JCR 2009 and its consequences
Cid Aimbiré M. Santos
Editor-in-chief
A year ago, on the Editorial of the Vol. 20 N. 3, we wrote about the first Impact Factor (IF) of 3.462 attributed to the Brazilian Journal of Pharmacognosy, published by the JCR 2009. Our evaluation was correct in affirming that this IF was far from the real impact of the BJP as a consequence of its large number of self- citations. At that time, we ended the Editorial arguing that, since June 2009, we adopted a new editorial policy on BJP, like many other national and international journals known by their academic excellence do. In our own words, we stated our wishes of "being assessed equally". After a year, just on the eve of the JCR 2010 launch, the Thomson Reuters, the institution responsible for the criteria governing the IF, informed us that the BJP would be out of the JCR until 2013, action justified by the following statement: " The resulting metrics do not accurately reflect the journal's role in the scholarly literature of its subject..." The document also states that the BJP willbe re-evaluated in 2012, "...to determine if the problem of excessive journal self-citation has been resolved."
If, on one hand, this decision position us, for a while, on the sidelines of the major international scientific journals, lacking referential evaluation, and negatively exposed to the scientific community opinion, on the other hand, it supports the way taken by the current board whose choice relies clearly on building a solid and consistent scientific production path. Changes in the political stance as well as in the Editorial Board are some of the instruments of such a provision, compromised not only with quality but also with the internationalization of the articles published.
In spite of the all dynamics developed since 2009, as a consequence of such a mistake made in the past, which cannot be justified, in any way, as a good reason or intention, the growth of RBFAR will be restrained for another couple of years. Also, it will affect the whole Pharmacy area in Brazil, and just to name one, the BJP will probably remain as Qualis B3 at CAPES stratification.
Although regretting this burden, particularly in the 25th BJP anniversary, we will maintain the initial goal proposed for the journal's editorial: a continuous improvement, seeking the excellence of the articles to be published in an ethical and transparent way.
In doing so, we are sure that, in 2013, the journal will receive the correct IF as a result of the hard work involved in the BJP publications related to the 2010-2011 biennium, without any devices to stand out scientifically.
Like the rudder of a ship at sea, we hope that the changes in the trajectory of the BJP will be clearly observed soon. Meanwhile, our goal stands as before: consolidate it as a national and international scientific journal of high quality.
The challenge lingers on.
Publication Dates
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Publication in this collection
08 July 2011 -
Date of issue
June 2011
