Fourteen years ago, I start the editorial management of the Brazilian Journal of Oceanography, periodical of a fifty-year tradition and edited by the Instituto Oceanográfico of the University of São Paulo. At the time, the magazine was in a difficult phase, with problems of periodicity and lack of papers. It was urgent to transform it into an attractive journal, inserted in the context of current oceanographic science. Here was the challenge.
Editors of scientific journals, especially Brazilian, know how difficult editorial management is. With the BJO at first I found the lack of resources and then the authors' discredit in sending their work to a magazine without quality indicators. However, the journal had an old and uninterrupted trajectory, despite the difficulties encountered along the way. For the purpose of recording this moment, I will recall here how it all began.
The idea of producing a scientific journal came from Wladimir Besnard, the first director of the recently founded Instituto Paulista de Oceanografia, who sought to gather technical and scientific knowledge that would decisively influence the development of fishing activities in the country. The Boletim do Instituto Paulista de Oceanografia, the first vehicle for the dissemination of oceanography in Brazil, was born in June 1950. Soon after, its name changed to the Boletim do Instituto Oceanográfico and for 43 years circulated worldwide, being distributed to more than 500 libraries. In 1996 the editorial policy was directed to bring the magazine to a national context. The name, visual and periodicity were changed and consolidated in the Revista Brasileira de Oceanografia, from volume 45.
When I took over the direction of the magazine in 2003, I began to reformulate the form and content of the journal, aiming both to make it again attractive to readers and consolidated the scientific milieu. In March of that same year, with volume 52, the Brazilian Journal of Oceanography (BJO) was launched, totally reformulated and focused on increasing and maintaining the flow of quality papers. Structural modifications encompassed more stringent submission requirements, English writing, sectoral editorial commission, and increased periodicity for four issues per year. It was also adopted new and modern visual. In 2010, the journal became online, with an electronic editorial management system, and paper printing ceased in the last issue of volume 57 (2009).
The electronic media increased the visibility of the journal, with consequent increase of impact. BJO has become one of the 31 Brazilian journals to have its impact factor calculated by the ISI (Web of Knowledge) and this index has been increasing consistently since 2007, from 0.23 to 0.67 in 2009. By 2015 the relative impact factor for the last 5 years was 0.85. The journal is part of the important collection of SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online) journals and more recently it also integrates the SCOPUS database.
The entry to SciELO was a decisive landmark in the recent history of BJO, since only magazines with strict quality criteria are admitted and the maintenance in the collection goes through annual evaluations. So, we were walking the right path and the magazine could now grow. We have received financial support for national scientific publications sponsored by CNPq (National Research Counsil), USP and FUNDESPA (Foundation for Water Studies and Research). Today the Brazilian Journal of Oceanography is a reference not only in Brazil, but in Latin America. We publish papers by researchers from many countries. Likewise, the body of reviewers is broad and covers specialists from countries on four continents.
Much of the work accomplished was due to the disinterested and effective collaboration of countless people: the Editorial Committee and the reviewers, always attentive in the greater objective of contributing to the gain in quality of the published papers; of the technical staff involved, always dedicated and enthusiastic, winner of the daily challenges. To them my deep gratitude.
To my successor I wish for such a good fortune. I am certain that he will be able to raise the Brazilian Journal of Oceanography to ever higher levels. These years to the forehead of the magazine were for me of much responsibility and commitment, but of great joy. Joy for being aware that quality science has been published in Brazil in an active national vehicle of long tradition, which reflects the maturation of the scientific community and the magazine itself.
São Paulo, November 22, 2016.
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
Oct-Dec 2016
