SciELO (Scientific Electronic
Library Online) is a database of articles, 377,772 articles, from 985 journals
published in 16 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (plus Spain and
South Africa). One can search either all
the articles by word, or limit the search by nation, region, or subject. Most of the journals are in the biological,
medical and social sciences. Its biggest limitation is that many but not
the majority of its articles are only available in Spanish and Portuguese.
The
initial reason for the creation of SciELO in 1987 was the conviction that the developing world’s scientific research was not being published
in the top journals. Lists of citations,
the scientific world’s equivalent of home run stats, showed only a tiny number
of articles by researchers outside the U.S., Canada and Europe were being used
to support research.
In
an influential article from 1995 “Lost
Science in the Third World” Luis Benitez-Bribiesca, editor of a Mexican medical
journal was quoted on the subject using cholera research as an example.
“Right
now cases are increasing in Mexico. Our
researchers have interesting findings about some new strains. International journals refuse our papers
because they don’t consider cholera a hot topic. But what if these strains spread across the
border to Texas and California? Previous knowledge about the disease will have
been lost. Scientists searching the
literature will not find the papers published in Mexican journals, because they
are not indexed.”
In
the same article Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, pointed out “it is vital
the developing nations communicate their research to one another. And it is hugely unethical not to have a way
for [Third World] researchers to share ideas with the medical infrastructure.”
When
SciELO started in 1997 with Brazilian funding it had two major goals.
First
was to find the best way to move academic journals on line in an open access format. Simply put open access means access to the
full text of a publication, on the web, with no limitations, except possibly a
requirement to register.
Its
second priority was to set up a system for keeping track of the citations of
the articles.
The
program started with 10 journals and grew to this year’s 985. There has also been a considerable growth in
the number of citations of Latin American authors, mostly from those listed in SciELO.
In
2009 A.L Pacer in the Canadian
Journal of Higher Education declared “the most critical feature of a SciELO
collection is its attention to the continuing quality of the journal it indexes
and publishes. Latin American and
Caribbean journals have markedly progressed in quality and professionalism. “
This
year Brazil started a book portal for the purpose of publishing “national and
thematic collections of academic books online with object of maximizing the visibility,
accessibility, use and impact of the research results, essays and studies that
are published in them." How long it will take other members to follow remains to be seen.
Some
commentators hope the introduction of South Africa to SciELO will be the beginning of
African and Asian participation.
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