Effect of SciELO Open Access on Brazilian Scientific Journals

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Effect of SciELO Open Access on Brazilian
Scientific Journals

• Lewis Joel Greene
• Editor, Brazilian Journal of Medical and
  Biological Research
• Professor Titular, Depto. Biologia Celular,
  Molecular e Bioagentes Patogênicos Fac. Medicina
  de Ribeirão Preto - USP
• ljgreene_at_fmrp.usp.br

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Topics

• Brazilian scientific journals.
• Lost Science in the Third World.
• Scielo Open Access
• Effect of Scielo-JCR data
• CAPES Portal

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Brazilian Scientific Journals

• www.scielo.br
• www.scielo.org
• 1300 journals titles traditional academic,
  institutional and professional in all areas.
• 400 journals functional but heterogeneous in
  quality and punctuality.
• CNPq, an agency for supporting research, spends
  USD 7,000/year on 150 journals 1 million US
• Most copies are free to society members,
  libraries, and are used for exchange.
• Very few paid subscriptions.
• Very few papers read.

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• Emphasis on being excluded from ISI (JCR)
  indexing and citation system.
• Few journals of developing countries are read in
  or outside their country.
• Diagnosis was correct.
• Remedy was not.

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• Being indexed is not sufficient.

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Journal Reality Visibility Availability
References in Journals Abstract services Indexing
services Current contents PubMed, WOS (ISI)
Visibility
The paper in hand Reprint requests Libraries
(institutional subscriptions)
Traditional availability
www.scielo.br www.scielo.org www.doaj.org CAPES
Portal for Brazilian academics - www.capes.gov.br
Open access availability
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Reality of Journals Published in Developed
Countries

• In the First World visibility and availability
  are linked by effective libraries supported by
  government grants for overhead to universities
  to pay for institutional subscriptions to
  journal.
• This situation does not exist in developing
  countries.
• Now Brazil has Scielo Open Access.

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Scientific Electronic Library On Line SciELO
SciELO-Brazil is Open Access Since 1997

• www.scielo.br
• www.scielo.org
• Digital, on-line
• 176 journals in April 2007
• Peer-reviewed
• No cost to reader or journal
• Initiative of BIREME (WHO, OPAS) and FAPESP
  (State of São Paulo Research Agency) for the
  development of software and for maintaining the
  Server.
• Brazilian agencies (Bireme, FAPESP, CAPES, and
  CNPq) pay the bill, so far.

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SciELO International

• www.scielo.org
• Software is made available to other countries who
  use peer-review and the same entry criteria as
  Brazil.
• Argentina(24), Chile(63), Columbia(22), Cuba(20),
  Spain(31), Venezuela(28), are already in the
  system.
• In development Costa Rica(9), Mexico(15),
  Peru(21), Portugal(13) and Uruguay(6) and West
  Indian(1).
• Total with Brazil 364 journals (April 2007).

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SciELO Open Access Publishing www.scielo.br

• The problem how do you inform the world
  scientific community that SciELO exists? How to
  reach it? What areas are covered? What languages
  are used?
• Run ads in Nature and Science? The New York
  Times? Google?

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• Being covered by SciELO is not sufficient!

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Direct Links Amplify the Penetration of SciELO
www.scielo.br, www.scielo.org

• Links from PubMed (1999), the WOS (2000), DOAJ
  (2003), Google (2004), CrossRef (2004) connect
  directly to the title page of the paper in
  SciELO.
• These links permit the 35 Brazilian journals
  indexed by PubMed and WOS to become easily
  accessible to all international scientists.

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How do You Measure the Effect of SciELO Open
Access on Brazilian Scientific Journals?
www.scielo.br.
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Total Number of Articles Downloaded from
www.scielo.br (Includes Robots)
What happened between 2003 and 2004?
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Total Number of Citations
Data from ISI Thomson
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Total Number of Citations Linear Regression
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Impact Factor
Data from ISI Thomson
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Impact Factor Linear Regression
Data from ISI Thomson
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Immediacy Index Citations in the same year as
publication
Data from ISI Thomson
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Cited Half-Life
Data from ISI Thomson
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Limitations of Present Data

• These data are not completely satisfactory
  because ISI data are available for only 22 of 176
  SciELO journals and only 10 are complete.
• Self-comparisons such as total citations for 2004
  versus 1998 for the same journal are weak.

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• The ranking of a journal in comparison with 4500
  journals covered by JCR, in terms of a specific
  characteristic, can provide useful information
  about the effect of SciELO on these journals.
• A low percentage in this context indicates a
  high position in the rank order and is good.

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Effect of SciELO on the Ranking of the Braz. J.
Med. Biol. Res. in relation to all other journals
covered by JCR. Data from ISI-Thomson
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Braz. J. Med. Biol. Res. - Total Citations Rank
in JCR Before and After SciELO
Data from ISI Thomson
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Braz. J. Med. Biol. Res. - Impact Factor Rank in
JCR Before and After SciELO.
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Rank in JCR Before and After SciELO.
Journals
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www.scielo.org www.scielo.br

• SciELO OPEN ACCESS increased the readership and
  citations of some scientific journals published
  in Brazil, but not to the same extent for all.
• Until now visits to and downloads from SciELO are
  to a large extent Brazilian and show a high
  prevalence of users who speak Latin languages.
• SciELO must increase its penetration of the
  international community (www.scielo.org) and
  inform the rest of world that 50 of the texts
  are in English.
• www.scielo.org is an international consortium of
  countries who speak Latin languages and we would
  expect them to have the same experience as
  Brazil.

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CAPES Portal

• Open Access for Brazilian university professors,
  post-graduate students and undergraduate
  students.
• 10,377 international journals and links to
  SciELO.
• 151 databases.
• 181 institutions with courses in post-graduation.
• 1.3 million academics have access to this
  restricted form of open access.

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CAPES Portal

• 34 million dollars paid by CAPES (Agency
  responsible for Post-Graduation, Ministry of
  Education) in 2005.
• 27 million accesses to complete texts in 2005.
• USD 1.26 per access to complete text rather than
  US 25-US 60.
• USD 0.35 per access to data banks.

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CAPES Portal

• CAPES PORTAL and SciELO complement each other by
  providing Open Access to the international and
  national literature, respectively.
• Before the CAPES Portal (1995) Brazilian
  scientists were always 1-2 years behind in the
  international literature.
• Now we and our students can read a paper the day
  it goes on-line at the same time as other
  scientists through out the world.
• A form of open access limited to 1,000,000
  Brazilian academics.

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• Many thanks to Abel Packer, Adalberto Tardelli,
  Regina C.F. Castro and Rogério Meneghini
  (BIREME), James Testa (ISI-Thomson) for making
  data available to me and Clarice Izumi and André
  R. Abrahão (Faculty of Medicine of Ribeirão
  Preto, University of São Paulo) for assistance in
  the preparation of this presentation.

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Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological
Research
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Campus of Ribeirão Preto, University of São Paulo
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If you havent heard, Brazil will be hexa
champion in 2010.
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THANK YOU!
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Total Number of Articles Downloaded by Country in
2005 (www.scielo.br)
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National versus International Scientific Journals

• The best Brazilian science is published in high
  impact international journals.

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Number of Research Articles Indexed by ISI
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Why Publish National Scientific Journals

• Memory of national scientific production.
• To inform scientists and society of progress in
  science.
• To define and implement criteria of quality for
  doing science and publishing science.

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Why Publish National Scientific Journals

• To communicate the results of research of
  national or regional interest.
• To communicate the results of Brazilian research
  to the rest of the world.
• To stimulate the development and consolidation of
  research areas in Brazil.