Let’s publish in our journals, read and cite them

One of the ailments affecting our science, common to all "developing" countries, is the scarcity of scientific journals with quality and visibility levels such that our scientists publish in them and do so with pride and satisfaction.

Notwithstanding, there are numerous examples of quality periodic publications produced in Latin America, a fact that shows that it is not an impossible task. Given both the number of researchers and the number of their publications in indexed journals, there is plenty of room for the production in the region of a much larger number of journals that can become recognized and appreciated. The efforts made by national organisms of science and technology in some countries deserve praise, but the attitude of many of our researchers leaves much to be desired.

The total number of periodic scientific publications produced in America, South of the Río Grande is unknown, but undoubtedly it reaches several tens of thousands given that, in each country, scientific societies of the most varied character and practically all academic institutions publish at least one and, in many cases, several journals. However, the number of journals included in indexes such as the Science Citation Index is only of a few tens. A regional system such as Scielo includes close to 400 journals, some of them from Spain. Latindex, a more comprehensive catalogue, contains a list of almost 20000 journal titles from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal, distributed in approximately equal parts between "hard" sciences and social sciences, which include the arts and humanities as well.

A good number of journals from the region are recognized and respected for their seriousness and for the quality of their editorial boards and their referees. Setting aside the chronic difficulty represented by the hegemonic character of the English language in science and technology, in many cases of indubitable quality the main reason for a low international appraisal are the poor diffusion and regularity. Both factors counteract important editorial efforts and speak against the mechanisms used for financing editorial efforts.

It is easy to ask scientists to publish in our journals, but before doing so it is indispensable to reach levels of quality, efficiency, expeditiousness and punctuality that make the latter deserve to be used as vehicles for a true and actualized exchange of knowledge and timely diffusion of findings and ideas, both in the region and in the world. As for researchers, it is necessary that they value more the efforts made to this end and submit their manuscripts for publication to those journals of proven competence. The disregard for local journals and the preference for publication in and citation from first world journals, even in the case of their own papers, should progressively disappear.

On the part of the journals and the organizations that support them, it is imperative to make great efforts so as to achieve significant improvements. Such improvements should not only cover the obvious qualitative aspects of the contents and the mechanisms and quality of refereeing, but also their efficient response to the authors and the possibility of an opportune distribution. The meritorious but often poorly efficient "amateurism" of scientific journal editors and their partial dedication to these chores should be replaced by a full time and highly professional dedication.

The initiatives for training scientific editorial staffs, as well as those for the evaluation, classification and indexing that are being developed at the institutional, national and regional levels ought to be reinforced and oriented so that, once and for all, complaints disappear and a strong group of quality journals emerge, admired by all, read and cited.

Miguel Laufer, 

Editor