Revista Brasileira de Educação Médica: 45 years of history

FIRST EDITION

The Brazilian Journal of Medical Education (RBEM, Revista Brasileira de Educação Médica) is the scientific dissemination organ of the Brazilian Association of Medical Education (ABEM, Associação Brasileira de Educação Médica)^1),(2. Its first publication was in 1977 (Figure 1) and two Boards of Directors of ABEM were responsible for its dissemination, the Editorial Board and the Writing Coordinators, as shown in Table 1:

Figure 1
First edition of RBEM published in 1977

Table 1
Teams responsible for publishing the first edition of the Brazilian Journal of Medical Education (RBEM).

Board of Directors of the Brazilian Association of Medical Education (ABEM)
Positions	1976-1978	1978-1980
President:	Horácio Kneese de Melo	João Paulo do Vale Mendes
1st Vice-President:	Rodrigo D’Argolo Ferrão	Naum Kelserman
2nd Vice-President:	João Paulo do Vale Mendes	Luiz Paula Castro
Treasurer:	Benjamin Albagli	Alice Reis Rosa
Chief Executive Officer (CEO):	Fernando Bevilacqua
Editorial Board
Antonio C. de Mattos Paiva
Clementino Fraga Filho
Ítalo Suassuna
João Paulo do Valle Mendes
Marcello Vasconcellos Coelho
Mário Chaves, Michel Jamra
Otávio Ribeiro Ratto
Rubens Maciel
Editorial coordination
Fernando Bevilacqua
Antenor Amancio Filho
Mabel Imbassahy

• Source: The authors.

According to the editorial by Horácio Kneese de Melo, President of the Editorial Board of ABEM from 1976 to 1978, published in Issue 1.1 of the journal, the reason for launching RBEM was:

“the marked increase in the number of medical schools in the country, the ever-increasing interest by teachers and students regarding medical education and the main purpose of ABEM, which is “the improvement of medical education” ³ .

Figure 2
First RBEM editorial

Volume 1 of RBEM contained only 1 issue and in this edition, material from the 1^st ABEM Regional Seminar, held in Curitiba, was published.

As stated in the book “Medical education and the political arena: the 60 years of ABEM”⁴, it was at the 1977 COBEM, held in November in the city of Belém (state of Pará), that the first issue of the Brazilian Journal of Medical Education (RBEM) was presented, with a proposal of three annual issues, which had as a guiding reflection the relationship between medical education and assistance services considering scientific and technological advances in health, divided into three panels: “The teaching of basic disciplines in the health area in the face of Universitary Reform”; “The teaching of clinical medicine” and “The reality of enrollment by discipline in medical schools”⁴.

VOLUMES AND ISSUES

The initial volumes of RBEM were quarterly; at some time, it was published annually, but returned to being quarterly and from 2008 onwards it became quarterly, the currently adopted format. Moreover, special editions and supplements focused on topics crucial to medical education have been published. It is also worth noting that some issues were not published (Table 2).

Table 2
Summary of RBEM volumes and issues

YEAR	VOLUME	ISSUES				SUPPLEMENTS
1977	1	1			-	-	-
1978	2	1	2	3	-	Supplement 1	-
1979	3	1	2	3	-	-	-
1980	4	1	2	3	-	-	-
1981	5	1	2	3	-	-	-
1982	6	1	2	3	-	-	-
1983	7	1	2	3	-	-	-
1984	8	*	2	*	-	-	-
1985	9	1	2	3	-	-	-
1986	10	-	2	3	-	-	-
1987	11	1	2	3	-	-	-
1988	12	1	2	-	-	-	-
1989	13	1			-	-	-
1990	14	1			-	-	-
1991	15	1			-	-	-
1992	16	1			-	-	-
1993	17	1	2	3	-	-	-
1994	18	1	2	3	-	-	-
1995	19	1			-	-	-
1996	20	1	2/3		-	Special edition	-
1997	21	1	2/3		-	-	-
1998	22	1	2/3		-	Supplement 1	-
1999	23	1	2/3		-	-	-
2000	24	1	2	3	-	-	-
2001	25	1	2	3	-	-	-
2002	26	1	2	3	-	Supplement 1	Supplement 2
2003	27	1	2	3	-	-	-
2004	28	1	2	3	-	-	-
2005	29	1	2	3	-	-	-
2006	30	1	2	3	-	-	-
2007	31	1	2	3	-	-	-
2008	32	1	2	3	4	-	-
2009	33	1	2	3	4	Supplement 1	-
2010	34	1	2	3	4	-	-
2011	35	1	2	3	4	-	-
2012	36	-	2	3	4	Supplement 1	Supplement 2
2013	37	1	2	3	4	-	-
2014	38	1	2	3	4	-	-
2015	39	1	2	3	4	-	-
2016	40	1	2	3	4	-	-
2017	41	1	2	3	4	-	-
2018	42	1	2	3	4	-	-
2019	43	1	2	3	4	Supplement 1	-
2020	44	1	2	3	4	Supplement 1	-
2021	45	1	2	3	4	Supplement 1
2022	46	1	2	3	4

