The purpose of the CAPES* meeting held 29 October 2014 was to discuss proposals for contracting international publishers to edit Brazilian scientific journals – as is already happening in China, Japan and other countries.
“We want a model in which Brazilian research journals attain an international standard and visibility, without losing their identity” said President of CAPES, Jorge Guimarães.
During the meeting Elsevier, Emerald, Springer, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley publishers presented their proposals to a selected group of journal editors
For CAPES, the initiative that is part of a greater project aimed at the internationalization of Brazilian universities and their scientific output.
“No Brazilian university has provided to internationalize entirely, but it can internationalize by sectors,” added Guimarães.
Subsequently, in a joint communication, Sigmar de Mello Rode, President of ABEC* and Abel Packer, Program Director for SciELO* expressed concern that CAPES initiative would favour only a small selection of the 280 national journals published on the SciELO platform which together represent 25% of the country’s scientific output.
De Mello Rode and Packer argue that the CAPES program should do more to support the growth of an indigenous publishing industry. The CAPES announcement did not make clear what role it foresaw for SciELO in the future.
Note:
CAPES (the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior) is the Brazilian Federal Agency for the Support and Evaluation of Graduate Education.
SciELO (The Scientific Electronic Library Online) is an electronic library covering a selected collection of Brazilian scientific journals.The library is an integral part of a project being developed by FAPESP – Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo, in partnership with BIREME – the Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information.
ABEC is the Brazilian Association of Scientific Editors.