Indexing and scientific production

EDITORIAL

Indexing and scientific production

Domingo Braile^*

On June 18^th 2007, I attended an important meeting held in São Paulo to review and clarify doubts regarding Journals Submission Form to Medline Literature Selection Technical Review Committee – LSTRC. The members of the Editorial Board of Revista Brasileira de Cirurgia Cardiovascular/Brazilian Journal of Cardiovascular Journal (RBCCV/BJCVS), Prof. Dr. Fabio Jatene, Prof. Dr. Walter Gomes, Dra. Rosangela Monteiro e Ricardo Brandau; Meryt Zanini (Secretary of the Brazilian Society of Cardiovascular Surgery – BSCVS), and the librarians Maria Elisa Rangel Braga (Unifesp/BC), Solange Santos (BIREME/Scielo) e Regina Castro (BIREME/CCS) also attended the meeting.

The submission form was carefully reviewed all together and some of the doubts were clarified. After the suggested changes had been made, the form was referred to Medline Administrator, Dr. Sheldon Kotzin, by e-mail, who also required the last printed issue of RBCCV/BJCVS. Some time later (after a while), we pleased received a pertinent news that RBCCV/BJCVS will be evaluated on October.

I strongly believe this time, there is a very good chance of getting RBCCV/BJCVS indexed. This is the outcome of the meeting I held with Dr. Kotzin last May, when he was very much attentive and gave me relevant advices to be successful on RBCCV/BJCVS submission. Scielo and Bireme played an important role in order to fulfill the submission form according to the parameters required by Medline. Thus, we must wait for October to come. I hope to give our BSCVS associates the good news: a dream came true – RBCCV/ BJCVS is indexed on Medline!

While we look forward to it, I have other good news. This one has already been confirmed. Thanks to the efforts of so many colleagues, in special the Associated Editor, Dr. Luciano Albuquerque, Dr. Joseph Coselli is now at RBCCV/BJCVS Editorial Board. The formal invitation was made during the IV South Brazilian Congress of Cardiovascular Surgery held in Gramado, Rio Grande do Sul. The answer of Dr. Joseph Coselli acceptance was positively delivered on August 29, 2007.

I am sure the presence of Dr. Coselli will be a real scientific breakthrough and will increase still more the international repercussion of RBCCV/BJCVS, already enriched by Dr. Manuel Antunes recently forthcoming, from Portugal, to compose the RBCCV/BJCVS Editorial Board.

Another thing I would like to mention is that at the end of July our site (www.rbccv.org.br) surpassed 500 logins. This is an important figure, which shows we were in the right direction when the "website" was purposely created on the Internet, and we adopted the electronic system to accept submissions and reviews. The accesses and daily print are about 1,000 and 3,000, from Brazil and abroad, respectively. I invited those who have not done the login yet, to do so, sending manuscripts, so it could be possible, at an early date, to break new records. The site is being continuously refined to become a more and more useful tool for the associates. On accessing the site and clicking in the item "Artigos em Editoração" (Portuguese), you will be able visualize which articles were approved and which will be published in the forthcoming issues of RBCCV/BJCCV (but not necessarily in the next issue). In the item "Revisores" it is possible to know who peer reviewed the articles.

In this issue, besides the articles of great importance, we are publishing from the page XXX the Free Papers presented at the IV South Brazilian Congress of Cardiovascular Surgery, always keeping in mind that this kind of publication can be added to the authors' curriculum.

The next Brazilian congress of SBCCV/BSCVS has been already confirmed: April 18-20, 2008, in São Paulo. In the next weeks, the affiliated will receive more detailed information, comprising the one regarding to the submission of papers, which once more will be via e-mail. I am sure that the event organized by Dr. Paulo Pêgo Fernandes will add scientific knowledge, with the presence of highly important guests, and the accomplishment of events significantly important in the field of cardiovascular surgery. Of course, we have to keep in mind that the social get together moments are always very important.

Even with all the problems caused by the lack of a more definite government policy for science, the effort of people associated to the field, in special to the postgraduation programs, show that if there were a great investment and, above all, a greater care with the public gadget management, Brazil will be able to parallel with the most advanced countries concerning the scientific production.

According to the figures reported by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (Capes) – a public foundation attached to the Ministry of Education with the mission to promote the development of graduate and research programs in Brazil – during the 59^th Annual Meeting of Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science (BSPS), held in July, Brazil rose two positions on the rank of the 30 countries with higher numbers of scientific papers published.

In 2006, the Brazilian Scientific production surpassed Sweden and Switzerland and reached the 15^th place with 16,872 published scientific papers. In 2004, the number of scientific papers published increased 33%, three times more than the world average. "In 2002, we were in the 20^th place; in 2005, we were in the 17^th place. This current ranking was expected only in 2009", said the President of Capes, Jorge Guimarães to the FAPESPAgency.This growth places Brazilian participation in the world-wide production of science on levels similar to those of Israel and South Korea. According to the citation records, Brazilian science has begun to have more impact at a world-wide level.

Concerning the production (performance) quality that measures not only the number of published scientific papers, but its impact – Brazil is the 20^th place. The fields which have the most increasing development in comparison with the last two triennials (2001-2003; 2004-2006) were psychology and psychiatry (70%); vegetal and animal production (58%); social sciences (52%); and medicine (47%). In comparison between 2005 and 2006, the growths were: immunology (23%); medicine (17%); vegetal and animal production (13%); economy (12%); ecology and environment (12%); and engineering (11%). The medicine leads the ranking of publications.

These are important numbers. They also show the importance of the medicine as well as the cardiovascular surgery in the breakthrough of the Brazilian scientific knowledge. Keep in mind that the statistics is performed through the published scientific papers in indexed journals in internationally well-known database. Thence, it is the utmost concern to index RBCCV/BJCVS on both Medline and Information Sciences Institute (ISI), which is our next target.

My best and warm wishes

*

Editor

RBCCV/BJCVS

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  21 Dec 2007
• Date of issue
  Sept 2007