• *Unpublished issues.
• Source: ABEM collection

Until 2013, the journal was published in printed format, becoming available only in electronic format as of 2014, currently adopting the continuous flow publication system. In 2007, it was added to the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO) collection, where its articles are currently published. (https://www.scielo.br/j/rbem/grid). RBEM is also indexed in the following databases: Virtual Library of Education in Health Sciences - EDUCA (Biblioteca Virtual de Educação em Ciências da Saúde); Summaries of Brazilian Journals - SUMARIOS; Latin American and Caribbean Literature in Health Sciences - LILACS (Literatura Latino-Americana e do Caribe em Ciências da Saúde); Index of Latin American Science Journals - PERIODICA (Índice de Revistas Latinoamericanas de Ciencias); Database on Education - IRESIE (Base de datos sobre Educación); Directory of Open Access Journals - DOAJ and Online Regional Information System for Scientific Journals of Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal - LATINDEX (Sistema Regional de Información en Línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina, el Caribe, España y Portugal). In 2022, RBEM submitted the process for the indexing in the Scopus database (Elsevier).

EDITORS

The first editions of the journal did not mention a name at the position of Editor, and only in 1981, in edition 5.1, was the figure of the Editor represented by Clementino Fraga Filho (Figure 3). After that, all editions had editors related to the creation of the material to be published (Table 3).

Figure 3
Edition 5.1 of RBEM, first editor

Table 3
RBEM Editors

YEAR OF INAUGURATION	EDITORS
1981	Clementino Fraga Filho
1983	Fernando Figueira
1985	Alice Reis Rosa
1986	Celia Lucia Monteiro de Castro
1987	Heloisa Maria Mendonça de Morais
1988	Frederico Simões Barbosa
1993	William Saad Hossne
1997	Jadete Barbosa Lampert
1998	Sérgio Tavares de Almeida Rêgo
2015	Lilian Koifman
2016	Olavo Franco Ferreira Filho
2019	Daniela Chiesa
2020	Rosiane Viana Zuza Diniz

• Source: ABEM collection.

The Editor in Chief receives the manuscripts that meet the regulations for publication in the journal, assigning to the associate editors (AE) the manuscripts that are within the scope of RBEM and have an innovative characteristic for the follow-up of the editorial process. These are in charge of conducting the process, from the choosing of reviewers to announcing the final decision regarding each manuscript.

LOGO

The first RBEM logo consisted of all the letters of its name and the background color of the cover was changed in each volume. In 1997, the layout of the letters was changed, but the color continued to be modified for each edition. At the end of 2019, the journal’s logo was changed, and started to feature the ABEM logo together with its name. The RBEM logos can be seen in Figure 4.

Figure 4
RBEM logos from 1977 to 2022

EDITORIAL PROCESS

Using a double-blind, peer-review process, the journal increased its editorial staff in 2021, based on a public invitation process for interested parties, with associate editors representing, for the first time, all ABEM regional offices. Moreover, it incorporated international associate editors to the team and also started to disclose in the published article the team of editors responsible for the editorial process.

The journal’s editorial process is a complex one and has been improved, especially over the last five years, aiming to speeding up and improving the quality of decisions. In this context, RBEM as a member of the Brazilian Association of Scientific Editors (ABEC Brasil - Associação Brasileira de Editores Científicos) has publicized and encouraged the participation of members of the editorial board in updating activities related to the necessary competences for reviewers and associate editors and the journal’s administrative team. Topics such as ethics and scientific integrity, open science and how to review scientific articles have been crucial in the last two years⁵.

There are four possible final decisions arising from the peer review, as shown in Figure 5. Manuscripts with major and minor revision decision are adjusted by the authors and submitted to a new peer-review process, which may result in rejection or acceptance of the manuscript.

