EDITORIAL
Brazilian Journal of Pharmacognosy and the Capes' New Qualis
Already responding to several questions we have had, July 2011 is the deadline for having the completion of the evaluation process by the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) in order to obtain the Impact Factor of the Brazilian Journal of Pharmacognosy. Surprising is the fact that, despite the Brazilian Journal of Pharmacognosy being indexed in all major global databases, it has been ranked as B4 in the Capes' New Qualis stratification system.
As it is widely known, the Qualis stratification is one of the most important instruments used by CAPES to evaluate and classify the Post-graduation Programs in Brazil and has been recently reviewed. The new version has been constantly criticized by scientists and particularly Brazilian editors, since the new model has introduced some difficulties to be overcome by national scientific journals, aiming their growth. In addition, within each area, there is a multitude of categories, with massive differences in the impact factor among them, as each one has its own scope, able to generate several citations. As the Federal Government, through CNPq, has been significantly supporting the Brazilian journals, the New Qualis system seems to play opposite. Within this frame, Brazilian researchers that are concerned with the evaluation of their post-grad programs will preferentially publish their work in better stratified journals, in which we will hardly find national representatives. Moreover, if the post-grad programs are evaluated by how much they publish and where, the Brazilian Journal of Pharmacognosy may be impaired in the very near future, within its own Pharmacy area. The vast majority of the Brazilian Pharmaceutical Sciences post-graduation programs have lines of research related to natural products, and the role played by the Brazilian Journal of Pharmacognosy in the growth and strengthening of these programs in recent years has been remarkable.
Improvement of our Qualis position in the field of Pharmacy is of fundamental relevance for the growth of the Journal. To accomplish this, we must set goals for growth and work hard to achieve them. In fact, we have already started it. The Editorial Board decided that, from January 2010, all manuscripts submitted for publication should be in English. Reaffirming previous decisions, works that report antimicrobial and antioxidant activities of extracts without the identification of the effect promoter(s) will not be considered. Moreover, the standards for publication will be improved and the Journal will have Section Editors, who will cooperate in the evaluation of submissions in their respective areas. We hope that our "h" factor at SCImago plataform (http://www.scimagojr.com/) will be properly evaluated. Also, we have the expectation that the Capes will reconsider our Qualis stratification in order to value the journals of the field that have been making the Brazilian research outputs known throughout world, particularly those resultant from our own post-grad programs.
Cid Aimbiré M. Santos
Editor
Publication Dates
-
Publication in this collection
22 Jan 2010 -
Date of issue
Sept 2009
