Category: Methodology

Publishers and FAIR data

In this post a proposal is introduced for academic publishing outfits to encourage and enable authors to make their articles — and where possible the underlying datasets — semantically unambiguous so that they can be communicated as FAIR data (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). The proposal is described in-depth in a published open access article, to which a link is provided in the post. Read More →

How to reduce the processing time of submitted articles: the experience of Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais

While the position of a scientific journal editor is interesting and rewarding, since it puts us in touch with the pulse of academic output, it also poses many challenges. It is necessary to give the journal a face, to guarantee the publication quality, to find reviewers willing to work anonymously and for free and to ensure the journal’s financial sustainability. This post deals with just one of the challenges: ensuring a quick response to the authors about the submitted manuscripts. Read More →

The SciELO publication model as an open access public policy

This post shares the brief description of the SciELO open access publication model presented by Abel L Packer, Director of SciELO, at the 14th Berlin Debate on Science and Science Policy which was themed “Who Owns Science? Reshaping the Scientific Value Chain in the 21st Century”. The description highlights the SciELO Program as a framework for the development and implementation of national policies to support quality journals and as an international cooperation program. The debate was held in the context of the Falling Walls Conference commemorating the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Read More →

Introduction to JATS (Journal Article Tag Suite)

Deborah A. Lapeyre, one of the developers of JATS and a member of the JATS secretariat, introduces us to the ANSI/NISO standard for the XML interchange of journal articles.
Read More →

The tomorrow of SciELO journals will be discussed by working groups in the SciELO Networking Meeting of the SciELO 20 Years week

The SciELO 20 Years Week is envisaged as a global discussion forum about the status of journals, the advancement and challenges related to the transition to open science modus operandi. A key week event, the SciELO Network Meeting will take place by means of working groups of editors and information and communication researchers and professionals, who will analyze SciELO journals’ relevance and the priority lines of action for the coming 3 to 5 years, which will orient the transition to open science. 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 →

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 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 →

Persistence and normalization of data were the main topics of the III SciELO-ScholarOne Updating Course

The III SciELO-ScholarOne Updating Course is a continuation of the SciELO Program’s commitment to raise the level of professionalism of its journals. The event took place at the FAPESP auditorium in São Paulo and brought together about 150 representatives from 70 SciELO journals seeking to improve their editorial management and had as main topics the persistence and normalization of data. Read More →

Texture – an open science manuscript editor [Originally published in eLife in July/2017]

The Substance project released in 24 July 2017 the Alpha3 version of the Texture editor, which reads and produces XML files according the Journal Article Tag Suite (JATS) used by SciELO to structure scientific texts. It is a major step towards a complete solution for editing JATS articles and its application in publishing workflows. Read More →

Internationalization as an indicator of journal performance in Brazil: the case of Psychology

The path to strengthening scientific publications almost always goes through internationalization. Publishing in English, however, is not enough to reach a truly global audience and indices comparable to the most prestigious journals. A study on the degree of internationalization of Brazilian psychology journals shows how to walk this path. Read More →

SciELO Preprints on the way

The main objective of SciELO Preprints is to speeding up the availability of research results and will contribute to an organized flow of potentially acceptable preprints by SciELO journals, in line with the advances and growing importance of preprints publication internationally. The cooperative construction of the SciELO Preprints modus operandi will encompass the promotion and debate of the preprints concept, the definition of governance and operations structures and the operational implementation. It is expected to be fully operational by mid-2018. Read More →

SciELO and the future of journals

The joint participation of journals and SciELO in overcoming problems that affect scholarly communication in the national and global contexts was the central topic of the 2016 annual SciELO Brazil meeting. The advances in professionalization, internationalization and sustainability of SciELO journals are improving their key functions on research validation and constitute a new stage in the evolution of SciELO. Read More →

Usage improvements and system’s new features were the main topics of the II SciELO-ScholarOne Updating Course

The II SciELO-ScholarOne Updating Course is a continuity of the SciELO Program’s commitment to raise the level of professionalism of its journals. The event took place at FAPESP’s Auditorium in São Paulo and brought together about 150 representatives of 81 SciELO journals seeking improvement of their editorial managements. Read More →

Flow of manuscripts and items processed by SciELO Brazil journals in 2014 and 2015

The improvement of manuscripts management is a key dimension in advancing the professionalization of journals promoted by SciELO. In recent years, the manuscript flow of the SciELO Brazil collection includes more than 80,000 submissions and about 20,000 articles published annually. This post looks at this flow in different thematic areas. Read More →