Figure 5
Final decisions after peer review at RBEM.

Throughout its 45 years of existence, RBEM has shown significant growth, considering the number of article submissions and publications, especially observed during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, preserving the different topics of the journal’s scope, a variety of relevant topics published on the perspectives of medical education has been observed. It is noteworthy the presence of the central topic of COVID-19 among the publication topics in 2022, showing the importance of the journal for the scientific dissemination of emerging topics (figure 6).

Figure 6
Topics of publications and number of submissions to the Brazilian Journal of Medical Education - RBEM in the last seven years.

Although submissions by national authors predominate, RBEM has received manuscripts from many continents, such as America (North America: 9 and South America: 1,529), Europe (9), Africa (6) and Asia (1). The distribution of publications according to the authors’ country of origin can be seen in Figure 7.

Figure 7
Distribution of RBEM publications according to the authors’ country of origin

Even more relevant has been the attention paid to good editorial practices with similarity tracking carried out through the systematic use of the iThenticate⁶ software since 2021.

It is important to point out that RBEM’s sustainability resources come from ABEM funding sources, which has guaranteed the preservation, throughout all these years, of independent editorial guidelines without the acceptance of advertising material for commercial purposes.

Understanding the role of the interaction between the different ABEM initiatives, since 2019, the papers submitted to the ABEM Brazilian Congresses of Medical Education and ABEM Regionals with the highest scores in the final evaluation are granted the incentive of exemption from the publication fee in RBEM, of the complete article, as long as it has been approved by the usual flows.

As a sign of recognition of the importance of associative life for the health of RBEM, since 2022 we guarantee exemption from the publication fee for approved articles that have 100% of ABEM-associated authors.

FINAL CONSIDERATIONS

RBEM is an open and free-access journal, in addition to being the only Brazilian journal on the subject of Medical Education. Its mission is:

“to be a renowned journal in the field of medical education and to publish high-quality material on relevant topics and perspectives in this area ¹ .

In his speech in the first editorial published by RBEM, Horácio Kneese de Melo states:

We thus launch the first issue of the Brazilian Journal of Medical Education, confident that it will act within the main purposes of ABEM and in the certainty of its success ² .

In addition to being the Brazilian journal dedicated to consolidating the scientific production in relation to medical education, RBEM, based on its publications, has revealed its role in rescuing the history of ABEM itself, as demonstrated in the several citations and references to publications found in the book “Medical education and the political arena: the 60 years of ABEM.”⁴

This editorial also constitutes a special recognition and acknowledgment of all the individuals who have made this successful trajectory of the Brazilian Journal of Medical Education possible: the ABEM associates who guarantee sustainability, the administrative staff who work in the structuring of the journal, the editors and reviewers who dedicate their time and experience to the review of manuscripts, and especially to the authors who trust in the journal and guarantee the quality of shared production.

For the continuation of its history,
may its collective success go on.

REFERÊNCIAS

• ¹
  Gálvez KRN. ABEM: 22 anos de história. Rev Bras Educ Med. 1984;8(3):141-65.
• ²
  SciELO. Homepage RBEM. 2021 [acesso em 14 jul 2021]. Disponível em: Disponível em: https:www.scielo.br/jornal/rbem/about/#about
  » https:www.scielo.br/jornal/rbem/about/#about
• ³
  de Mello HK. Editorial. Rev Bras Educ Med . 1977;1(1):7.
• ⁴
  Nemi A, dos Santos ÍV, de Almeida TA. A educação médica e a arena política: os 60 anos da Abem. Brasília: Abem. 2022. E-book. 216 p. [acesso em 15 nov 2022]. Disponível em: Disponível em: https://website.abem-educmed.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Abem_60anos_site.pdf
  » https://website.abem-educmed.org.br/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Abem_60anos_site.pdf
• ⁵
  Associação Brasileira de Editores Científicos [acesso em 15 nov 2022]. Disponível em: Disponível em: https://www.abecbrasil.org.br/novo/
  » https://www.abecbrasil.org.br/novo/
• ⁶
  iThenticate plagiarism Checker [acesso em 09 set 2022]. Disponível em: Disponível em: https://www.ithenticate.com
  » https://www.ithenticate.com

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  16 Dec 2022
• Date of issue
  2022

History

• Received
  16 Nov 2022
• Accepted
  16 Nov 2022