This work describes a quantitative research into the visibility of the scientific production of the leaders of Social Work research groups in the public universities of the state of Rio de Janeiro, registered with the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (Brazilian National Council for Scientific Research). The visibility of the results of Social Work research makes possible the exercise of rights and the broadening of the concept of citizenship. A search was conducted of the scientific production registered on the Lattes platform (a Brazilian scientific database) between 2003 and 2010. The best part of these articles in periodical journals is composed of the traditional form of communication, namely printed documents; amongst these, a good number are not indexed by web accessed databases, which has an adverse impact on visibility. This pattern of scientific communication corroborates the typical pattern found in other Social Work areas. In terms of visibility, this group does not match the greater visibility of other areas that have a larger number of open access journals, as well as periodicals that make use of indexing channels such as databases (Science Citation Index), directories (Latindex) and cooperative networks (Redalyc).
Scientific communication; Research into social work; Scientific researcher; Scientific journals