Internationalization of knowledge and the enhancement of the quality and visibility of scientific Brazilian journals

Abstract

In the last fifteen years, Brazilian scientific journals have been encouraged to internationalize, so that the production of knowledge can be disseminated beyond the countries that speak Portuguese, in order to increase their visibility. The slow and gradual onset occurred mainly with the indexation of journals in recognized databases, such as SciELO, CUIDEN, and LILACS, which absorbed the scientific production of Latin American countries, but also in internationally scoped databases, which reach readers in the English language such as Medline, CINAHL, Scopus and Information Science Institute (ISI). Those indexations, and others, challenge Brazilian nursing, as the internationalization of the scientific journal is a process that requires planning, dedication, and the financial investment efforts of the editorial team. Several steps need to be performed, the first one of which is assumed that the articles must be in at least two languages where one of them is compulsorily to be in English. They should have open access to be read and should be recognized as carriers of knowledge which are mostly cited. Thereafter, a new application has started that is attracting influential and international researchers who are interested in submitting their manuscripts to journals published in Brazil. The need to promote the internationalization of Brazilian journals was one of the topics discussed at the Conference that commemorated 15 years of the SciELO Network - Scientific Electronic Library Online, on October 2013 in Sao Paulo-SP, which brought together specialists researchers and scientific communica tors of 25 countries. The scientific director of the SciELO Network, Dr. Rogerio Meneghini, based on his study of the international visibility of journals of China, South Korea, Brazil, India, Russia and South Africa, revealed that the collection of Brazilian scientific journals was ranked at fifth place in terms of international citations between those emerging countries, leaving them just ahead of South Africa. He highlighted that the number of articles published in Brazilian journals in English is lower than in the other four countries. Some nursing journals, especially those that are part of the SciELO collection a few years ago, began publishing articles in English, seeking to increase the visibility and citation of articles by researchers from other countries. There was also a growing incorporation of this practice in other journals that are not part of that network.