Dear readers,
We close the year of 2013 with this issue of História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos, which features 15 original articles and other texts – an issue as jam-packed as the year gone by. The high point of 2013 no doubt occurred on June 6 – right at the outset of the social movements that electrified Brazil – when the journal entered the world of social networking by launching a blog (www.revistahcsm.coc.fiocruz.br), a Facebook page (www.facebook.com/revistahcsm), and a Twitter profile (http://www.twitter.com/revistahcsm), initially only in Portuguese but since October in English as well.
The HCSM team had little prior experience with social networking, and so the fast-moving tempo and overpowering dynamics of these forms of communication caught us somewhat by surprise, compelling us to adopt novel routines quite unlike the ones we were used to. Different skills are required, the financial costs and additional labor power involved are not minor, and constant updating is crucial so that the journal's new personas do not wither and ultimately prove counterproductive.
The journal Educação e pesquisa (http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_serial&pid=1517-9702&lng=pt&nrm=iso) will soon publish an article by the HCSM team entitled "Challenges for humanities editors in the realm of scientific periodicals and social networking: reflections and experiences" (in Port.). The reflections in its pages were refined during the course of the year thanks to our team's presentations at three events in 2013, where we learned a great deal. The first, sponsored by the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO), was the Meeting of Humanities Editors, held last June in the city of São Paulo. Next came the International Forum of Science Journals, which took place in Águas de Lindoia this past September during the 37th Annual Meeting of the National Association of Graduate Studies and Research in the Social Sciences (Anpocs). In October, likewise in the city of São Paulo, came the extraordinary 15 Years of SciELO conference, where Brazilian and foreign presenters discussed the latest horizons in science communication, including the technology and socio-institutional imperatives that favor its globalization. Bookended by the June and October events, SciELO launched its blog entitled "SciELO in Perspective – Humanities" (in Port.), which uses the internet to publicize the research findings published in SciELO's collection of Brazilian periodicals and thus contribute to the professionalization and internationalization of these journals.
The publication of our journal is governed by an orderly workflow, starting with the receipt of a submission and running through its analysis, preparation, and publication. These papers are in turn the product of slow, painstaking intellectual explorations of research objects located in times past, observed through the prism of the lengthy passage of time or, more often, through the prism of historical circumstances. Social networks carry the ephemeral soap bubbles of the day, in pace with the chaotic unfolding of everyday events. The connection between the events conveyed on these networks and the ripened fruit of historiographic research presents a constant challenge. It may be that this will eventually help the communities of researchers with which our journal has ties to more forcefully absorb the celebrated maxim of the school of the Annales, according to which the issues and matters of the present should be examined in the light of the past.
HCSM's new social networking personas have drawn a broader and more diversified readership than the audience that usually reads the papers in the journal and uses them as raw material to produce fresh scholarship in the area of research or teaching. To what extent will these new people who are now reading and enjoying HCSM bring about an improvement in the journal's academic performance? We don't know yet.
Despite the numerous added demands of this past year, we managed to maintain a growth rate of 10% in the number of texts published, while also considerably increasing the number of articles available ahead of print. Since 2006, we have invested in the English translation of papers published in both Portuguese and Spanish. All told, we have translated over 110 articles in our quest to internationalize HCSM. None of this would be possible without the readiness and collaboration of everyone who reads and reviews the texts submitted to our journal – more in number every year. We would sincerely like to thank our peer reviewers for their accessibility and their invaluable contributions.
Whether you are a dedicated longtime reader or have only recently been drawn into our fold, please kindly accept this volume 20, issue number 4, which has been compiled for you with the usual care – along with our sincere wishes for a happy holiday season and a splendid new year!
Jaime L. Benchimol
Science editor
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
oct-dez 2013
