Editorial

We are pleased to present the 2017 third and last issue of Direito GV Law Review (v. 13, n. 3, Sept.-Dec. 2017).

This issue presents a set of twelve original articles within quite different subjects. Ten were written by Brazilian researchers and two by foreign researchers (from Portugal and South Africa). This issue also includes a translation into Portuguese of the German text entitled “The naturalistic challenge of a criminal law founded on guilt”, by Professor Klaus Günther.

This year, Capes has completed another cycle of evaluation of the Brazilian graduate programs in Law (quadrennium 2013-2016). In the evaluation process of the programs, the scientific journals were also evaluated. According to Capes data, only 67 journals evaluated in 2017 were classified in stratum A1, in a sample of 2,059 titles. Direito GV Law Review remained in stratum A1, which means that it takes a place among the very restricted set (3.2%) of journals in the upper stratum.¹

The editors of scientific journals have barely learned that Qualis/ Capes defines a posteriori its evaluation criteria. Thus, when we begin a new quadrennium, it is not possible to adopt the criteria applied in the previous quadrennium as rules to be thoroughly followed. Editors tend to consider these criteria as a starting point for their action. Based on them, they undertake futurology exercises in order to predict evaluation behavior in subsequent years.

The goals and strategies for each issue are defined in a nebulous regulatory environment, which brings obvious difficulties to the professionalization of scientific journals in the area. Nevertheless, some directives are likely to remain for the 2017-2020 quadrennium. The first of them is the policy of encouraging researchers to publish more in journals and less in books or in book chapters. This may mean an increase in the volume of articles submitted to the journals of the higher strata, which may be offset by an increase in the number of journals in these strata in the next evaluations – despite the lack of certainty about the criteria that makes a journal eligible to the higher strata. In the last four years, Capes has rehearsed some models of impact measurement, but has not defined the metrics to be adopted. The other directive will be the annual evaluation of journals by number, and no more, it seems, by volume. This measure will require professionalization and control over the percentages of ad hoc reviewers, authors (doctors or not), HEIs of origin, etc.

Besides the evaluation of Qualis/ Capes, Direito GV Law Review has sought to implement the policies proposed by the Scielo platform. Although I do not always consider the specifics of the areas or subareas, my assessment is that Scielo has clearer objectives to justify the indexing of journals in its base, which is extremely important for publishers and managers to program their actions. The tripod (i) internationalization of Brazilian research, (ii) professional management and (iii) financial sustainability of journals should not change in the coming years. And these are undeniably important goals for any scientific journal. We are already considering Scielo’s suggestions regarding the adoption of preprints, continued publication, ahead of print and others. In addition, the team of Direito GV Law Review will be present at the VII Annual Meeting of Scielo, on December 12, 2017, and attentive to the news for the year 2018.

Lastly, I take advantage of the last Editorial of the year to thank the researchers who acted as ad hoc referees in the year 2017. Ad hoc referees donate their time and knowledge in an anonymous and unpaid way so that the authors can improve their researches and reach the final versions of the articles we bring to the public. This work is fundamental to increase the quality of law research in Brazil and, therefore, we owe much to these researchers. That is why I thank you all!

Good reading!

Catarina Helena Cortada Barbieri
Editor-in-chief

• 1
  See Relatório de avaliação quadrienal 2013-2016. Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior – CAPES. Diretoria de Avaliação. 19 set. 2017. p. 10 et seq. Available at: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a= v&pid=sites&srcid=Y2FwZXMuZ292LmJyfGF2YWxpYWNhby1xdWFkcmllbmFsfGd4OjdhNTkzMTAxMDgxYzc1YWU. Accessed on: Nov. 15, 2017.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  Sep-Dec 2017