Revista Gaúcha de Enfermagem: 40 years disseminating knowledge production

Revista Gaúcha de Enfermagem (a nursing journal from Rio Grande do Sul) is celebrating its 40^th anniversary in 2016 as it continues to actively carry out its mission to “Help disseminate knowledge in the field of health, by publishing scientific production of interest for Nursing”. It was created by Professor Dirce Pessôa de Brum Aragón, in 1976(¹), to provide nurses in southern Brazil an outlet to disseminate their research and studies. Over these last four decades it has consistently broken new ground and highlighted knowledge produced in Nursing to the domestic and international scientific community, making it a source of pride for the School of Nursing of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul.

Among Brazilian nursing journals, it was the third offered to professionals, afterRevista Brasileira de Enfermagem (“Brazilian Nursing Journal”) and Enfermagem em Novas Dimensões (“Nursing in New Dimensions”). It was originally linked to the Department of Professional Assistance and Guidance, but in 1982 it started being managed by the Office of the School of Nursing of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (EENFUFRGS)(¹). During this trajectory there have been and still are many obstacles to keep it going. However, in recent years it has been professionalized and enjoys the support of faculty members and departments that have assumed the commitment to keep it active and circulating within the academic and scientific world.

Over the years it has received financial assistance from the Research Support Foundation of the State of Rio Grande do Sul (FAPERGS) and Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre (HCPA). Today, it is maintained through the Support Program for the Publication of Journals of the Office of the Dean for Research of UFRGS and physical and human resources from the School of Nursing, in addition to support from the Support Foundation of UFRGS(¹).

Since 2013, in an effort to add value to the work of professors, administrative specialists and scholarship holders of the School of Nursing who comprise the managerial core of RGE, the activities developed in the magazine yearly are characterized as an extension project, without compensation, under the coordination of the Director of EENFUFRGS.

It should be noted that RGE does not receive any specific financial assistance from UFRGS for the improvement of its editorial processes performed by third party services, despite belonging to EENFUFRGS. Although it has been serving the scientific community for 40 years, only in 2015 did it obtain support for the printing of Volume 36 in English by the UFRGS Print Shop – a feature which sets the journal apart from its peers indexed in SCiELO and other international databases, due to the quality of services it provides to authors and those who consume it.

RGE currently holds a place of prominence among Brazilian journals and plays an important role in the assessment of the Graduate Studies Program in Nursing (PPGENF) of UFRGS and other universities, since the quality of the journals that give solidity to the publication of the scientific production of professors and students from these institutions is an important point used by CAPES (Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education) to evaluate these universities. In this regard, the classification in Qualis-Periódicos B1(²) and its indexation in international databases imparts excellence to it, as a nursing journal in the dissemination of knowledge produced in graduate studies programs and as an outlet containing articles with scientific quality.

In an effort to boost the exposure and consequent consumption of what it publishes for the domestic and international scientific community, and bearing in mind the pillars defined by SciELO(³), in which it is indexed, namely internationalization, professionalization and financial autonomy, the RGE Publication Committee (CED) has set goals for the last three years, many of which were achieved, such as print and online publication in English, which has been taking place since 2012, changes in the article evaluation process aimed at reducing the time between submission and publication, adoption of the language XML, increased number of consultants or opinion givers and more international articles, among others.

In this regard, it adopted the mode of continuous publication, used by different journals in the field, starting with Volume 37 No. 1, March 2016, in order to offer the scientific community a product for consumption almost in real time.

RGE uses the SEER online submission system. However, in order to know the metrics in the flow that an article passes through from submission until approval for publication, as well as identify points for improvement and establish quality indicators, the Scholar One system (Thomson Reuters) is scheduled to start being used in May 2016, which will place RGE on the same level as other international standard journals from the field.

Control of plagiarism is also on RGE’s agenda, where there are plans to adopt a plagiarism detection system in 2016, in response to the need identified by CED and guidelines from SciELO for journals indexed in it(³).

Another aspect that sets RGE apart was its initiative, beginning in 2015, to publish a special edition each year, over and above those normally published, for the purpose of disseminating scientific production by nurses in regard to domestic government agendas or those of international bodies, and thereby divulge the state-of-the-art of these policies to the scientific community. Noteworthy among these is Reaching the Eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), proposed in September 2000 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) 2000-2015, which includes the special issue from RGE, published in 2015.

As one of the open access initiatives, all RGE content, except for where it is identified, is licensed under a Creative Commons License of the attribution type CC-BY4.0. In the Diadorim directory of journal publication policies (MCTI/IBICT), RGE authorizes the final version of articles to be filed in digital, open access repositories, as is also the case with the international directory SHERPA/RoMEO.

Mindful of preservation policies to ensure permanent access to publications, RGE has its content preserved by the Brazilian Network of Digital Preservation Services – Cariniana Network (MCTI/IBICT) and the LOCKSS Program – Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe (Stanford University).

In carrying out its commitment toward the nursing scientific community and aware of the importance of scientific communication and dialogue with its peers in the domestic arena, RGE is part of Portal REV@ENF, taking on with other journals from the field the agreement containing the proposal from SciELO in order to keep it and enable all nursing journals that are part of the Portal, and not indexed in SciELO, to receive exposure and be consumed by the field.

Publication and scientific communication in Latin America, the Caribbean and Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries is high on RGE’s agenda, as it pursues strategies with partnering journals in the field, aimed at developing joint actions that will promote exposure of these countries in North America and Europe. In this regard, it is part of the Technical Cooperation Protocol of BVS International Nursing.

According to data from Google Scholar (June 2015), Revista Gaúcha de Enfermagem holds position 13/100 in the ranking of citations of Brazilian journals(⁴).

The nursing scientific community of Rio Grande do Sul is to be congratulated for having a journal like RGE. The School of Nursing feels honored and rewarded by the courage, effort, dedication and commitment of all those who for 40 years have seen and believed that it is possible to create a journal, and who throughout this entire time have spared no efforts to keep it going, improve it, invest in its operation and did not buckle under in the face of obstacles.

We’d like to thank everyone whose work has elevated this journal to its current level of excellence and whose purpose is to achieve the category it merits.

Special thanks to the Publication Committee in the person of Professor Maria da Graça Oliveira Crossetti PhD, to national and international opinion givers who devote a portion of their time to contribute with their knowledge in the evaluation of articles, to officials and scholarship holders who have demonstrated commitment and responsibility in carrying out their activities and specifically to the authors, who have selected RGE to disseminate their productions - the primary clients without whom RGE would not be able to attain the status it holds in the nursing scientific community.

REFERÊNCIAS

• ¹
  Rodrigues CDS, Witt RR, Bonilha ALL, Miranda CL. Os 30 anos da Revista Gaúcha de Enfermagem. Rev Gaúcha Enferm. 2006 mar;27(1):124-8.
• ²
  Crossetti MGO. Revista Gaúcha de Enfermagem: caminho para o Qualis [editorial]. Rev Gaúcha Enferm. 2011 set;32(3):431-4.
• ³
  Scientific Electronic Library Online (BR). Critérios, política e procedimentos para a admissão e a permanência de periódicos científicos na Coleção SciELO Brasil. São Paulo: SciELO; 2014.
• ⁴
  Google Acadêmico [Internet]. Mountain View (CA): Google Inc.; c2015 - [citado 2016 fev 10]. Principais publicações – português; [aprox. 6 telas]. Disponível em: https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=pt-BR&vq=pt.
  » https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=top_venues&hl=pt-BR&vq=pt

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  2016