Learning to communicate science in developing countries

Résumé 0

"Good quality science has been produced in developing countries,as shown by the number of papers published in prestigiousjournals. However, the competence to produce good journals inthese countries has lagged behind for several reasons, particularlythe establishment of an international publishing system relyingon the increasing value attributed to the ISI-JCR journalranking, a view adopted by authors worldwide and by fundingand evaluation systems. Developing countries became integratedto this international context and the efforts to produce good localjournals can be pinpointed to individual initiatives that inmost cases failed to progress. One important consequence ofthis gap is that dealing with the peer review procedure, a majorinstrument to produce good journals and to foster scientificprogress, is a limited experience in developing countries. Under this scenery an enterprise that began in Brazil in 1997 andthereafter spread over twelve other Iberoamerican countries isdiscussed in the light of recent data. SciELO (Scientific ElectronicLibrary Online) is a program fundamentally supportedby public funding, aimed at launching online the best existingjournals in several countries, in an open access mode, based onpeer-reviewing and bibliometric/scientometric analysis for thepurpose of journal indexation and maintenance in its database.SciELO covers the functions of a meta-publisher and aims tooperate in accordance with the open access movement, renderingscientific knowledge more widely available. The data presentedshow encouraging evidences that a new auspicious panoramais being established in the context of producing scientificjournals in Brazil."