Should this letter go to my Lattes?

The Brazilian Lattes Platform is recognised as one of the most powerful and cleanest databases for accessing scientists’ credentials worldwide, being an important tool for evaluating the scientific production of Brazilian researchers since it synthesises information regarding all aspects of our academic careers (CNPq 2022, Lane 2010). I t was launched in August 1999 and underwent a reassessment in 2005 (CNPq 2022). Since then, only punctual updates have been performed (e.g., Carpes et al. 2022), albeit slowly (Staniscuaski et al. 2021).

The bibliographical production is among the most important sections of the Lattes curriculum and highlights the researchers’ scientifi c, technological, artistic, and cultural production (CNPq 2022). It includes different products chronologically listed in categories, including published articles, books, and conference abstracts. Specifi cally for published articles, the platform also recovers the journal’s impact factor and the paper’s citations considering different databases but does not classify the articles according to their types, thus including opinion articles (i.e., brief comments of general interest related to trending academic topics) and full articles (i.e., scientifi c reports presenting original results and following the scientifi c methodology) in the same classifi cation (CNPq 2022). While full articles demand several rounds of the peer-review process to be published, opinion pieces are typically reviewed by the journal editor, not necessarily going through peer review.

The metrics to quantify academic productivity are highly criticised for overestimating the number of papers to the detriment of their quality and relevance in the fi eld (Leite & Diele-Viegas 2021). Such strict quantitative metrics harm the chances of underrepresented groups occupying prominent positions in academia since they tend to present lower production numbers due to biases experienced throughout their careers (Diele-Viegas et al. 2021). In this sense, including letters and other opinion pieces in the same fi eld as full articles in the Lattes curriculum can be determinant for keeping this exclusionary system since fast-publication types of scientifi c pieces can be confused with full papers and accounted as such in evaluation boards. However, if we should not include opinion pieces in this fi eld, where should we have them instead?

For those familiar with such pieces’ writing, we must acknowledge that it also requires time and effort from the researcher willing to think about these urgent and up-to-date subjects. Several opinion pieces are the starting point for profound discussions in their fi eld, enlightening new paths for future scientifi c research (e.g., Alleva 2006, Prather et al. 2020). In addition, not all pieces lack the peer-review process – some can take months and several rounds of peer-review to be published (e.g., (Deanna et al. 2022, Hipólito et al. 2020).

This opinion piece is not intending to question the value and importance of opinion pieces –what sense would that have? It is actually an invitation for the Brazilian scientific community to reflect on the importance of such pieces and their role in our careers. While we should not rely on opinion pieces to construct our curriculum and become competitive in examination boards, we should acknowledge their importance in the proposal and advance of several subjects in the scientific field. Therefore, discussions should not go towards whether we should include those pieces in our Lattes – but, instead, on creating a more descriptive production field in the platform (where it will be possible to describe the type of article and review process it underwent) and changing the metrics of our evaluating system to allow more qualitative analysis of scientific production.

REFERENCES

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Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  02 Dec 2022
• Date of issue
  2022

History

• Received
  20 May 2022
• Accepted
  27 Aug 2022