Category: Methodology

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 →

International course updated SciELO network professionals on the new methodological platform

The SciELO network collections of national quality journals operate in a decentralized manner in 15 countries following common objectives, principles, methodologies and technologies. To achieve the main objective of contributing to improving the quality, visibility, use and impact of the journals, the network promotes the development of skills and scientific communication national infrastructures following the state of the art and has as a principle to maximize the interoperability of journals and articles on the Web. Thus, one of the most recent advances in the operational platform of SciELO collections is the adoption of full texts structure in XML, which motivated the updating course on the methodological platform, held in June 6-10 in São Paulo, with the participation of 16 representatives from Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Paraguay, Spain and Uruguay. Read More →

The adoption of English among SciELO Brazil journals has been increasing

The adoption of the English language is one of the advances that SciELO is promoting in order to increase the insertion, visibility and international impact of journals and the research they communicate. In recent years, the adoption of English has growing consistently among SciELO journals, which, from 2014 reached the milestone of publishing more in English than in Portuguese. The expectation of SciELO is that in the 2 to 3 forthcoming years 75% of the articles will be published in English and 40 to 50% in Portuguese. Read More →

SciELO in the major discovery services

All SciELO journal articles and eBooks are now covered by the major international Discovery Services which serve to locate and provide access to scientific information, and offer academic libraries the required tools for their academic, research and student communities. The Discovery Services have a specific focus on materials identified as relevant to the academic, research, educational, and learning communities. This advancement will contribute to enhancing the visibility and interoperability of SciELO indexed content. Read More →

Speeding up research communication: the actions of SciELO

The SciELO Program has been promoting the individualized publication of articles, increasing the frequency of publication and the anticipation of publication of new issues. The goal is to contribute to the improvement of SciELO journals in line with the current trend to accelerate research communication. Read More →

The advanced management of manuscript evaluations was the focus of the first ScholarOne refresher course at SciELO

The idea for the refresher course SciELO-ScholarOne, held August 7 in the auditorium of FAPES in São Paulo, came from the need to further improve the level of professionalization of the editorial teams of the SciELO journals that use ScholarOne. The course was attended by close to 180 participants, representing 77 journals from different areas of knowledge. Read More →

The impact of the migration to the ScholarOne® platform on the editorial flows of a journal in the Human Sciences [Originally published as the editorial in the Revista de Sociologia e Política vol. 23 n. 54]

The article discusses the results of the rationalization of the editorial routines of a scientific journal. Since the Revista de Sociologia e Política began to conduct its process of arbitration on the ScholarOne® platform, the time spent in decision-making has been standardized, and the work of the reviewers was improved. Indicators show that the platform is effective for the professionalization of editorial activities. Read More →

SciELO adopts CC-BY as main Open Access attribution

From 1st July 2015 the SciELO Program will adopt the Creative Commons license CC-BY as a standard of Open Access attribution to SciELO Brazil Collection. By this decision, SciELO aligns to the Open Access policies adopted by the leading journals and international publishers with the main purpose to increase and the options of access and reuse of the published articles. Read More →

SciELO updates the guide for publication of errata and retractions

In late-May 2015 the SciELO Program published the updated guide for publication of erratum, retraction and expression of concern. The guide was written based on international guidelines and recommendations and it is directed to editors of journals indexed in SciELO. Read More →

Online management of manuscripts is a required indexing criterion of SciELO

From 2015 on all journals indexed in SciELO Brazil should operate the review of manuscripts with the support of a system or service that records the flow of transactions and produce follow up reports and statistics. The aim is to strengthen the quality and credibility of the journals. Read More →

Internationalization of journals was the central topic of the 4th Annual SciELO Meeting

The extent of national and international dimensions as determinants of the performance of journals of Brazil dominated the program of the 4th Annual SciELO Meeting, held on December 2, at the FAPESP auditorium in São Paulo. Currently responsible for the communication of more than 25% of the national scientific production indexed internationally, the journals of Brazil influence the country’s international scientometric ranking, positively in number of articles and negatively in received citations per article. Read More →

The SciELO journals are being improved by the adoption of classic workflows relating to the online management of article submissions

Together with the journals that it indexes, SciELO is fostering the improvement of the management of the evaluation of article submissions in order to help overcome the various difficulties faced by the journals, and to strengthen the transparency of the processes. Part of this initiative is the use of automated management systems that organize the functions of the parties involved in the evaluation of article submissions, allow for the monitoring of the workflows and provide statistics on the corresponding activities, with a view to steering the systematic improvement of the processes. This post analyzes three classic workflows in the automated management of article submissions adopted by a group of SciELO journals whose promising results show the viability of SciELO’s strategy. Read More →

Why XML?

The XML structuring of full texts of all SciELO journals from 2015 ownwards represents a significant advance in the process of editing, publishing and interoperability of journals and the research they publish. With XML the process of quality control of the structure of the texts, their storage and retrieval in databases, exchange with other systems and display in different formats as well as in fixed and mobile reading devices will be more efficient. Read More →