Brazilian Science journals: estrategies to increase and improve the communication with society

Abstract

Brazilian science journals have won more international exposure with increasing indexing databases such as the prestigious Web of Science (WoS). Although Brazilian scientists, especially from the hard sciences, still prefer to publish in international journals, following the trend of seeking the greatest impact factor and credibility that these publications can provide to their articles, there are continuous efforts of internationalization of national journals. For society, however, the Brazilian journals are practically invisible, they are barely used as information sources, although much of the news about science (28%) are based on papers published in science journals, as indicated in the survey that has analyzed the science covered by the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo for 5 years. It is possible to notice that national science journals, on one hand, disclose their contents only for experts and, on the other hand, the science journalists prefer to write about research published in international journals. The reasons for this are not clear yet. In order to help answering this question, this project aims at investigating the communication strategies of national science journals indexed in SciELO through questionnaires to the editors to understand their interests and difficulties in expanding the communication channels of the journals. The project also intends to apply questionnaire about preferences and difficulties that science journalists have in accessing content produced by Brazilian science journals. From the collection and analysis of results, we intend to develop a pilot project with 10 science journals that are interested in expanding their communication channels and monitor changes in access to its content, at first, which would indicate a change in visibility of the journal. The project will produce tutorials to science journals to assist journals editors in implementing new channels of communication with the media and society. The expectation is that this project can sensitize editors of Brazilian science journals and the media to the importance of establishing communication between science and society, increasing the visibility and credibility of Brazilian research. (AU)