Different viewpoints about a decision!

Upon reading the negative opinion of the CNPq Review Committee, referring to the request for editorial support made by REM, I have come to the conclusion that some points elaborated by it showed the committee's lack of knowledge about the magazine.

Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico - CNPq has been funding the magazine for years, regardless of the publisher's curriculum, who in the case of REM is me, and I work full time as its administrator and believe I have done an excellent job to date. Moreover, in REM, it is the responsibility of the Associate Editor, not the editor-in-chief, to take full responsibility for manuscript decisions

The number of associated editors was criticized, forgetting that for each area, REM has, on average, five people, a small number considering the areas and sub-areas covered by the journal. These professionals, unlike the administrator, are linked to universities of excellence, and still teach, research, and most likely still review articles similar to REM publications. To reduce flaws, I always keep in mind a sentence that says: one incompetent manager brings along another. And all of them hide the overall weakness in the system (Iacoca, L., 1984). The corollary of this phrase would be that the competent ones only look for the most competent ones, and it is, thus, in the REM.

The committee states that there is no information on how the magazine works. This indicates that the members of the CNPq Review Committee ignored that in order to belong to The Scientific Electronic Library Online - SciELO, a publication necessarily has specific working rules for authors, reviewers, etc. This is an international standard.

In fact, I prefer to believe that the committee ignored this obligation, rather than that it acted in bad faith. If you accessed SciELO, or the REM website (or any other good level magazine), you would see the instructions for each of the decision-makers involved.

The committee criticized spending for English revision. As it is difficult to write in English if one is not native born, we have adopted both before and after editing with no extra charge. As such, it is opportune to remind the Committee that: copy editing is the process of reviewing and correcting written material to improve accuracy, readability, and fitness for its purpose, and to ensure that it is free of error, omission, inconsistency, and repetition. The committee forgot that this little action avoids ridicule, to which the author will be exposed, when a foreign appraiser refuses to review a text full of errors. And this happened, even when the REM published in Portuguese. In doubt, I made a calculation, depending on the number of articles received and accepted, the cost was $ 14 / article. No comments.

It is clear that REM seeks to minimize errors, and this is due to the collaborative and transparent environment of the entire team, and autonomy allowing the competences of each team member to be shown in full. Nothing like being 83 years old.

Prof. Jório Coelho1
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5041-5085
¹Editor Chefe
Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto - UFOP, Escola de Minas, Departamento de Geologia
Ouro Preto - Minas Gerais - Brasil
E-mail: [e-mail]

References

• IACOCCA, L. & NOVAK, W. Iacocca - An autobiography: Random House Publishing Group, 1984. 384 p.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  Apr-Jun 2019