Published since 1909, the magazine Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, the oldest scientific journal in Latin America, reaches its 101st volume with the highest impact factor since 1994: 0.847 points. The index of the journal, which is edited by Instituto Oswaldo Cruz (IOC), was released by the Journal of Citation Reports (JCR). Since 1972, the JCR annually reports the impact factors of scientific journals indexed by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI).
The impact factor is a useful tool for assessing the relevance of a journal to the scientific community and is calculated by dividing the number of citations registered in the last two years by the number of articles published in the period. Thus, it is possible to measure the consultations carried out and evaluate the impact of the publication on scientific production. The annual growth registered by Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz – which has the third highest index among Brazilian scientific journals – points to the improvement in the quality of publication and becomes even more significant for being exponential. In the last two years, its growth rate went from 0.05 to 0.1, as a result of measures implemented since 2002 by the journal's editorial board.
“The impact factor of Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz has grown gradually since 1994, when we started monitoring it, and that means improving the quality of the journal, which is now consulted by an ever-increasing number of researchers. While in 2002 we had 619 consultations, in 2005 we registered a total of 16”, evaluates researcher José Rodrigues Coura, scientific editor of the magazine and head of the Department of Tropical Medicine of the IOC.
“This was possible due to changes in the policy of the editorial board. A strategy adopted four years ago was the publication of at least one review article in each issue of the journal. Because they compile a lot of information, these works serve as a source for the production of original articles, which generates queries to the journal”, concludes Luciane Willcox, managing editor of Memórias.
Another procedure adopted in 2002 was the formation of a group of associate editors, composed of researchers Claude Pirmez, Octávio Fernandes, Pedro Cabello and Ricardo Lourenço, all from IOC, which screens the articles submitted to the journal before selecting the scientific adviser. This sieve resulted in an increase in the publication's level of demand and contributed to its improvement.
Coura points out, however, that the number of citations recorded by a journal is not determined solely by the relevance of its articles. “A journal with more than ten thousand members, such as the international ones, will have a high impact factor because it will be read and consequently cited by a large number of researchers. More comprehensive or multidisciplinary publications, in turn, such as Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, with editions every 45 days and a print run of a thousand copies, are consulted by a greater variety of researchers and therefore have a more oscillating impact”, the researcher considers.
The full text of published articles and subscription information are available at http://memorias.ioc.fiocruz.br/
*Reporting: Bel Levy
Published since 1909, the magazine Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, the oldest scientific journal in Latin America, reaches its 101st volume with the highest impact factor since 1994: 0.847 points. The index of the journal, which is edited by Instituto Oswaldo Cruz (IOC), was released by the Journal of Citation Reports (JCR). Since 1972, the JCR annually reports the impact factors of scientific journals indexed by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI).
The impact factor is a useful tool for assessing the relevance of a journal to the scientific community and is calculated by dividing the number of citations registered in the last two years by the number of articles published in the period. Thus, it is possible to measure the consultations carried out and evaluate the impact of the publication on scientific production. The annual growth registered by Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz – which has the third highest index among Brazilian scientific journals – points to the improvement in the quality of publication and becomes even more significant for being exponential. In the last two years, its growth rate went from 0.05 to 0.1, as a result of measures implemented since 2002 by the journal's editorial board.
“The impact factor of Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz has grown gradually since 1994, when we started monitoring it, and that means improving the quality of the journal, which is now consulted by an ever-increasing number of researchers. While in 2002 we had 619 consultations, in 2005 we registered a total of 16”, evaluates researcher José Rodrigues Coura, scientific editor of the magazine and head of the Department of Tropical Medicine of the IOC.
“This was possible due to changes in the policy of the editorial board. A strategy adopted four years ago was the publication of at least one review article in each issue of the journal. Because they compile a lot of information, these works serve as a source for the production of original articles, which generates queries to the journal”, concludes Luciane Willcox, managing editor of Memórias.
Another procedure adopted in 2002 was the formation of a group of associate editors, composed of researchers Claude Pirmez, Octávio Fernandes, Pedro Cabello and Ricardo Lourenço, all from IOC, which screens the articles submitted to the journal before selecting the scientific adviser. This sieve resulted in an increase in the publication's level of demand and contributed to its improvement.
Coura points out, however, that the number of citations recorded by a journal is not determined solely by the relevance of its articles. “A journal with more than ten thousand members, such as the international ones, will have a high impact factor because it will be read and consequently cited by a large number of researchers. More comprehensive or multidisciplinary publications, in turn, such as Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, with editions every 45 days and a print run of a thousand copies, are consulted by a greater variety of researchers and therefore have a more oscillating impact”, the researcher considers.
The full text of published articles and subscription information are available at http://memorias.ioc.fiocruz.br/
*Reporting: Bel Levy
The non-profit reproduction of the text is allowed as long as the source is cited (Comunicação / Instituto Oswaldo Cruz)
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