Abel Laerte Packer

The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship

There is an urgent need to improve the infrastructure supporting the reuse of scholarly data. A diverse set of stakeholders—representing academia, industry, funding agencies, and scholarly publishers—have come together to design and jointly endorse a concise and measureable set of principles that we refer to as the FAIR Data Principles. The intent is that these may act as a guideline for those wishing to enhance the reusability of their data holdings. Distinct from peer initiatives that focus on the human scholar, the FAIR Principles put specific emphasis on enhancing the ability of machines to automatically find and use the data, in addition to supporting its reuse by individuals. This Comment is the first formal publication of the FAIR Principles, and includes the rationale behind them, and some exemplar implementations in the community.

Is there science beyond English? Initiatives to increase the quality and visibility of non-English publications might help to break down language barriers in scientific communication.

Of the past 25 winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature, only 9 wrote their masterpieces in English; the remaining 16 laureates wrote in other native languages. Many of their works were eventually translated into English, which was probably necessary for international recognition and the attention of the Swedish Nobel Prize committee. The translators faced the arduous task of transferring the splendour of the original text into a different semantic, syntactic and sometimes cultural context to make it appeal to a wider audience. ![][1] Most Nobel laureates in Physics, Chemistry, and Physiology or Medicine do not face the challenge of translating their works into another language before gaining recognition. Many speak English as their first language and even non‐native English speakers usually publish their discoveries in English. Furthermore, given that English is the lingua franca of science, the international community—including the Nobel Prize committees at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Karolinska Institute—do not have to wait for a translation. The situation is reminiscent of the ancient and medieval worlds, when scholars could communicate only in Latin until great historical literates, such as Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare and Martin Luther, promoted the use of the Italian, English and German languages, respectively, by writing in their native languages. > Any scientist must therefore master English—at least to some extent—to obtain international recognition and to access relevant publications In fact, English has become the modern lingua franca in a world that is economically, scientifically and culturally largely dominated by Anglo‐American countries. Any scientist must therefore master English—at least to some extent—to obtain international recognition and to access relevant publications. But although this makes communication between scientists much easier, it also creates problems for non‐English‐speaking countries. Even if their scientists are able to read English publications, to reap the societal benefits they must … [1]: /embed/graphic-1.gif

Articles by Latin American Authors in Prestigious Journals Have Fewer Citations

Background The journal Impact factor (IF) is generally accepted to be a good measurement of the relevance/quality of articles that a journal publishes. In spite of an, apparently, homogenous peer-review process for a given journal, we hypothesize that the country affiliation of authors from developing Latin American (LA) countries affects the IF of a journal detrimentally. Methodology/Principal Findings Seven prestigious international journals, one multidisciplinary journal and six serving specific branches of science, were examined in terms of their IF in the Web of Science. Two subsets of each journal were then selected to evaluate the influence of authors affiliation on the IF. They comprised contributions (i) with authorship from four Latin American (LA) countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico) and (ii) with authorship from five developed countries (England, France, Germany, Japan and USA). Both subsets were further subdivided into two groups: articles with authorship from one country only and collaborative articles with authorship from other countries. Articles from the five developed countries had IF close to the overall IF of the journals and the influence of collaboration on this value was minor. In the case of LA articles the effect of collaboration (virtually all with developed countries) was significant. The IFs for non-collaborative articles averaged 66% of the overall IF of the journals whereas the articles in collaboration raised the IFs to values close to the overall IF. Conclusion/Significance The study shows a significantly lower IF in the group of the subsets of non-collaborative LA articles and thus that country affiliation of authors from non-developed LA countries does affect the IF of a journal detrimentally. There are no data to indicate whether the lower IFs of LA articles were due to their inherent inferior quality/relevance or psycho-social trend towards under-citation of articles from these countries. However, further study is required since there are foreseeable consequences of this trend as it may stimulate strategies by editors to turn down articles that tend to be under-cited.

International versus national oriented Brazilian scientific journals. A scientometric analysis based on SciELO and JCR-ISI databases

SummarySciELO (Scientific Electronic Library on Line, www.scielo.bireme.br) is aprogram aimed at offering a core of Brazilian Scientific Journals in an open access mode at internet. This initiative has been followed by other Latin American, Caribbean and Iberian countries. Along with the development of the open accessed electronic library, a complementary scientometric/bibliometric database has been set up which permit to retrieve citation data of more than 40,000 articles. The robustness that this database has now achieved allows one to make important studies which were not possible before, using only the international Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) database.

Comparison of scientists of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA on the basis of the h-index

A new scientometric indicator, the h-index, has been recently proposed (Hirsch JE. Proc Natl Acad Sci 2005; 102: 16569-16572). The index avoids some shortcomings of the calculation of the total number of citations as a parameter to evaluate scientific performance. Although it has become known only recently, it has had widespread acceptance. A comparison of the average h-index of members of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences (BAS) and of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA (NAS-USA) was carried out for 10 different areas of science. Although, as expected, the comparison was unfavorable to the members of the BAS, the imbalance was distinct in different areas. Since these two academies represent, to a significant extent, the science of top quality produced in each country, the comparison allows the identification of the areas in Brazil that are closer to the international stakeholders of scientific excellence. The areas of Physics and Mathematics stand out in this context. The heterogeneity of the h-index in the different areas, estimated by the median dispersion of the index, is significantly higher in the BAS than in the NAS-USA. No elements have been collected in the present study to provide an explanation for this fact.

