The impact factor of Jornal Vascular Brasileiro

EDITORIAL

The impact factor of Jornal Vascular Brasileiro

Winston B. Yoshida

Editor-in-chief, J Vasc Bras.

One of the ways to objectively evaluate the scientific production of a given country, institution or even author is analyzing the number of publications associated with them. The citation of these publications by other authors indicates their impact and importance in the Brazilian and international scientific scenarios. The impact factor (IF) is calculated as a ratio between number of publications and number of citations.

The calculation is carried out by dividing the number of citations in the Science Citation Index by the number of articles published in the past 2 years. Only publications indexed in the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI), which are frequently indexed in MEDLINE, have a regular calculation of this factor.¹ The importance of these data has been growing since the IF started being adopted by several institutions, either governmental or not, as a differential in the evaluation of scientific journals and authors in the competitive scenario of worldwide research.

In Brazil, the IF has been used as a criteria for assessing the quality of the scientific production of authors and journals, especially in governmental committees and agencies, such as the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES), which classifies Brazilian graduate courses and their coordinators based on the articles produced as a result of theses and on the IF of the journals in which these articles are published.

Articles published in Brazilian journals indexed in SciELO (Qualis A National) provide scores only the courses, not for the authors or the principal investigator. The impression this system gives is that the management of such institutions believe that everything published in Brazil is bad or has lower quality.¹ It should be taken into consideration that IF figures do not sometimes reflect the quality of the article, as many might have a large number of citations exactly due to its negative aspects. In addition, many regional research studies published in Brazilian journals are important for the country but do not generate IF, despite their high quality.¹

Brazilian journals indexed in MEDLINE tend to present low IF for several reasons: due to the low availability of these journals in European and American libraries; because Brazilian authors prefer or are obliged to publish their best studies in international journals; due to the existing practice among Brazilian authors of not citing their Brazilian and Latin American colleagues.^1,2

Jornal Vascular Brasileiro has insisted in the citation of these authors in its articles,^2,3 a recommendation that is part of the author's checklist in the instructions to authors. I believe such effort has yielded good results, since the citations of our articles have been growing as indicated by SciELO (www.scielo.br/jvb) and Scopus (www.scimagojr.com) indexes (Figures 1 and 2).

According to SciELO, the IF of our journal has raised from 0.2308 to 0.2436 between 2007 and 2008, considering that the year of 2008 is still ongoing. However, such growth is still too small. As observed by Costa Val et al.² and Bonamigo,³ there is much work to be done to change the harmful habit Brazilian authors have of not citing the excellent publications made by their Brazilian and Latin American colleagues in this journal and also in other Brazilian or Latin American journals.

Despite the previously mentioned limitations, the IF is currently a consolidated journal quality index. The higher this index, the higher the number of authors that will search for the journal, who will have their contributions reaching a larger audience and consequently originating new citations, like a virtuous cycle, one that is also important to our journal.

To do so, we need to count on the engagement of our colleagues at Sociedade Brasileira de Angiologia e de Cirurgia Vascular, by sending their articles and citing other Brazilian authors. These measures will bring higher scores and quality to the journal, factors that are of paramount importance to request the MEDLINE indexation and and to obtain a regular measurement of the IF.

References

• 1. Pinto AC, Andrade JB. Fator de impacto de revistas científicas: qual o significado deste parâmetro? Quim Nova. 1999;22:448-53.
• 2. Costa-Val R, Sousa Fş JC. A produção científica do J Vasc Bras: conquistas e desafios. J Vasc Bras. 2008;7:6-17.
• 3. Bonamigo TP. A produção científica do J Vasc Bras. J Vasc Bras. 2008;7:1-2.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  08 Dec 2008
• Date of issue
  Sept 2008