A brief inventory of concerns in scientific communication

Scientific activity is very often associated with the production of answers and sometimes certainties. The proposal here is to bring another perspective to think about the commitments that scientific doing takes. In this context, a central role of scientific journals in our area is to offer knowledge that allows to mobilize ideas for the formulation of original questions, aiming at the investigation and questioning of social situations. TES, which this year turned 20 years old, includes, in collective health, among the journals that fulfill this function, articulating knowledge and questions of the fields of health, education and work.

When in dialogue with the world of contemporary work, the look that interests us examines and confronts a reality of difficulties for workers, for the working class. What is up to us as researchers and editors is to promote, encourage questions and investigative paths that remove us from comfort and break with any tendency to naturalize social processes. At the same time, it is also up to us, through knowledge, to call for a commitment to the transformation of the conditions in which processes of suffering, illness and alienation are materialized.

They are typical guidelines of collective health, which is guided by the horizon of transformation, but also influences socially significant and contextualized transformations that indicate another commitment that crosses us: looking at Brazil... And to recognize the various Brasis. A look that reconfigures itself over time, or rather, with history, sounding as a responsibility of researchers and, as a result, of scientific journals.

Thus, it is possible to say that the collective health and the journals that integrate it participate in a social and democratic construction. When talking about democratic construction, in this particular articulation with scientific communication, we seek to integrate the ambition to make public texts in which we identify the relevance of the themes, the originality of the questions, the consistency in the development of research and the observance of ethical aspects (Diniz, 2008).

In the wake-up and act line, in this path of democratic strengthening, a challenge we face is to equate the implementation of editorial policies that strengthen the presence not only of the themes, but of women researchers, researchers and black, indigenous researchers, and researchers. with the purpose of overcoming inequality in the production of knowledge. Inequalities, in their various forms, have always been central problems for collective health.

The illusion of neutrality is dispensed in this path. However, there is a need to be clear about the difference between a scientific article and a manifesto, without any contempt for manifestos. It is known that they change history, but our space is different. However, we have faced several questions regarding what we informally treat as ‘quality of the texts’, but it is preferable to understand how to adapt a discourse to the scope of the journal.

We are not supporters of the thought that places the manuscript as a product of academic consumption. We understand that it is up to us to develop the notion that there exists, between journals and manuscripts, a ‘relationship’ of affinities, criteria, possibilities, or not, of meetings, that a very explicit editorial policy helps to understand. We note that the current forms of communication, driven by digital media, allows us to communicate with the potential to interfere in the construction of ideas and actions more positive for scientific communication. Editors and authors are not opponents. Quite the opposite. But, sometimes, that’s what we seem to be.

The high rates of rejection of articles frustrate authors and editors. What to do on this question? What would be the role of journals to face it? Scientific articles are the results of research processes that occur in an environment that is not that of journals. But they are also the answer, sometimes immediate and eventually premature, to a system that continuously and aggressively presses for publication volume. Such a fact is well known, and therefore cannot leave our questioning radar.

Each field of knowledge has its own characteristics. One of the vocations of collective health is to dialogue not only with scientists/researchers, but also with managers, professionals of the Unified Health System (Sistema Único de Saúde - SUS), students, social movements, trade union organizations... finally, borders that are beyond the academic community, because, after all, who would dare to define ‘who should know?’ Scientific journals in our area are intrinsically linked to educational processes, which implies our interest in expanding their reach, and that is why the challenge of scientific dissemination also concerns us.

In an expanded vision of a national framework of scientific journals, we realize that there will only be a future if it is firmly established that the work of scientific communication is constituted as an inseparable part of the creation of a national scientific-technological project, sovereign. This reflection immediately refers to the case of movements for open science, which involves a diverse set of practices, but which has as nuclear ideas transparency and quick access to research results, whose international importance is evident in cases of public health emergency, like zika and COVID-19 (Guanaes and Albagli, 2022).

It is noteworthy, after all, that an important challenge is to confront the tendency of submission by pressure and seduction by international oligopolies that act in the field of scientific communication, with effects detrimental to the value and power of Brazilian journals. It is a struggle in multiple dimensions, especially in public policy. A confrontation that requires joints, propositions and plans and guidelines. In this sense, it highlights the challenge of the actors of this ecosystem to find time to meet, discuss ideas and make decisions to affirm our place in the production of concerns and in the formulation of relevant actions. Moreover, to demonstrate that our work, this work that we have in common, usually seen as elitist and exclusionary, can be a transformational doing, with inventive practices, packed in the idea of offering ways to think and face our social problems, in the space that fits us, and from them build a future not only of more knowledge and science, but also of more hope.

Referências

• DINIZ, Débora. Ética na pesquisa em ciências humanas: novos desafios. Ciência & Saúde Coletiva, Rio de Janeiro, v. 13, n. 2, p. 421, 2008. https://doi.org/10.1590/S1413-81232008000200017. Disponível em: https://www.scielo.br/j/csc/a/QDNVw9nGF7X7b8Kf4LNvRVs/?lang=pt Acesso em: 6 dez. 2023.
  » https://www.scielo.br/j/csc/a/QDNVw9nGF7X7b8Kf4LNvRVs/?lang=pt
• GUANAES, Paulo C. V.; ALBAGLI, Sarita. Dados de pesquisa subjacentes a artigos científicos: questões do direito autoral. Em Questão, Porto Alegre, v. 28, n. 3, e-114171, jul./set. 2022. Disponível em: https://seer.ufrgs.br/index.php/EmQuestao/article/view/114171 Acesso em: 6 dez. 2023.
  » https://seer.ufrgs.br/index.php/EmQuestao/article/view/114171

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  09 Feb 2024
• Date of issue
  2023