and Brazilian and international organizations (such as João Rangel de Almeida, of the Wellcome Trust).
An important ongoing development is the embracement of Open Science, a movement of world-wide and Brazilian academics that is changing scientific communication. This movement calls not only for democratizing access to knowledge but also facing new challenges such as continuous publication, accepting work from preprint servers, new metrics to replace flawed citations-based impact measurements, and acceptance by scientific communities of open reviewing and comments, as well as publication of all research data and processes. The journal initially bridged the gap between histories of health and historical sciences, but it is increasingly focused on research into the history of science, the history of health, science writing for a general audience, and the preservation of health history resources. This specialization was appropriate and necessary because of the large volume of manuscripts the journal receives and the need to be an original and effective tool for interaction between communities of specialists. We hope our work is perceived as an important contribution to the creation of such communities in Brazil and various other countries in the region, communities that barely existed 25 years ago.
In this anniversary issue, it is important to point out that História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos has flourished thanks to the unwavering support of the directors of the Casa de Oswaldo Cruz: Paulo Gadelha, Nisia Trinidade Lima, Nara Azevedo, and Paulo Roberto Elian dos Santos, and the devotion of its editors: Sergio Goes de Paula, Paulo Gadelha, and Jaime L. Benchimol. They wholeheartedly endorsed the journal’s professionalization and economic viability. Over these last 25 years, the journal has also enjoyed the valuable support of Fiocruz, the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico, CNPq), Coordination for High-Level Personnel Training (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior, Capes), the Institute for Applied Echonomics Research (Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada, Ipea), the Carlos Chagas Foundation for Research Support in the State of Rio de Janeiro (Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Faperj), the Brazilian Association for Scientific Publishers (Associação Brasileira de Editores Científicos, Abec), the Committee on Publication Ethics (Cope), the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovations and Communications. All of this allowed us to create a superb editorial team of talented and extraordinary people such as Ruth B. Martins, Isnar Francisco de Paula, Regina Marques, Miriam Junghans, Maria Elisa da Silveira, Roberta C. Cerqueira, Marciel Mendonça Rosa, Mônica Cruz Caminha, and Fernando Vasconcelos (whose cover designs graced the journal almost from the start, becoming more colorful in 2005). Happily, Roberta, Miriam, Marciel, Mônica, and Fernando are still with us full-time, and over recent years other specialists have joined them on various tasks: Camilo Papi, Mônica S. Auler, Vinícius Renaud, Marina Lemle, Vivian Mannheimer, the section editors, a series of proof-readers, translators, printing press workers, and Fiocruz staff. And of course we are eternally grateful to the editorial staff, authors and peer reviewers. In 2012, Jaime L. Benchimol decided to share the work of editing the journal with one of us (Marcos Cueto). Since 2015, when Jaime retired from the excellent work he had been doing since 1997, the editorial work has been shared by the two signatories to this letter.
The anniversary is also a memorable one because, despite its scientific and editorial achievements, this journal emerged, is produced and stands out in a country, Brazil, and a region, Latin America, in which serious problems keep on re-emerging, threatening academic, institutional and political continuity. História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos has had to overcome skepticism in various parts of the world among those who doubted that the global south could publish a quality journal. Over these 25 years, the journal has overcome recurrent hardships, characterized not only by lack of resources but by a difficult and complex environment which, while not designed to eliminate research altogether, does mean that it barely survives. The focus on productivity and the obsession with management as a panacea, which are clearly tinged with neoliberalism, insist on glorifying a sterile ocean made up of abstruse form-filling, painstaking descriptions of activities and certificates bearing useless stamps. This means forgetting the lesson of the labyrinth of colonial Latin American laws, when such oversight tended to mask what was really happening. Thus, also, scientists lose one of their most precious possessions: time.
However, there are foci of resistance to adversity and discontinuity that are ready to take on the political setbacks and scientific challenges. História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos is one of them, and will attempt to remain so. Fortunately it can learn from, and be inspired by, its rich trajectory, as well as those of other leading journals from Fiocruz, Brazil and Latin America. Therefore, we are optimistic about the future, and venture to say out loud: 25 more years!
REFERENCIA
- BENCHIMOL, Jaime L. Carta do editor. História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos, v.9, n.2, p.257. 2002.
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
19 June 2019 -
Date of issue
Apr-Jun 2019
