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Quality and Impact of Ibero-American Scientific Journals 4-7 October 2009, San José, Costa Rica

The conference Quality and Impact of Ibero-American Scientific Journals, organized jointly by Latindex (www.latindex.org) and the University of Costa Rica (www.ucr.ac.cr), was the third of a series of related meetings. Its predecessors were the two workshops that took place in the framework of the International Bookfair of Guadalajara in 1994 and 1997, the first one on Scientific Publications, the second one on Scientific Journals in Latin America. As on previous occasions, INASP, UNESCO and CONACYT (Mexico) provided complementary financial support for conference participants.

Journal publishing has changed significantly during the last fifteen years. Therefore, further to assessing the experience of Latindex, which was founded in the aftermath of the first Workshop, it was considered opportune to review the impact of other initiatives, such as virtual libraries and institutional systems created for the promotion and evaluation of journals, and to debate key issues concerning the quality, visibility and impact of the journals published in the region.

The conference was attended by nearly 50 participants. These included four keynote speakers: Prof. Leslie Chan from the University of Toronto, Prof. José Antonio de la Peña from the National University of Mexico (UNAM) and Conacyt, Prof. Emir Suaiden from the Instituto Brasileiro de Informação em Ciência e Tecnologia (IBICT) and Prof. Hebe Vessuri from the Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas (IVIC), in addition to a selection of 38 specialists from 16 countries. Working groups were organized around three topics: 1) Prestige, quality and impact of journals: indicators and evaluation systems, 2) Strengthening the Ibero-American journals: the role of editors; 3) Visibility, register and access in the digital era: experiences in Ibero-America and beyond.

Quality and impact are two key issues, very much at the centre of the debate. Editorial quality parameters, particularly those established by Latindex, are increasingly being adopted as a norm and serving to promote good practices in the Ibero-American world. On the other hand, the changing environment of scholarly publishing is starting to have an impact on the concept of quality. Impact, as we all know, is an even more difficult concept to define and the subject of much controversy. The meeting discussed the impact factors generated by well-known information systems, as well as the risks associated to their inappropriate use as indicators of quality. Emphasis was placed on the role that journals have historically played as promoters of schools of thought or research of particular relevance. Further, the use of Spanish and Portuguese as publishing languages was considered an important mechanism to extend the social impact of the scientific activity in the region.

The conference provided an opportunity to interact with journal editors, who shared their first-hand experience in trying to produce journals of good quality and high impact, both among and beyond the community of peers. The growing scientific activity and the continued pressure on scientists to publish are resulting in new titles being created by the day, some of them fully electronic. A number of emerging regional online libraries are providing organized access to the journal contents, with aggregated features and predominantly on a free and open basis. These online facilities, in addition to institutional programmes for the promotion and evaluation of scholarly journals, represent unique opportunities that editors cannot afford to miss.

At the end of three days of lively debate, the workshop concluded with a wide ranging list of conclusions and recommendations. One of the main conclusions related to the need to continue building the Latindex directory of titles as a valuable tool for information and diagnosis about what is published in the region. Further, it was agreed to continue promoting the free, organized and open access to the vast scholarly literature produced in the region through online libraries and repositories, which in their turn should be made accessible though a common portal being developed by the Latindex system.

The outcomes of the two Guadalajara workshops were published by Fondo de Cultura Económica (Mexico) in 1995 and 1999, respectively, under the titles: Scientific publications in Latin America and Scientific journals in Latin America. In keeping with the tradition, a selection of the materials of the Costa Rica Conference, duly edited, will be published again in book form by Fondo de Cultura Económica.