Jornal Vascular Brasileiro reflects the Brazilian Society of Angiology and Vascular Surgery

EDITORIAL

Jornal Vascular Brasileiro reflects the Brazilian Society of Angiology and Vascular Surgery

Winston Bonetti Yoshida^*

Now that the Congress of Angiology and Vascular Surgery is over, we can consider its relationship to Jornal Vascular Brasileiro (J Vasc Bras).

Traditionally (and the latest congress was no exception), the members of our society make presentations on a wide variety of abstracts. There is even a healthy dose of competition among services in terms of entering the most abstracts into the various congress sessions. However, one should stress that there is no such thing as an unpublished paper.

Abstracts are not compiled by any bibliometrics resource as impact factor or H-index. They do not count for the re-validation of specialist degrees, are usually not seen by many, and are read by absolutely no one. Their publication on the annals of congresses are a mere formality for historical purposes, granting no benefit for the authors in terms of resume and contests.

On the other hand, good abstracts demand large investments in terms of time and dedication, which can and should be exploited: the bibliography is done, the general structure is set, results have been compiled and undergone statistical analysis, and conclusions have been reached. There lacks very little for the abstract to be submitted to our journal.¹

Evidently, writing a full article does not guarantee that it will be published. It first needs to go through the peer review process and the editor before it is accepted. However, once accepted, it becomes valuable to the authors and services they represent.

Due to new CAPES qualification guidelines for Brazilian journals, J Vasc Bras is going through a rather turbulent period. The new criteria, supported exclusively by impact factor, calculated by private company Thomson-Reuters (ISI), is extremely harmful to our journal and to Brazilian journals in general.² At the same time as CNPq offers financial support for our journal, CAPES disqualifies anything published in it. One should realize that journals take a long time to mature. The New England Journal of Medicine, for example, one of the most important medical journals in the world, was founded in 1812!

We have contacted both Associação Médica Brasileira (AMB, the Brazilian Medical Association) and Associação Brasileira de Editores Científicos (ABEC, the Brazilian Association of Scientific Editors) towards starting a wide debate with CAPES on the new criteria. We hope that this movement will ultimately lead to the undoing of this aberration. The subject is making the rounds in Brazilian science, with negative opinions throughout.³

While we wait for this review, our journal urgently needs help and support from our colleagues at Sociedade Brasileira de Angiologia e de Cirurgia Vascular (SBACV), which can be done by the provision of an additional number of original articles.

We should also stress that J Vasc Bras reflects SBACV. It features what is best in terms of scientific production in our society, serving as basis for organizations, institutions, bibliometric indices, and the population as a whole to assess it and evaluate it. If J Vasc Bras died because of the lack of interest from colleagues and subsequent lack of new articles,⁴ SBACV would die out as well. The consequent lack of credibility would affect all angiology and vascular surgery professionals.

At this difficult, but hopefully only temporary, moment in our history, we summon all colleagues to make a concentrated effort to support J Vasc Bras by submitting a great number of articles to our journal.

References

• 1. Yoshida WB. Temas livres versus publicação. J Vasc Bras. 2005;4:319-20.
• 2. Rocha-e-Silva M. O novo Qualis, ou a tragédia anunciada. Clinics. 2009;64:1-4.
• 3. Escobar H. [notícia na internet] Ranking coloca revistas científicas brasileiras em "risco de extinção". O Estadão. Acessado: 29/07/2009. http://www.estadao.com.br/estadaodehoje/20090706/not_imp398294,0.php
• 4. Moreira RC. Por que os cirurgiões vasculares brasileiros publicam tão pouco? J Vasc Bras. 2008;7:291-2.

^*

Editor-Chefe, J Vasc Bras.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  05 Jan 2010
• Date of issue
  Sept 2009