Bori: a platform for the dissemination of scientific articles by Brazilian researchers for the Brazilian and international press

Abstract

Every Friday, newspapers from around the world, including Brazilian ones, tend to have a common behavior in their respective news sections: they report on studies published in the scientific magazine, Science. This is because Science, along with dozens of other American and European periodicals, releases embargoed studies to journalists from all over the world duly registered on a platform of scientific divulgation. In the case of Science, the embargo is dropped on Fridays. This platform for periodicals in question, called EurekAlert, is maintained by AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) and brings together, in addition to Science, periodicals such as PLOS, PNAS and Lancet. The Brazilian press if strongly guided by the cycle of embargoed scientific studies available on this American platform. Studies by Brazilian authors in the periodicals that are a part of EurakAlert are usually prioritized by journalists in the selection of scientific articles that will be released in a news format, however, in some cases, they may almost become diluted among so many other works presented at the same time. Furthermore, studies by Brazilian researchers who publish scientific novelties in periodicals outside of EurakAlert, such as in congress annals or even Brazilian periodicals indexed to SciELO, are often left out of the press. The consequence of this process is notorious: the Brazilian press gives more space to international studies than to studies made by Brazilians, at Brazilian institutions, with national funding. Thus, the Brazilian society's perception of scientific production in terms of quantity and quality is more closely associated with foreign studies than with national studies, which can strongly influence the society's support for science and public policies in the area of science. By reading Brazilian newspapers, it is possible to conclude, due to this phenomenon, that Brazilian science produces little, or develops studies of little impact, compared to those made by the American, German, Chinese, or British science communities. This project aims to develop an unprecedented system to disseminate Brazilian scientific production published in national and international scientific periodicals for Brazilian and foreign journalists interested in this type of information. The system, initially named Bori, in honor of the Brazilian scientist, Carolina Bori, aims to gather in a type of network, which initially will be free of charge and later on paid for, some of the elite research institutions of the country that can place, on this platform, a pre-determined number of embargoed studies, or up to one month of publications. In order to facilitate the work of journalists, the material will be accompanied by an informative press release to assist the journalist to understand the theme, visual material (when available), and direct contact information for the researcher responsible for the work. The platform, from a technological and design point of view and, later, the curatorship of the studies to be divulged and all the journalistic and visual material based on the scientific works, will be developed by the team of this company which is proposing the project, under the coordination of a specialized science journalist, who is also a scientist that has worked with the main science publishers of the country, and has vast knowledge of the process of production of scientific knowledge and scientific journalism. The expectation is to create in a short period of time a culture of access to the Bori platform as a daily practice of scientific, environmental, health, and related areas journalism, in order to contribute substantially to the dissemination of scientific activities within Brazil and, thus, to positively impact the development of B (AU)