Effect of SciELO Open Access on Brazilian Scientific Journals
Lewis Joel GreeneEditor, Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research
Professor Titular, Depto. Biologia Celular, Molecular e Bioagentes Patogênicos Fac. Medicina de Ribeirão Preto -
USP
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Topics
1. Brazilian scientific journals.
2. Lost Science in the Third World.
3. Scielo Open Access
4. Effect of Scielo-JCR data
5. CAPES Portal
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Brazilian Scientific Journals
www.scielo.brwww.scielo.org
• ~1300 journals titles – traditional academic, institutional and professional in all areas.
• ~400 journals – functional but heterogeneous in quality and punctuality.
• CNPq, an agency for supporting research, spends USD$ 7,000/year on 150 journals ≈1 million US$
• Most copies are free to society members, libraries, and are used for exchange.
• Very few paid subscriptions.• Very few papers read.
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• Emphasis on being excluded from ISI (JCR) indexing and citation system.
• Few journals of developing countries are read in or outside their country.
• Diagnosis was correct.• Remedy was not.
Scientific American, August 1995, p 76-83
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Being indexed is not sufficient.
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Journal Reality: Visibility + Availability
Visibility
Traditional availability
References in Journals
Abstract services
Indexing services
Current contents
PubMed, WOS (ISI)
The paper in hand
Reprint requests
Libraries (institutional subscriptions)
Open access availability
www.scielo.br
www.scielo.org
www.doaj.org
CAPES Portal for Brazilian academics - www.capes.gov.br
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Reality of Journals Published in Developed Countries
• In the First World visibility and availability are linked by effective libraries supported by government grants for “overhead” to universities to pay for institutional subscriptions to journal.
• This situation does not exist in developing countries.
• Now Brazil has Scielo Open Access.
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SciScientific EElectronic LLibrary OOn Line = SciELOSciELO SciELO-Brazil is Open Access Since 1997
www.scielo.brwww.scielo.org
• Digital, on-line• 176 journals in April 2007• Peer-reviewed• No cost to reader or journal• Initiative of BIREME (WHO, OPAS) and FAPESP (State
of São Paulo Research Agency) for the development of software and for maintaining the Server.
• Brazilian agencies (Bireme, FAPESP, CAPES, and CNPq) pay the bill, so far.
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SciELO International
www.scielo.org
• Software is made available to other countries who use peer-review and the same entry criteria as Brazil.
• Argentina(24), Chile(63), Columbia(22), Cuba(20), Spain(31), Venezuela(28), are already in the system.
• In development: Costa Rica(9), Mexico(15), Peru(21), Portugal(13) and Uruguay(6) and West Indian(1).
• Total with Brazil – 364 journals (April 2007).
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BRAZILIAN JOURNALOF MEDICAL AND BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH
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BRAZILIAN JOURNALOF MEDICAL AND BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH
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SciELO Open Access Publishing www.scielo.br
The problem: how do you inform the world scientific community that SciELO exists? How to reach it? What areas are covered? What languages are used?
Run ads in Nature and Science? The New York Times? Google?
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Being covered by SciELO is not sufficient!
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Links from PubMed (1999), the WOS (2000), DOAJ (2003), Google (2004), CrossRef (2004) connect directly to the title page of the paper in SciELO.
These links permit the 35 Brazilian journals indexed by PubMed and WOS to become easily accessible to all international scientists.
Direct Links Amplify the Penetration of SciELO
www.scielo.br, www.scielo.org
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How do You Measure the Effect of SciELO Open Access on Brazilian Scientific Journals?
www.scielo.br.
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Total Number of Articles Downloaded from www.scielo.br (Includes Robots)
YearDeveloped countries
Developing countries
Unidentified
2002 27,853 1% 1,488,399 4% 203,391 1%
2003 167,638 5% 3,846,977 9% 939,020 4%
2004 1,021,904 32% 12,204,178 29% 9,237,110 35%
2005 1,958,149 62% 24,405,696 58% 15,706,242 60%
What happened between 2003 and 2004?
