The innovative and enterprising course of the Latin American Journal of Nursing and the adoption of an internationalization policy

EDITORIAL

The innovative and enterprising course of the Latin American Journal of Nursing and the adoption of an internationalization policy

Isabel Amélia Costa Mendes^I; Maria Helena Palucci Marziale^II

Editors of Latin American Journal of Nursing of Ribeirão Preto of the University of São Paulo at Ribeirão Preto College of Nursing - WHO Collaborating Centre for Nursing Research Development:

^IFull Professor, e-mail: [e-mail]

^IIFull Professor, e-mail: [e-mail]

The concept of technology presupposes the incorporation of knowledge. This process can result in innovations that produce new services and/or new products, behavioral changes, new processes to satisfy clients' needs, new organizational forms, new markets, differential quality of processes and products according to the client's expectations, exploration of new strategies for enterprises. In short, the development of an innovation levers successive changes in the continuous search for quality to attend to emerging needs.

In the 20th century, the revolution in information and communication technologies (ICT) provoked large-scale changes in science, due to the speed of scientific communication processes, the conquest of quality standards in these processes and the potential to reach clients/consumers of the produced knowledge.

In the trail of this revolution, SciELO - Scientific Electronic Library Online was created in 1997, through a pioneering initiative in Latin America and the Caribbean. Its goal is to join and make available a selected electronic library of scientific journals, thus attending to the needs of the scientific community in developing countries. This enterprise is acknowledged as relevant and wide-ranging due to its policy and equity strategies, offering open access to scientific information; due to the visibility it grants to scientific production from Latin America and the Caribbean; due to the quality and eligibility criteria it adopts and to its methodology, which favors, among other resources, the availability of contents in three languages: Portuguese, English and Spanish.

The Latin American Journal of Nursing (RLAE) was submitted to an assessment process and included in SciELO from 2002 onwards (www.scielo.com.br/rlae). In 2006, its entire collection (since 1993, when RLAE was created) became available on-line, and the journal now appears as one of the most accessed publications.

Acknowledging technological change as an important trigger of opportunities which, in turn, leads to political, structural, organizational and process changes, RLAE used its five-year experience in SciELO (through performance and quality goals)^(1-14) to live up to its mission of being a scientific dissemination instrument for Nursing in Latin America. As a Collaborating Centre of the World Health Organization, the University of São Paulo at Ribeirão Preto College of Nursing had the task of developing a dissemination mechanism for research results of international range, in line with the commitment it assumed before the WHO to contribute to the development of nursing research. Therefore, at the time of its creation, RLAE already saw the need to be issued in two or three languages. Due to logistical limitations, the journal started with publications in Portuguese or Spanish, considering the importance of publishing for the Brazilian and Latin American community. However, this did not mean that the importance of producing a global dissemination vehicle was ignored, permitting nurses from other regions to get to know the state-of-the-art of Nursing research in Brazil and the region. Although knowing that our scientific activity was "invisible" in global terms was uncomfortable, launching an initially regional publication already meant an advancement. The journal favored the achievement of important goals as, according to comments at that time, "the fact is that, in an increasingly interdependent world, countries have to interrelate mutually. In the context of interdependence, Nursing in Latin American countries should be guided by a sense of collaboration, which is considered as an investment. It is known that current tendencies move towards globalization, mainly in communication. This spirit marks the creation of the Latin American Journal of Nursing, with a view to integration among Latin American nurses which, through knowledge, can turn Nursing in the region more interrelated"⁽¹⁵⁾.

The entry into SciELO was perceived as a valuable opportunity to return to the initial policy of issuing the Journal in three languages. During the first five years of experience, technological changes provoked structural and process changes. The Journal assumed the responsibility to convert its contents to the SciELO methodology and finally, promoted the political change. Thus, the content of the print journal is now fully issued in English, while the electronic format offers the full version of articles in Portuguese, Spanish and English, through SciELO.

This innovation, brought about by technological changes, benefits clients who have access to RLAE's collection wherever they are. Besides offering access to Spanish and Portuguese-speaking people, these efforts concretize the target of granting international visibility to knowledge produced in Brazil and the region.

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  29 May 2007
• Date of issue
  Apr 2007