EDITORS' NOTE
Bibliometrics and visibility of the Brazilian psychiatry
The current issue of the Revista Brasileira de Psiquiatria brings on a non-planned but not less important way a varied set of contributions approaching the visibility and the relevance of the Brazilian psychiatry. Beginning with the editorials, it is important to highlight the text by Dainesi and Pietrobon that, in a didactic manner, explains the need of using bibliometric indices to assess the scientific relevance of articles, authors or research groups. This analysis is fundamental for deciding about funds allocation so that such resources can be spent as efficiently as possible. However, the authors themselves warn about the need of knowing the limitations of such indices in order to avoid biases. An excellent example is provided by the special article by Kieling and Gonçalves who analyze the increasing visibility of the Revista Brasileira de Psiquiatria after it was indexed in the main medical databases: ISI and PubMed/MEDLINE.
The article is also a great opportunity for understanding the meaning of the impact factor and its importance to a journal that, like ours, is published outside Europe and North America. We need a solid journal, whose quality can be simultaneously acknowledged through local and international parameters, including articles that place the local scientific production (Brazilian and Latin American) in regard to the world and that, at the same time, be sensitive to the peculiar characteristics of our culture and geography.
The article by Razzouk et al. evidences that there are two countries showing outstanding results in our geographical and cultural region: Mexico and Brazil. Even though, our scientific production is modest and the path to increase it is full of obstacles and conflicts that are difficult to conciliate. In the letters section, there is another excellent example. In a reply to the letter by Sougey criticizing the lack of Brazilian authors in the supplement about posttraumatic stress, Kapczinski discusses delicate and significant issues a great portion of the Brazilian scientific production remains restricted to unpublished thesis and dissertations or hidden in journals of little visibility due to the fact that they are not indexed in databases widely disseminated in the scientific community.
However, it is true that we tend to neglect the local production because we are attracted to the brightness of the international production. The core question we have to answer is "why does it happen?" Among several reasons, we can mention one that is obvious and objective. When a national researcher searches an international database, he or she needs to meet again with the local production in such a database. There is no escape; if we want to know more about ourselves we need to show ourselves abroad. That includes, for instance, the decision of keeping the original articles of the Revista Brasileira de Psiquiatria in English in order to assure their international visibility, while we provide the local reader with supplements, literature reviews and updates in Portuguese guaranteeing a continuous medical education that has high quality and comprehensiveness.
In other words, besides the usual selection of high quality articles, this current issue provides us with an opportunity to think about the goals of a psychiatry journal from Brazil and Latin America, how to reach them and how to make sure through valid parameters that we are indeed getting closer to our ideals.
Hermano Tavares
Euripedes C Miguel
Jair de Jesus Mari
Luis Augusto Rohde
Marcos T Mercadante
Rodrigo Affonseca Bressan
Publication Dates
-
Publication in this collection
06 July 2007 -
Date of issue
June 2007