SciELO: uma metodologia para publicação eletrônica

Descreve a Metodologia SciELO - Scientific Electronic Library Online para a publicacao eletronica de periodicos cientificos, abordando temas como a transicao da publicacao impressa em papel para a publicacao eletronica, o processo de comunicacao cientifica, os principios que nortearam o desenvolvimento da metodologia, sua aplicacao no site SciELO, seus modulos e componentes, os instrumentos nos quais esta baseada etc. O artigo discute, tambem, as potencialidades e tendencias para a area no Brasil e America Latina, apontando questoes e propostas que deverao ser abordadas e solucionadas pela metodologia. Conclui que a Metodologia SciELO e uma solucao eficiente, flexivel e ampla para a publicacao cientifica eletronica.

Articles with authors affiliated to Brazilian institutions published from 1994 to 2003 with 100 or more citations: I - the weight of international collaboration and the role of the networks

Articles with 100 citations or more in the scientific literature and with at least one author with Brazilian affiliation, were identified in the Thomson-ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) Web of Science bibliometric database, covering a 10-year period, from 1994 to 2003; 248 (0.23%) out of a total of 109,916 articles with Brazilian affiliation were identified. This study was primarily carried out to identify thematic nuclei of excellence in research that had major impact in the international literature (Meneghini and Packer 2006). The regional and institutional affiliation distributions of these articles follow approximately that of the total of Brazilian articles in the ISI database. However, some significant deviations are observed derived from the outstanding performance of a few groups responsible for the publication of the HC-ISI (Highly cited ISI) papers. The international collaboration and the network organization of work played a fundamental role in these results. It is evident that the role played by organizations in research networks as well as the international collaborations exerted strong influence in the impact of these articles, although with distinct amplitude in the different fields.

Articles with authors affiliated to Brazilian institutions published from 1994 to 2003 with 100 or more citations: II - identification of thematic nuclei of excellence in Brazilian science

Articles with 100 citations or more in the scientific literature and with at least one author with Brazilian affiliation, were identified in the Thomson-ISI (Institute for Scientific Information) Web of Science bibliometric database covering a 10-year period, from 1994 to 2003 (see Packer and Meneghini 2006); 248 (0.23%) out of a total of 109,916 articles with Brazilian affiliation were identified. This study was primarily carried out to identify thematic nuclei of excellence in research that had major impact in the international literature. Twelve of these nuclei in the fields of Biomedicine, Medicine, Biology, Physic, Chemistry and Astronomy were considered outstanding and their genesis and development were described. The weight of factors such as international collaboration and network organization are distinct in these areas and the reasons for that are discussed.

SciELO: una metodología para la publicación electrónica

It describes the SciELO Methodology Scientific Electronic Library Online for electronic publishing of scientific periodicals, examining issues such as the transition from traditional printed publication to electronic publishing, the scientific communication process, the principles which founded the methodology development, its application in the building of the SciELO site, its modules and components, the tools use for its construction etc. The article also discusses the potentialities and trends for the area in Brazil and Latin America, pointing out questions and proposals which should be investigated and solved by the methodology. It concludes that the SciELO Methodology is an efficient, flexible and wide solution for the scientific electronic publishing.

A eclosão dos periódicos do Brasil e cenários para o seu porvir

Os periodicos de qualidade do Brasil alcancaram, nos ultimos anos, um notavel avanco, com a crescente presenca nos indices bibliograficos internacionais e na web, impulsionados principalmente pela comunicacao de resultados de pesquisa de autores brasileiros das diferentes areas do conhecimento e com uso diferenciado dos idiomas ingles e portugues. Pelo menos 80% dos seus artigos originais e de revisao indexados internacionalmente tem afiliacao brasileira e representam cerca de 30% do total da producao cientifica indexada do Brasil. Porem, essa centralidade nacional e acompanhada de baixo impacto, medido pelo numero de citacoes recebidas nos indices, em comparacao ao que obtem os periodicos dos paises desenvolvidos. Embora o desempenho seja compativel com o dos periodicos de paises emergentes e a publicacao em acesso aberto resulte em cifras extraordinarias de downloads de artigos, boa parte dos periodicos do Brasil enfrenta o desafio de qualificar-se para, de modo concomitante, competir nacional e internacionalmente por manuscritos de melhor qualidade e melhorar o desempenho nos indices internacionais. Essa almejada qualificacao requer a superacao das limitacoes inerentes as condicoes institucionais, de gestao e financiamento nas quais operam e o avanco da profissionalizacao, internacionalizacao e inovacoes nos processos de editoracao, publicacao e disseminacao, alinhados ao estado da arte internacional. Este artigo apresenta um panorama das principais caracteristicas bibliometricas e de gestao editorial do conjunto dos 400 periodicos do Brasil indexados no SciELO, Scopus e WoS e projeta cenarios de mudanca na composicao atual com a promocao de periodicos de referencia internacional e na forma como sao avaliados e financiados.