Launch of the new portal Bahiana Journals

On the eve of the celebrations of its 65 years, the Escola Bahiana de Medicina e Saúde Pública launched, this Thursday morning, May 25th, its newest internet portal: the Bahiana Journals, a site for scientific publications that brings together journals in the areas of Medicine, Dentistry, Education and Health, Physiotherapy, Nursing and Psychology. The site has free access to interested parties and researchers and is available at journals.bahiana.education

The ceremony took place at the Cabula Academic Unit and was attended by the dean of Bahiana, Prof. Dr. Maria Luisa Carvalho Soliani, the Dean of Research and Innovation, Atson Fernandes and the Dean of Undergraduate and Graduate Education, Maria de Lourdes de Freitas Gomes who participated in the opening table.

To mark the launch of the new portal, the Scientific Communication Nucleus (NUCC) of the Bahiana organized a special program with visiting professors and researchers from inside and outside the institution. The opening lecture, "Reflections on the role of scientific information in the development of science", was presented by the coordinator of the NUCC Prof. Dr. Kátia Sá. In her speech, she presented the entire trajectory of scientific journals in the Bahiana, the processes of change and the goals for journals to achieve increasingly higher scores in the indicative strata of national and international quality.

"The role of journals in scientific and social development" was the theme of the lecture by Prof. Lena Vania Ribeiro Pinheiro, coordinator of Education and Research, Information Science and Technology at the Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology (IBITC). In addition to presenting a brief overview of IBITC's actions, the professor presented the concept of "open science", which aims to strengthen the replicability, attribution, reuse and improvement of scientific works, facilitating criticism and collaboration.

the teacher of Bahiana Dr. Luiz Cláudio Correia presented the theme "The role of scientific evidence in the development of contemporary sciences", in which he showed paradigms between the quantity and quality of scientific publications and the need to encourage the production of review articles, to the detriment of high production of original articles.

Finally, participants were able to listen to a lecture by the international guest, Franz Portzsout (Germany), who spoke about communication problems in scientific production.

The magazines were presented by their respective editors and the portal was also publicly exhibited by NUCC executive editor João de Deus and editorial analyst George Araújo.

Regarding the path taken to the current status, Dr. Kátia says that the entire process began in 2012, when a survey was started to understand the quality standards and align with the level of excellence that the Bahiana it already has in other areas. After assembling the team, she says: "we started to develop and apply international criteria in our editing process, choosing scientific editors, knowing well the indicators and forms recommended internationally for us, in order to reach more goals". The professor admits that the path to consecration of scientific journals requires work and patience. "This is a job that we will have to have the patience to grow slowly, consistently, so that they don't die, because most magazines die in two years and ours are already five years old and, on the contrary, instead of dying they are growing".


New portal

João de Deus explains that now the periodical portal of Bahiana is in full compliance with international requirements. "The site was made to dialogue with the international community, so it has what we needed, to receive articles in English, accommodate foreign reviewers who evaluate and editors who also do this work in English".

According to the executive editor, the entire project was designed to fill all the gaps that the previous publishing system did not address, "so, we have an integration with the social network that is a request from Sielo, we have English to talk to the community international, as requested by our government and we have a greater prominence for news about scientific work in order to disseminate science and help authors to approach standards of scientific integrity".

Prof. Lena was enthusiastic about the presentations of the magazines and highlighted the innovative character that the Bahiana owns, within all its tradition. "I noticed the commitment of all researchers who are in charge of these journals, they are, aesthetically, very beautiful, all nationally and internationally standardized. I think the institution is to be congratulated. Congratulations on the event, congratulations on your tradition and, to the while modernity, I am delighted to be here participating and getting to know this initiative".