To the scientific community
On September 12, at the XXV Brazilian Congress of Speech and Hearing Therapy and the First Bahia Meeting of Speech Therapy, held in the city of Salvador, the editors of the journals in our area were present to discuss some pertinent issues for the best publishing of our journals.
The representatives of each of the four journals, namely CoDAS (Prof. Ana Luiza Navas), Communication Disorders (Prof. Leslie Piccolotto Ferreira), CEFAC Journal (Prof. Dr. Hilton Justino), ACR ( Prof. Dr. Eliane Schochat and Prof. Dr. Katia de Almeida), were present. Under the moderation of Prof. Dr. Léslie Piccolotto Ferreira and rapporteur of Prof. Dr. Maria Cecilia M. Pinheiro Lima, the discussions were summarized in the following text. The purpose of this publication is to inform all researchers in our area and collaborate in order to better index our journals.
1. Ethical issues in research and publication
The issue of plagiarism and self-plagiarism was discussed. In case the specific software detects a high index of similarity between contents published on the internet and the manuscript, the author should be alerted and should review, even if it is auto plagiarism. There is also the case of authors submitting a research to different journals, or authors who submit an article to a journal and in case of being denied, immediately submit to another, without even considering its specific rules. As many of our reviewers are on the editorial board of several journal, the same article is read by the same person on several occasions. The journal editors agree that this topic should be discussed even with the undergraduate students.
2. Qualification of undergraduate and postgraduate students in scientific dissemination
The idea of encouraging the creation of workshops and talk meetings under the theme “how to write an article”, has been given. These activities could be assumed by educational institutions and even SBFa. The provision of DE courses would be a solution to the problem, since many institutions have rooms for video conferencing. In addition, a workshop for journal reviewers has been suggested for graduate students to participate as well, as they will be the future referees in our area.
3. Design of researches and themes already published and without contribution
The quality of the articles submitted, as well as the quality of the opinions that are sent, and the delay in the responses of the reviewers were topics discussed among those present. It is very important that referees be punctual, that they send their considerations within the period stipulated by the journal. Often, the problem of time to finalize the evaluation of an article is greater when the article enters the second or third round of verification of the suggested changes. The reviewer´s not accessing the authors´ response letters and as a result, keep on charging changes, thus, further delaying the process, has been highlighted.
Another problem that emerges are the opinions that bring opposite information (one reviewer accepts the work and the other does not), which causes the editor to send it to a third party, delaying the process. The role of the associate editor was exalted in the sense of being requested in the case of a tiebreaker. This person could be asked to give an opinion even before sending the papers to the ad-hoc referees, in order to minimize the time of analysis by the reviewers, when the quality of the article is not satisfactory, due to methodological procedures not compatible with the proposal, or themes already surpassed as to the importance for the growth of the area. The issue that many articles are being sent without a more thorough reading of the advisor, with even spelling and syntactic errors has been brought up. The possibility of charging a submission fee so as to intensify the authors' attention in sending better texts has been raised.
4. Evaluation of the articles submitted by the referees
The need for training reviewers and the fact that journals could address a position of the editors to assist them in how to do a good analysis of the work has been discussed. As journals have received many articles, the criteria are increasingly stricter with respect to approval and this should be clarified to reviewers. A good opinion is one that makes explicit the issues to be reviewed, pointing out methodological issues and greater consistency in the discussion of the findings. There should be greater attention to bibliographic reviews, since many authors are cited although they have made no statements. The editors have difficulty with articles in the public health area, because they receive different opinions or discrepant opinions for one specific article, considering the different methodological models and scarcity of referees in the area. Another point discussed in the meeting would be how to classify the works elaborated in the Professional Master's Degree, since the products of these master's degrees are presented in the form of technological development. One suggestion would be for journals to include a new category, such as technological innovation. Another issue that arose was bibliographical review. There are several types of revision (narrative, systematic and integrative), and those that are referred in a greater number are considered as systematic reviews, with or without meta-analysis, but not always of this nature, for they do not respond to a clearly formulated research question. This should be placed in the research design, in the body of the work.
Thus, most articles that arrive would be considered a narrative review because they do not respond to a research question. In general, narrative review takes place when the journal invites an expert on a topic to do a particular review. The systematic review cited by the Systematic Reviews Cochrane Database should be inserted in the CEFAC journal and was pointed out as interesting by the group. Another topic that appeared was the issue of descriptors and keywords. The term “Fonoaudiologia” (Speech-Language Therapy) had been removed from BIREME, but now it is being used as a descriptor. However, this term should not be used in research carried out by speech therapists, except in the case of research aimed at teaching (training) of Speech Therapy. One example given was term Medicine that does not appear in all articles written by doctors. A topic discussed, too, was the use of English descriptors, which should be based on the terms of DeCS. A suggestion for the journals would be requesting, in addition to the term, the code that describes it.
5. Dissemination of articles on social networks etc.
Editors have been using social networks, such as Facebook, twitter, Instagram, and they requested that the articles be cited by the authors in social networks, in order to further publicize our productions. At the end of the meeting, all attendees were informed that the Brazilian Society of Speech-Language Therapy and Audiology will make its website available for the publication of the four journals in the area.
Léslie Piccolotto Ferreira
Maria Cecilia Marconi Pinheiro
Lima Ana Luiza Navas
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
Sept 2017
