Journal networking in nursing: a challenge to be shared

EDITORIAL

Journal networking in nursing: a challenge to be shared

Margareth Angelo^I; Maria Madalena Januário Leite^II; Valéria Castilho^III

^IFull Professor of the Maternal-Child and Psychiatric Nursing Department. School of Nursing, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil. [e-mail]

^IIAssociate Professor of the Department of Professional Guidance. School of Nursing, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil. [e-mail]

^IIIAssociate Professor of the Department of Professional Guidance. School of Nursing, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil. [e-mail]

The evolution of Nursing Science has been boosted by the growing production resulting from Graduate Study Programs. Scientific research in Brazil is mostly promoted in public universities and scientific journals have been the main means of dissemination of this disciplinary production. However, the avid and careful journal readers realize that they (journals) also point at the directions and even the evolution of their own scientific production. Traditional journals, including REEUSP, which has been published uninterruptedly for over four decades, are the true holders of memory of scientific development in nursing. The journal innovates its processes, as science development innovates its own strategies.

The interface between science and knowledge dissemination has created a specific type of knowledge that contributes to understanding what it means to produce and disseminate science in the 21^st century. There was a time when graduate study programs were isolated educational activities, and the production also reflected a solitary activity, where the articles were products of one single author. With time, it was understood that the researcher does not work or produce alone, and publications began to show the development of a minimally paired production, with an author and a co-author.

The association of people involved in the collaborative work of research groups represented some advancement in the procedural nature of scientific production. It is important to emphasize that, in a research group, there is recognition of individual boundaries and of the chance of succeeding through the strategy of collective work⁽¹⁾. Therefore, research groups proliferated and took over a privileged place in science and technology policies in Brazil, accounting for 27,523 active groups in the CNPq Directory in 2010⁽²⁾. This new outline of the academic production context is seen in the publications that introduce the many research group participants as co-authors of articles, marking the beginning of an era of adding new concepts in academic dialogue, which includes research globalization, translational research, and network production.

The communication between pairs, teamwork, the networks for exchanging ideas and disseminating research proposals and findings and thematic reference groups today create an essential condition for performing scientific investigations and achieving knowledge advancement⁽³⁾. Today, in current scientific research, we experience a tendency to work within the network concept.

Informatics has changed information and learning paradigms and the Internet has democratized knowledge, introducing not only new technologies but also new behaviors and customs, such as social networking. An on-line social network is a place where people exchange experiences and ideas, a place where there is a possibility to access information and build and share knowledge. Today's communication is from many to many, and the members of a network consume, produce, and associate that content. Theoretically, each man or each woman can access any databank, thus breaking the power/knowledge scheme⁽⁴⁾. From there on, according to the author, we can reach a much more instigating concept, which is the concept of networking.

The knowledge-flux, the knowledge-transaction, and the new individual and collective intelligence technologies have significantly changed the data regarding the education and development issue⁽⁴⁾. In this line of thought, we can consider the possibility of these new habits reaching the management of nursing journals.

Today, there are several types of social networks available. We comfortably interact with journals and virtual libraries, but we still have not developed an online network between national and international nursing journals. Therefore, in a time of collective discussions regarding strategies to qualify academic production and journals, the main means of the referred production, we face the challenge of thinking about the possibility of organizing and implementing a network that would permit the development of a new environment for communication, knowledge, and innovation, besides aiming at the economic and financial support of journals.

This type of network would allow for multidirectional ways of interaction in an innovative connection environment, promoting and sharing knowledge and developing new forms of cooperation. Sharing in this network would imply that each journal would also be willing to share in the development of other journals and the overall network, making room for interaction, dialogue and exchanges. A range of possibilities exist, where concepts and new publishing practices would be recreated and have new meanings.

When a connection between journals is established, it will be realized that sharing is the path to be followed, as it could even lead to sustainable development because it would become something developed collectively, based on the perspective and experience of many. Networking between nursing journals would strengthen knowledge as a form of empowerment, and the social capital of nursing would increase almost instantly.

This online network, besides promoting the exchange between the many editors, would provide conditions for developing strategic views regarding costs, funding and forms of accreditation, in the Qualis system in Brazil as in international systems. Furthermore, it would broaden the perspective of working areas, improve the group analysis of hindrances, problems, and possible solutions, and define the contributions from the numerous partners. The network should be flexible and allow for subjects to seek and gain business competencies in the publishing area and build strategic alliances, moving and developing skills and knowledge.

Furthermore, this network would provide support to editors and the publishing team in terms of improving their organization and efficiency, encouraging innovations and creating a more productive environment that would help journals respond to the pressures of public policies in a pro-active way and, especially, strengthening the development of knowledge that would affect nursing skills and advanced health care. Therefore, networking would lead journals towards establishing cooperative and collaborative relationships, overcoming competitiveness and becoming partners, with news forms of relationship and management.

We believe that the productivity, innovation and satisfaction as consequences of networking would boost nursing knowledge and the development of a culture of cooperation, as well as management and business development.

To do this, in this network context, it is essential to create collaborative work strategies and trust relationships between subjects, sharing responsibilities and commitment towards accomplishing the actions established in the agreement between the partners.

In conclusion, we believe that the proposal for building an online social network of nursing journals is an instigating and complex goal to be achieved, with benefits to the journals' organization which would be able to give fast and consistent answers to their users, reduce costs, improve work quality and performance, and especially the access and exchange of knowledge between its members. It will be a structure that could strengthen, capacitate and empower journals in terms of processing information, making decisions and producing technological innovations. This network would offer new perspectives in knowledge development and in the innovation of processes, products, and services, with continuous reconfigurations. Finally, it would take knowledge dissemination to a new era, coherent with how research is made.

With these thoughts, particularly as people looking at a close future, we end one more year of work and commitment that REEUSP has with Nursing Science.

We wish all our readers and collaborators a happy and productive 2012!!!

References

• 1. Pereira GRM, Andrade M L. Aprendizagem científica: experiência com grupos de pesquisa. In: Bianchetti L, Meksenas P, organizadores. A trama do conhecimento: teoria, método e escrita em ciência e pesquisa. Campinas: Papirus; 2008. p.163-68.
• ²
  Brasil. Ministério de Ciência e Tecnologia. Súmula estatística: Diretórios de Grupos de Pesquisa do Brasil [Internet]. Brasília; 2010 [citado 2011 set. 25]. Disponível em: http://dgp.cnpq.br/censos/sumula_estatistica/2010/grupos/index_grupo.htm
• 3. Gatti BA. Formação de grupos e redes de pesquisa educacional: dialogia e qualidade. Rev Bras Educ. 2005;30(4):123-32.
• 4. Levy P. Cibercultura. 3ª ed. São Paulo: Editora 34; 2010.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  12 Jan 2012
• Date of issue
  Dec 2011