Peer review is seen as one of the pillars – if not the most important – of scientific communication. Despite the difficulties in going through the review process, the authors believe that the process improves the quality of the manuscript, and they want to be published on refereed journals that have a sound evaluation mechanism. Recent cases of attempted manipulation of the peer review process by fake reviews concern the international scientific community, however, it does not undermine its credibility and trust. The peer review crisis can be an opportunity to strengthen and improve the process. … Read More →
The Elsevier you know is not the only Elsevier
The current science publisher Elsevier may have the same name as the venerable publishing house that published the work of great scientists in the 16th and 17th century, but there is in fact no historical connection other than the name. … 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 →
Peer review modalities, pros and cons
The double-blind peer review system is chosen by most researchers as an effective and efficient mechanism by eliminating subjective judgment as well as authorship and affiliation biases, allowing to focus on the quality of the manuscript. Nature reports that authors can, from now on, choose this form of review for their manuscripts. Here are discussed the most common forms of peer review, its features, advantages and disadvantages, including those regarding SciELO Brazil journals. … Read More →
Could grant proposal reviews be made available openly?
Researchers have been discussing what would be the impact of making the review process of grant proposals more open and transparent, in order to support the preparation of better proposals and acknowledge the work of the reviewers. A recently published paper in Nature examines the impact of two articles on the open availability of the review of research proposals and the possibility of changing the assessment after publication of the results. … Read More →
Study analyzes the use of social networks in the assessment of scientific impact
The use of social networks in science communication has been increasing on a large scale, and specific platforms have been created for interaction and information sharing among researchers. A study by researchers at the University of St. Gallen, in Switzerland evaluated whether and how scientific impact can be measured by social media data analysis, and how this approach correlates to traditional metrics. … Read More →
Gender inequality in science varies among disciplines
Certain disciplines have a lower percentage of women than others. A study published in Science puts forward the hypothesis that there are proportionately fewer women in fields where it is believed that brilliance and innate talent are required rather than hard work and dedication. The study, which looked at 1,820 researchers in institutions of higher education in the United States, showed an inverse relationship between the fields that value innate talent and the number of women represented in these fields. … Read More →
350 years of scientific publication: from the “Journal des Sçavans” and Philosophical Transactions to SciELO
Is has been 350 years since the first numbers of the first journals of scientific nature were published – Journal des Sçavans and Philosophical Transactions. With the support of the new printing technology handwritten letters used in the communication between researchers and scholars have been replaced. There is much to celebrate in these 350 years in which scientific journals contributed to the record and memory of the advancement of science. Online Web publishing is the most important transformation of scientific journals since that year 1665. … Read More →
Editorial ethics – the geography of plagiarism
A recent study published in PNAS on 757,000 arXiv.org documents about the reuse of text (text overlap) shows that this practice is more common in some countries than others, but the results seem to show that the authors who extensively copy texts from others are also the less cited. … Read More →
Editorial ethics: fraudulent arbitration
In recent months there have been a significant amount of retractions of scientific papers due to fraudulent arbitration processes. Apparently “paper mills” are appearing on the market that offer researchers, for a price, the possibility that their name appear in an article in a high Impact Factor journal (although not being the author). … Read More →
Odontoestomatología – first Uruguayan journal entirely in English in SciELO
On December 4th, the Facultad de Odontología, Universidad de la República del Uruguay marked a milestone in scientific publication in the country. After eight years of scheduled tasks the journal Odontoestomatología, indexed in SciELO, is the first journal in the country available online, in open access entirely in English. … Read More →
UNESCO and SciELO launch a new book on SciELO on its 15 years of operation
UNESCO and SciELO jointly announce the launch of a new book that takes an in-depth look at SciELO’s beginnings, undertakings and operations since its inception 15 years ago. The book highlights SciELO’s pioneering work in adopting the open access publishing model in 1998, a model which was later endorsed by the Budapest and Berlin Declarations, and in 2009 by UNESCO’s own open access policy. … Read More →
The SciELO Network publishes more than 500,000 articles in open access during its 17 years of operation
With more than 500 thousand articles indexed and published in open access, the SciELO Network begins 2015 having achieved a notable milestone. On the eve of the completion of 17 years of continuous operation, this milestone is a result of the ongoing operation of 13 certified journal collections that adopted the SciELO Model between 1998 and 2009, inclusive. This post presents SciELO as it is today, and highlights the commitment of SciELO in advancing the professionalization, internationalization and financial sustainability of journals. … Read More →
It is time to review the Brazilian postgraduation system
The Brazilian graduate system has fallen behind and needs major modifications. A panel convened to analyze the postgraduation since its initiation in the early 70’s envisaging a more effective system with respect to the quality of our students and the scientific enterprise in Brazil is needed. … Read More →
Article analyses saturation of peer reviewers
Online publication caused a significant increase in the number of journals and articles worldwide, but the number of researchers has not increased proportionately. Thus, the peer review process, which ensures quality and credibility to scientific articles, is saturated and as a result the quality of reviews is decreasing. Two articles in Nature address this issue, the first one proposes a hybrid model to evaluate the articles and the second reports an online service for registration and publication of reviews, in order to grant credit and recognition to the reviewers. … Read More →
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