Challenges beyond the scientific knowledge production

For several decades, innumerous appeals and reflections on how to build the nursing science and achieve visibility in the scientific world led researchers to make efforts to produce knowledge that contributed to the well-being of people, improving their quality of life, relieving their suffering and transforming the reality in which we live. In addition to knowledge production, it was necessary to invest in its dissemination, so that knowledge could be shared, promoting dialogue among peers and transforming the practice.

With the use of scales to assess the quality of knowledge production, the scientific community realized that only publishing was not enough; it was necessary that researchers consume the knowledge generated by other researchers, quoting them and dialoguing with the results of other research through their papers.

The emergence of electronic databases represented a great facilitator for searching intellectual production and for interaction among national and international researchers. However, there are new databases every day, which increasingly impose more stringent quality standards that must be met for the permanence of journals in these bases.

This has required more stringent criteria for accepting articles for publication, the intensification of principles and foundations for scientific writing⁽¹⁾ and a concern to ensure the scientific integrity of publications.

Despite scientific efforts by researchers to ensure more ethically and scientifically qualified publications and the speed of dissemination of research, it is not possible to ensure that other researchers and practicing professionals will consult and use the knowledge disseminated by scientific journals. The challenge of the applicability of knowledge remains, despite the large amount of information available.

To break this barrier, we propose a less hermetic language that can be understood by scientists from fields apart of that in which the research was produced, by an audience larger than that of the authors’ original area of expertise⁽²⁾.

Thus, journals seek more current means of communicating with readers, combining social networks, talk shows, releases and other media, along the traditional publishing of journals.

The [new] challenges are about using the full potential of electronic media to enhance positive aspects of the traditional scientific communication flow and defining policies to support the new structure of scientific communication flow, ensuring quality, preservation and dissemination of information as a public good⁽³⁾.

In 2015, under new scientific direction, REBEn reinforces and renews its values related to a dissemination that is systematic, updated and conscious of the importance of knowledge towards a bibliometric improvement of the journal, according to ethical standards defined by the national and international community of dissemination media. The biggest challenge is to ensure that the publication of knowledge will provide readers, authors and reviewers with tools that can effectively contribute to the practice of nursing, aiming to improve it in order to transform health-disease profiles and the quality of life of the population.

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  Kotz D, Cals JWL, Tugwell P, Knottneru JA. Introducing a new series on effective writing and publishing of scientific papers. J Clin Epidemiol [Internet]. 2013 Apr [cited 2015 Feb 02];66(4):359-60. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23452725
  » http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23452725
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  Bredan A. Inheritance of poor writing habits. To improve scientific writing we must break the chain of transmission of complex writing style from senior to junior scientists. EMBO Rep [Internet]. 2013 Jul [cited 2015 Feb 02];14(7):593-6. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23732539
  » http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23732539
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  Castro RCF. Impacto da Internet no fluxo da comunicação científica em saúde[Impact of the Internet on communication flow of scientific health information]. Rev Saude Publica [Internet]. 2006 Aug [cited 2015 Feb 02];40(Spec no):57-63. Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16924304 Portuguese.
  » http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16924304

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  Jan-Feb 2015