Total Number of Citations
Rank Title
Total no. of
citations
%
Increase1998 2004
1 BRAZ J MED BIOL RES 1008 2043 1035 103
2 MEM I OSWALDO CRUZ 937 1928 991 106
3 J BRAZIL CHEM SOC 187 790 603 322
4 PESQUI AGROPECU BRAS 367 704 337 92
5 REV SAUDE PUBL 169 474 305 180
6 BRAZ ARCH BIOL TECHN 1 87 86 -
7 DADOS-REV CIENC SOC 36 44 8 22Data from ISI Thomson
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Total Number of CitationsLinear Regression
Rank titletotal cites
(2004)slope (b) R²
N (years)
1 BRAZ J MED BIOL RES 2043 167,74 0,99 8
2 MEM I OSWALDO CRUZ 1928 163,10 0,98 8
3 J BRAZIL CHEM SOC 790 89,16 0,91 8
4 PESQUI AGROPECU BRAS 704 48,70 0,63 8
5 REV SAUDE PUBL 474 42,82 0,87 7
6 BRAZ ARCH BIOL TECHN 87 13,36 0,89 6
7 DADOS-REV CIENC SOC 44 1,86 0,27 7
Data from ISI Thomson
BRAZ J MED BIOL RES
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
Year
To
tal c
ite
s
MEM I OSWALDO CRUZ
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
Year
Tota
l cite
s
Impact Factor
Rank Title
Impact factor
%
Increase1998 2004
1 J BRAZIL CHEM SOC 0.472 1.161 0.689 146
2 BRAZ J MED BIOL RES 0.439 0.824 0.385 88
3 MEM I OSWALDO CRUZ 0.474 0.740 0.266 56
4 DADOS-REV CIENC SOC 0.167 0.370 0.203 122
5 BRAZ ARCH BIOL TECHN 0.000 0.143 0.143 -
6 REV SAUDE PUBL 0.134 0.235 0.101 75
7 PESQUI AGROPECU BRAS 0.051 0.167 0.116 227Data from ISI Thomson
Impact FactorLinear Regression
Rank titleimp. Factor
(2004)slope (b) R²
N (years)
1 J BRAZIL CHEM SOC 1,161 0,12 0,84 8
2 BRAZ J MED BIOL RES 0,824 0,06 0,86 8
3 MEM I OSWALDO CRUZ 0,740 0,04 0,83 8
4 DADOS-REV CIENC SOC 0,370 0,03 0,43 7
5 BRAZ ARCH BIOL TECHN 0,143 0,02 0,58 6
6 REV SAUDE PUBL 0,235 0,02 0,45 7
7 PESQUI AGROPECU BRAS 0,167 0,01 0,68 8
BRAZ J MED BIOL RES
0,000
0,200
0,400
0,600
0,800
1,000
1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
Year
Impa
ct fa
ctor
MEM I OSWALDO CRUZ
0,000
0,200
0,400
0,600
0,800
1,000
1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
Year
Impa
ct fa
ctor
Data from ISI Thomson
Immediacy IndexCitations in the same year as publication
Rank Title
Index
%
Increase1998 2004
1 J BRAZIL CHEM SOC 0.042 0.067 0.025 +60
2 MEM I OSWALDO CRUZ 0.027 0.057 0.030 +111
3 BRAZ J MED BIOL RES 0.090 0.103 0.013 +14
4 BRAZ ARCH BIOL TECHN 0.000 0.025 0.025 -
5 PESQUI AGROPECU BRAS 0.046 0.012 -0.034 -73
6 REV SAUDE PUBL 0.000 0.007 0.007 -
7 DADOS-REV CIENC SOC 0.000 0.000 0.000 -Data from ISI Thomson
Cited Half-Life
Rank Title
Cited half-life
%
Increase1998 2004
1 BRAZ J MED BIOL RES 4.9 6.1 1.2 +24
2 J BRAZIL CHEM SOC 3.2 3.8 0.6 +19
3 MEM I OSWALDO CRUZ 6.9 6.4 -0.5 -7
4 PESQUI AGROPECU BRAS 8.2 8.0 -0.2 -2
5 REV SAUDE PUBL 7.5 6.6 -0.9 -12
6 BRAZ ARCH BIOL TECHN - - - -
7 DADOS-REV CIENC SOC - - - -
Data from ISI Thomson
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Limitations of Present Data
• These data are not completely satisfactory because ISI data are available for only 22 of 176 SciELO journals and only 10 are complete.
• Self-comparisons such as total citations for 2004 versus 1998 for the same journal are weak.
