Journals of the Health Sciences field in the Portal de Revistas da USP: an alternative Brazilian information resource

Introduction

The Portal de Revistas da USP - Portal of Journals of the USP, is an electronic library that collects journals published under the responsibility of the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Launched in 2008 with 31 scientific journals, aiming to increase the visibility of those USP journals published in the national and international context, adopted the SciELO model of electronic publishing, a non-profit metapublisher launched in 1997 by Latin-American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information - BIREME, the Pan American Health Organization - PAHO and the World Health Organization-WHO, in partnership with the Sao Paulo State Research Foundation - FAPESP, to provide easy and free access to the full text and to allow users to obtain indicators of scientific production, as reports of citations and co-authors [1]. The purpose of this work is show the current configuration of the Portal de Revistas da USP, highlighting the periodicals about Health, spreading an initiative as an alternative resource to scientific journals' visibility and to the free access for Health Community in Brazil.

Methods

The data about the journals were obtained from the Portal de Revistas da USP in its official website (http://portal.revistasusp.sibi.usp.br) , and it was consulted the current number of journals in total and by area, highlighting those about Health, verifying their configuration, including the indexing in Web of Science – WoS (by Thomson Reuters), Scopus (by Elsevier) and SciELO databases.

Results

Currently (Figue 1) the Portal de Revistas da USP has 62 scientific journals, and the website informs (April 27, 2012) that there are 2.592 journal issues, 31.610 articles with 650.341 citations, being 20 titles from the area of Health Sciences, that along with the Human Sciences (20 titles), each one performing 29% from total, following by the Applied Social Sciences, with 15 titles (21%), Biological Sciences, 6 titles (8%), Agricultural sciences with 4 titles (6%), Linguistics, Language and Arts with 3 titles (4%), and Exact & Earth Sciences, 2 titles (3%). SciELO database indexes the more than 20 Health Sciences journals (11 titles), followed by Scopus (8 titles) and finally, the WoS with 7 titles; while 7 Health Sciences journals are in all resources, 3 both in SciELO and Scopus, and 1 in SciELO and WoS. And 9 journals are not indexed in any of these sources yet.

Discussion and Conclusion

The Portal de Revistas da USP grew 50% in three years: in 2009 there were 31 scientific journals registered [2], and today there are 62. In Health Sciences, the number of indexed bonds increased from 15 in 2009 to 20 in 2012, a growth around 34%. It is an important evolution in the context of the publishing difficulties in non-English speaking countries. The adoption of the SciELO metapublisher increased the journals visibility, also allowing to obtain indicators of scientific production. Such initiatives should be encouraged and disseminated, focusing on alternatives to scientific literature excluded from mainstream science publishing.