Monthly Archives: July 2014

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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 →

The SciELO in Perspective blog celebrates its first year

Social networks are an integral part of the scholarly communication process, acting as they do as sources of access to curated information, as a medium of dissemination and marketing, and as sources of the so called altmetrics that measure the visibility and influence of research on the Web. The adoption of social networks by the SciELO journals is a priority of the SciELO Program in its professionalization and internationalization action lines. In July 2014, the blog SciELO in Perspective celebrated it first successful year of operation, and is defining itself as the common blog platform for the SciELO journals. Read More →

Author credits …. Credited for what?

When the publication of a scientific article has been the joint responsibility of dozens of people, the following questions can arise: Who is the author? How is credit apportioned? and Does everyone have the same level of responsibility? A recent editorial in Nature puts forward a taxonomy which can be used to categorize the different roles which come together to make up the concept of authorship. It is interesting to make a comparison with how the film industry addresses this issue when apportioning credits in the awarding of Oscars. Read More →

The Open Data movement: international consolidation

The open data movement – the availability of scientific research data for preservation, searching, using and citing – is gaining followers in all sectors of the academic world, and with editors, publishers, research institutions and funding agencies. The movement will allow greater interoperability, transparency, visibility and research impact, in addition to ensuring the digital preservation of the original data that would otherwise have a tendency to be lost or become inaccessible with the passage of time. Read More →

South America science in Nature

The celebrated journal Nature devotes a special section of its June 11 issue to an analysis of South American research output, highlighting areas of excellence and innovation which are internationally recognized, and fields of collaboration with other countries both inside and outside the region. The articles in this section stress the economic and infrastructural inequalities within the region, as well as the low levels of investment in research and development, and point to FAPESP as a successful model of investment directly linked to a state’s GDP. Read More →