EDITORIAL

Innovations in Jornal Vascular Brasileiro

Winston Bonetti Yoshida

Editor-in-chief, J Vasc Bras

Throughout the years, Jornal Vascular Brasileiro has undergone a process toward continuous improvement, progress and maturity. The year 2008, in particular, was quite impressive in that sense.

The first innovation was the high volume of articles submitted to Jornal Vascular Brasileiro in 2008 The number of submissions has increased about 58% since 2004, leaving us very pleased, perhaps because such increase sounds like a reflection of our continuous efforts to make the members of the Brazilian Society of Angiology and Vascular Surgery aware of the importance and value of publications in relation to the presentation of free papers.^1,2 Additionally, we have received, throughout this period, overseas submissions from countries such as Italy, the United States, India, France, Canada, and Belgium, unveiling an international trust, interest and appraisal regarding our journal.

As a result of this maturity process, we have placed a request for inclusion of our journal in PubMed/Medline. During the III Meeting of Editors of LILACS and SciELO Scientific Journals, held September 2008, in Rio de Janeiro (RJ), there was general agreement in the presentations that Latin American scientific journals should adapt to international criteria and request inclusion not only in Medline, but also in ISI’s Web of Science. Since we met these criteria, our request to Medline was placed in November 2008, and in January 2009 we placed a request to the ISI. We hope that the directors of Medline and the ISI appreciate our efforts to continuously improve editorial quality and punctuality of the journal. Throughout 2009, Jornal Vascular Brasileiro will be evaluated every issue. Thus, we summon all colleagues to make an additional effort to liven up the submissions, as this will facilitate and prompt the composition of each issue, an important criterion to achieve Medline approval. Similarly, we summon our reviewers to provide thorough and prompt revisions.

An innovation to be accomplished in 2009 is that all articles accepted in our journal can be accessed online on SciELO webpage, even prior to their print version. This resource, called ahead of print, is supported by SciELO and allows a longer time of exposure and access to our articles, favoring future citations, one of the methods used to evaluate the journal’s impact factor. In order to facilitate citations, Google^® search engine can now be used in our website (www.jvascbr.com.br). Readers can simply type the subject or the author's name to find any article published in J Vasc Br.

Another interesting innovation is that authors submitting their manuscripts to Jornal Vascular Brasileiro may include, in addition to photographs and figures, a short-length edited video to better illustrate the article. This resource will be made available to readers on SciELO webpage (www.scielo.br/jvb) through a link next to the article (under services).

Furthermore, we have reached final-stage implementation of the online process of submission and evaluation of articles in Jornal Vascular Brasileiro. A system for journal desktop publishing (Sistema Eletrônico de Editoração de Revistas, SEER) will be used; this is a publishing system-oriented program developed by the University of British Columbia, Canada, and the Brazilian Institute for Information in Science and Technology (Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia, IBICT) and modified by SciELO. Over the last 4 months, proper arrangements have been made to the eventual inclusion of Jornal Vascular Brasileiro, and we have progressed to final-stage tests to its definitive implementation. This new system plays a crucial role in the improvement of the process of submission and evaluation of our articles, bringing our journal into harmony with the best international journals.

Finally, also worth mentioning in this respect is the one additional year of support granted by CNPq. This is not an automatic extension; it implies a competition with a large number of national journals, which makes our achievement stand out.

Therefore, I reinforce to all colleagues the importance of concentrating efforts throughout 2009, in order to submit an avalanche of articles to Jornal Vascular Brasileiro and, thus, to collaborate on obtaining our international indexation, a long-desired goal of all members of the Brazilian Society of Angiology and Vascular Surgery.

References

• 1. Yoshida WB. Temas livres versus publicação. J Vasc Bras. 2005;4:319.
• 2. Yoshida WB, Holmo NF, Corregliano GT, Baldon KM, de Souza e Silva N. Publicações indexadas geradas a partir de resumos de congressos de angiologia e cirurgia vascular no Brasil. J Vasc Bras. 2008;7:293-296.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  26 May 2009
• Date of issue
  Mar 2009