SciELO 20 Years – September 26-28th, 2018

By Abel L Packer

In 2018, SciELO will celebrate 20 Years of operation towards advancing the quality and global visibility of the journals and the research they index, publish and interoperate in 15 countries. We shall celebrate with a series of events that will culminate with an international conference SciELO 20 Years, on September 26-28^th, 2018. Save this date in your agenda.

For sure, we have much to celebrate, the journals and their publishing institutions, their editors, editorial teams and research communities that publish and assess research, those who read and use research from their peers, researchers and information science and scientometric professionals, the coordinators of national and thematic collections, funding agencies and users in general. However, it is also necessary to acknowledge the persistent difficulties and barriers to the sustainable publication of many journals.

The presence of SciELO in 15 countries, supported by national research agencies, is a concrete expression of public policies in favor of improving national scientific publishing capacities and infrastructures. In many cases, however, there is a lack of resources available to individual journals, and, in general, insufficient support to value nationally edited journals and, therefore, the research they publish. One of the main objectives of SciELO is precisely to contribute to the sustainable increase of the journals’ quality and visibility. To this end, SciELO is continuously developing a space of convergence and collaboration with the journals, oriented towards the adoption of the state of the art of scholarly communication in line with the conditions, priorities, policies and editorial practices of the different disciplines and thematic areas. This common space is supported by the lines of action of professionalization, internationalization and financial sustainability. As a consequence, there is an advanced and dynamic process of insertion of SciELO journals into the international flow of scholarly communication, while strengthening the diversity and characteristics of the research they communicate.

SciELO 20 Years, therefore, represents an opportunity for a broad analysis of SciELO’s performance as a differentiated model of open access publication, as a strategy for the inclusive and global advancement of scholarly communication, of the journals and research they publish and as an international cooperation program. Four dimensions are equally decisive in giving due consideration to this analysis. Firstly, the evolution of national policies to support research and scholarly communication, with emphasis on the research assessment systems and the journals valuation they provide. Second, the methodological and technological innovations that are underway in scholarly communication aligned with the open science movement that lead to the emergence of a radical renewal of the velocity and forms of publishing. Third, the contribution of journals as critical components of the scientific enterprise and the importance of editorial policies and the editors proactivity. Fourth, the SciELO Program contribution, its indexing, publishing and interoperability functions and collective solutions building.

These dimensions of the performance analysis of SciELO in general and the insertion of journals into the international flow of scholarly information require and project the SciELO 20 Years conference as a landmark international forum for the exchange of ideas, information, knowledge and experiences, with the participation of funding agencies authorities, SciELO editors, coordinators of national collections, representatives of scientific editors associations, open access advancement and open science programs, and researchers and information science professionals.

In preparation for the SciELO 20 Years Conference, activities and seminars will be held involving the SciELO Network national collections, editors and experts. On September 24^th and 25^th , prior to the international conference, a meeting of the Coordinators of the SciELO Network will be held, which will analyze and share the advances, difficulties and expectations of the national collections in face of the challenges and innovations ahead.

Whatever is your insertion in scholarly research and communication, we rely on your active participation in the celebration of SciELO 20 Years.

Translated from the original in Portuguese by Lilian Nassi-Calò.