EDITOR'S NOTE

Dear Readers,

In addition to the usual palette of spontaneous submissions, this issue of História, Ciências, Saúde - Manguinhos offers a dossier on the topic of archives, product of the September 2009 meeting organized by Aline Lopes de Lacerda, of the Universidade Federal Fluminense, and Marcos Chor Maio, of the Casa de Oswaldo Cruz/Fiocruz, under the alluring title "Passion for archives: organizational practices and uses in research." In attendance were archivists, historians, anthropologists, and sociologists, and of the papers presented there, three evolved into the articles now published in these pages.

The current issue is rather hefty because we are working to reduce the time between submission and publication to a maximum of one year - a year during which an article moves not always so quickly through the process of peer review, author revisions, reevaluation by the editors, copyediting, translation into English for our online edition in some cases, more copyediting, layout, proofing, and (at long last!) publication in hard format and online.

I would like to take this opportunity to formally ratify a change that was merely hinted at in our last issue: from this point forward, the Peruvian historian Marcos Cueto and I will be sharing the role of scientific editors. For those of you who would like to have a look at his credentials, I suggest you read the interview he gave in June 2011 to Ruth B. Martins, our former executive editor, who is currently with the Casa de Oswaldo Cruz's social communications section (interview available at http://migre.me/8m2qU).

I would also like to share with you our satisfaction over the most recent classification of História, Ciências, Saúde - Manguinhos by Qualis-Capes: we now hold an A1 rating not only in history and education but also in sociology. Further, we kept our A2 rank in language/linguistics and social work, while we rose in collective health to B1, a standing we had already achieved in anthropology/archeology, architecture and urbanism, arts/music, geography, urban and regional planning, demography, and psychology.

Dear readers, I have a favor to ask of you: could you please help us spread the word about a call for papers (details at http://migre.me/8m2uR)? Through the end of May, we will be accepting original submissions on international cooperation in health focused on its history, results, challenges, and perspectives, with a special emphasis on bio-ethical aspects of international health relations. The proposal comes from members of two groups at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation: the Núcleo de Estudos sobre Bioética e Diplomacia em Saúde (Study Group on Bioethics and Diplomacy in Health) and the Observatório História e Saúde (History and Health Observatory).

In the not-too-distant future, after approval through the usual peer-review process, the journal will be publishing papers presented at the seminar "International Health/Global Health: historical perspectives from Latin America and the Caribbean." The event will take place at the Casa de Oswaldo Cruz/Fiocruz this June 21-22. Organized by Marcos Cueto and Gilberto Hochman, the seminar will discuss the concept of 'global health' and its origins and characteristics, contrasting its unique features with an idea that has a longer, broader history: 'international health.' The seminar will especially examine the changing role played by government in public health services and international agencies, as well as interactions between the local and the global in Latin America and the Caribbean.

História, Ciências, Saúde - Manguinhos will also soon publish papers presented at the international conference sponsored by the Freie Universität Berlin's Latin American Studies Institute. Entitled "Brazil in the global context: 1870-1945," the event took place last October in the German capital. It was an initiative by Georg Fischer, Christina Peters, and Frederik Schulze, collaborators of Professor Stefan Rinke, eminent polestar of master's and doctoral candidates at that university who specialize in studies of Brazil and other Latin American social formations. Rinke is author of masterful works on the topic, including Geschichte Lateinamerikas: Von den frühesten Kulturen bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: Beck, 2010; A history of Latin America, from its oldest cultures to the present).

I bid you farewell with this invitation: join me on a trip to lovely Lisbon, a city of mountains tracing out a feminine silhouette, of charming old buildings, steep hills, and cobblestone streets, of an indigo blue sky, and of such kind and gracious people...a city that stirs an enticing mixture of feelings, of something familiar and of something unknown. The First Luso-Brazilian Meeting on the History of Tropical Medicine will be held there this coming April 21-24 at the centenarian Instituto de Higiene e Medicina Tropical (program available at http://encontrolb.ihmt.unl.pt). You most likely have noticed the growing exchange of knowledge between historians of science from Brazil and Portugal in the pages of our journal. I harbor the hope that this gathering will stand as an affirmation of what I see as the promising future of comparative history and the history of mutual relations in the life sciences, medicine, and public health.

Jaime L. Benchimol

Scientific editor

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  05 Apr 2012
• Date of issue
  Mar 2012