Author: Scielo

Identifiers and Research: ORCID Basics and Plans – Interview with Laure Haak

Brazil is promoting a remarkable advance in the adoption of the research identifier ORCID with the formation of the Brazilian ORCID Consortium led by CAPES with the participation of several organizations, among which SciELO. All SciELO Brazil journals will publish articles with authors’ ORCID as of 2019. An interview with Laure Haak highlights the importance of ORCID. Read More →

Open peer review perspectives: a thought-provoking question mark

Research analyzes the feasibility of adopting Open Peer Review by Information Science journals. This post presents the first step already completed focusing on the editors. The second stage, already underway, is focused on referees in order to reach a comprehensive view on the adoption of Open Peer Review by Information Science journals. Read More →

Discussing indicators in research funding: What role do altmetrics play? [Originally published in Europe of Knowledge blog in December/2017]

At any rate, altmetrics, or alternative metrics, are gaining momentum in higher education. This post is based on my master’s thesis that explores the usage of altmetrics with a focus on research funding. Altmetrics track down and count the mentions of scholarly outputs in social media, news sites, policy papers, and social bookmarking sites. Then altmetrics data providers aggregate the number of mentions. This allows an observation of how many times research has been viewed, discussed, followed, shared, and downloaded. Read More →

SciELO launches new operation interface for its collections

The new operating interface of the national and thematic collections of the SciELO Network offers a contemporary visual experience and it is characterized by its fast response. The development of the interface used efficient, flexible and high security programming, processing and integration technologies. The new interface has been in experimental operation with the SciELO Public Health thematic collection since November 2017. In 2019 all SciELO Network collections will be operating with the new interface. The launch of the new interface is part of the 20 years celebration of the SciELO Program. Read More →

How to make the most of an academic conference – a checklist for before, during and after the meeting [Originally published in LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog in March/2018]

Preparing for the celebration of 20 years of SciELO, this post by Marta Teperek presents a checklist of the preparations before, during, and after an academic conference to maximize the opportunity to connect with like-minded individuals and exchange stimulating ideas. Read More →

The articles of SciELO journals on the European Commission Open Science platforms

The SciELO technological platform was updated in early 2018 to allow the integration of SciELO journal articles into the information sources of the European Commission’s OpenAire and OpenMinTeD projects. OpenAire operates a repository of research texts and data and supports the European community’s open access mandates and open research data. The OpenMinTeD project promotes the development of a full-text mining platform and research data. The participation of SciELO articles in these platforms will contribute to increase the use and visibility of the research results they communicate. Read More →

SciELO 20 Years Conference – an innovative and participative forum on the future of scholarly communication

The celebration of the 20 years of SciELO in 2018 will culminate with the Meeting of the SciELO Network and the SciELO 20 Years Conference, in the week of September 24th-28th. The Network Meeting will address the updates of the SciELO Publishing Model and the priority lines of action for the coming years. The SciELO 20 Years Conference will discuss 12 contemporary scientific communication themes. Each of these themes will be developed under the coordination of a scientific committee that will gather bibliographies, interviews, posts and articles that will guide the debates in the 20 Years Conference. Read More →

Scientific communication practices in High Energy Physics: potential of preprints

The use of preprints repositories in High Energy Physics (HEP) to accelerate scientific communication dates back more than half a century, encouraging the practice of self-archiving and open access to research results. This report reflects on the potential of preprints in HEP scientific communication through the open access initiatives SPIRES and arXiv. The success of preprints repositories and databases in physics seems to have encouraged other areas to create their own thematic repositories, favoring the free circulation of information and discussion of scientific data. Read More →

The Qualis system: a perspective from a multidisciplinary journal [Originally published as the editorial in Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências vol. 89 no. 3]

The CAPES journal evaluation system Qualis penalizes the progress of multidisciplinary journals such as the Anais da Academia Brasileira de Ciências (AABC). Present in 39 of the 40 assessment areas, the Anais’ ranking varies from strata A2 to B5. When Qualis lowers its ranking in a given discipline, there is an immediate decrease in papers submission, affecting the journal’s evolution and its editorial management in the medium and long term. An editorial written by AABC Editor-in-Chief claims affirmative actions to qualify Brazil’s research with a quality multidisciplinary journal. Read More →

Quantity does matter as citation impact increases with productivity [Originally published in LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog in January/2018]

Many scholars are encouraged to focus on the quality not the quantity of their publications, the rationale being that becoming too focused on productivity risks reducing the quality of one’s work. But is this, in fact, the case? Peter van den Besselaar and Ulf Sandström have studied a large sample of researchers and found that, while results vary by field, there is a positive and stronger than linear relationship between productivity and quality (in terms of the top cited papers). This same pattern appears to apply to institutions as well as individual researchers. Read More →

Sant Joan d’Alacant Declaration in defense of Open Access to scientific publications, by the group of editors of Spanish journals on health sciences (GERECS)

Aligned with the European Open Science Policy Platform and other declarations, the group of editors of Spanish journals on health sciences, in its last November meeting, issued the Sant Joan d’Alacant declaration in defense of Open Access. Read More →

SciELO Indexing Criteria align with open science communication

The new SciELO Brazil Criteria are aligned with the good practices of open science communication. They become valid from January 2018 and project a new stage of improvement of Brazil’s scientific communication, which should be progressively extended to the other countries of the SciELO Network. The advancement towards open science has as a characteristic the repositioning of the main players of scholarly communication: authors, journals, and research funders. Read More →

Academic journals with a presence on Twitter are more widely disseminated and receive a higher number of citations [Originally published in LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog in December/2017]

Previous research has shown that researchers’ active participation on Twitter can be a powerful way of promoting and disseminating academic outputs and improving the prospects of increased citations. But does the same hold true for the presence of academic journals on Twitter? José Luis Ortega examined the role of 350 scholarly journals, analysing how their articles were tweeted and cited. Read More →

Open-access books are downloaded, cited, and mentioned more than non-OA books [Originally published in LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog in November/2017]

Open-access journal articles have been found, to some extent, to be downloaded and cited more than non-OA articles. But could the same be true for books? Carrie Calder reports on recent research into how open access affects the usage of scholarly books, including the findings that OA books are, on average, downloaded seven times more, cited 50% more, and mentioned online ten times more. A number of accompanying interviews reveal that authors are choosing open access routes to publish their books not only because of wider dissemination and easier access but also for ethical reasons. Read More →

Make sure your book is discoverable! Advice for the reader-oriented author [Originally published in LSE Impact of Social Sciences blog in November/2017]

Although academic book publishing remains dominated by print, the ability to reach readers is now hugely dependent on the online discoverability of scholarly books. Authors looking to connect with as wide a readership as possible should consider how to maximise the chances of their books and chapters being returned in readers’ online searches. Terry Clague offers some simple advice to the reader-oriented book author. Read More →