INVITED EDITORIAL
Recalling the 20 years our journal
Edgar Chagas Diefenthaeler, Gisele Gus Manfro
This year, when Revista de Psiquiatria do Rio Grande do Sul (RPRS) is celebrating its 30 years, we were invited to contribute an editorial about our collaboration in the journal's history, which was just celebrating its 20th anniversary when we assumed the editors-in-chief positions. During these past 10 years, our journal has consolidated itself and reached a level of development that is compatible with the progress of psychiatry as a medical specialty along with the local scientific evolution during this period. However, 10 years ago, we were beginning a long and continuous process and we can still remember the invitation of Dr Neusa Lucion for us to become editors-in-chief of the journal. That was the first time the position would be shared by two colleagues. We thought that it would be an interesting task and that we would be able to contribute by offering something of our personal characteristics and theoretical knowledge in order to change the journal, making it more up-to-date. We had the help of Dr Calich, who was editor-in-chief before we assumed and provided relevant information so that we could start working. Later, we established the Editorial Board that worked hard in a friendly environment. We also recall the satisfaction of having done a fruitful work together with this efficient Editorial Board and the help of our secretary Sandra Schmaedecke. During the years 2000 and 2001, we finished the long process of including our journal in PsychoINFO, the largest database on references in the area of psychology, after going through an analysis performed by the reviewers of the American Psychological Association, which certified our journal's international quality.
With nine issues published during the 2 years of our management, we were able to achieve the periodicity that make international indexing possible, thus, opening new opportunities for inclusion in other databases. With that purpose, we reviewed 63 articles from several areas of interest: clinical and biological psychiatry, psychotherapies, psychoanalysis, child and adolescent psychiatry, family-related pathologies, alcohol and drugs. We prepared presentations on the main activities developed by Sociedade de Psiquiatria, such as the 16th Cycle of Advances and the 5th Meeting of Rio Grande do Sul. We received unconditional support from the members of the Board of Directors, especially from Dr Neusa Lucion, who offered the necessary resources for the organization of such events. Press releases about RPRS were published in six issues of our Society's newsletter during this period.
Valuable contributions helped to increase our journal's visibility, such as the participation of our colleagues from Associação de Psiquiatria do Rio Grande do Sul, from the other associations from Rio Grande do Sul and Brazil, as well as from the Argentinean Association of Psychiatry and the Psychosomatic Institute of Buenos Aires, among others. Since we remained loyal to their languages, our journal published articles written in English and Spanish.
We finished our work with the publication of volume 23 of RPRS. We were aware of the need to publish articles on topics that included the different areas studied by our readers, with special focus on original or update articles and review articles that could be of interest for our readers. In addition, the members of the Editorial Board always welcomed the authors that contributed to our journal serving as tutors for those colleagues who were beginners in the hard and pleasant task of writing and publishing a scientific article. Therefore, we believe we contributed locally to increase the wide scientific knowledge, enriching our daily work, our experiences and our integration, according to what was always the aim of Associação de Psiquiatria do Rio Grande do Sul.
There are no conflicts of interest associated with the publication of this editorial.
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
24 Aug 2009 -
Date of issue
2009