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• The ranking of a journal in comparison with ~4500 journals covered by JCR, in terms of a specific characteristic, can provide useful information about the effect of SciELO on these journals.
• A low percentage in this context indicates a high position in the rank order and is good.
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Effect of SciELO on the Ranking of the Braz. J. Med. Biol. Res. in relation to all other journals covered by JCR.
Data from: ISI-Thomson
58%
28%
20041993
Total Citation
N = 4000 ~ 4500 Passed 1275 journals
(30×42.5 )
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Braz. J. Med. Biol. Res. - Total Citations Rank in JCR Before and After SciELO
Year
Scielo PubMedWEB
N = 4000-4500
58%
28%
DOAJ
Data from ISI Thomson
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Braz. J. Med. Biol. Res. - Impact Factor Rank in JCR Before and After SciELO.
PubMed
Year
Scielo
WEB
N = 4000-4500
76%
56%
DOAJ
Data from ISI Thomson
850 journals
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Rank in JCR Before and After SciELO.
Journals
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1. SciELO OPEN ACCESS increased the readership and citations of some scientific journals published in Brazil, but not to the same extent for all.
2. Until now visits to and downloads from SciELO are to a large extent Brazilian and show a high prevalence of users who speak Latin languages.
3. SciELO must increase its penetration of the international community (www.scielo.org) and inform the rest of world that ~50% of the texts are in English.
4. www.scielo.org is an international consortium of countries who speak Latin languages and we would expect them to have the same experience as Brazil.
www.scielo.orgwww.scielo.br
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CAPES Portal
• Open Access for Brazilian university professors, post-graduate students and undergraduate students.
• 10,377 international journals and links to SciELO.
• 151 databases.
• 181 institutions with courses in post-graduation.
• ≈ 1.3 million academics have access to this restricted form of open access.
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CAPES Portal
• 34 million dollars – paid by CAPES (Agency responsible for Post-Graduation, Ministry of Education) in 2005.
• 27 million accesses to complete texts in 2005.
• USD$ 1.26 per access to complete text rather than US$ 25-US$ 60.
• USD$ 0.35 per access to data banks.
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CAPES Portal
• CAPES PORTAL and SciELO complement each other by providing Open Access to the international and national literature, respectively.
• Before the CAPES Portal (1995) Brazilian scientists were always 1-2 years behind in the international literature.
• Now we and our students can read a paper the day it goes on-line at the same time as other scientists through out the world.
• A form of “open access” limited to 1,000,000 Brazilian academics.
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Many thanks to Abel Packer, Adalberto Tardelli, Regina C.F. Castro and Rogério Meneghini (BIREME), James Testa (ISI-
Thomson) for making data available to me and Clarice Izumi and André R. Abrahão (Faculty of Medicine of Ribeirão Preto,
University of São Paulo) for assistance in the preparation of this presentation.
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Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research
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Campus of Ribeirão Preto, University of São Paulo
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If you haven’t heard, Brazil will be hexa champion in 2010.
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THANK YOU!
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Total Number of Articles Downloaded by Country in 2005 (www.scielo.br)
Rank CountryArticles
downloaded
01 Brazil 23045449
02 Portugal 877094
03 Great Britain 182686
04 Spain 159514
05 Canada 124939
06 France 98054
07 Colombia 95032
08 Argentina 83244
09 Chile 78984
10 Germany 68659
Rank CountryArticles
downloaded
11 Venezuela 63172
12 Turkey 46121
13 Philippines 31026
14 South Korea 23551
15 South Africa 20975
16 Sweden 16816
17 Vietnam 12084
18 Denmark 9103
19 Russia 8925
20 Finland 1021
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The best Brazilian science is published in high impact
international journals.
National versus International Scientific Journals
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Number of Research Articles Indexed by ISI
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004
Year
Res
earc
h A
rtic
les
(x10
-3)
Brazil
South Korea
Argentina
Chile
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Why Publish National Scientific Journals
1. Memory of national scientific production.
2. To inform scientists and society of progress in science.
3. To define and implement criteria of quality for doing science and publishing science.
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Why Publish National Scientific Journals
4. To communicate the results of research of national or regional interest.
5. To communicate the results of Brazilian research to the rest of the world.
6. To stimulate the development and consolidation of research areas in Brazil.
