Radiologia Brasileira - Publicação Científica Oficial do Colégio Brasileiro de Radiologia

The indexation of Radiologia Brasileira (RB) at internationally recognized databases is a priority for the members of Colégio Brasileiro de Radiologia e Diagnóstico por Imagem board of directors. This has also been the objective of practically all the most important Brazilian and international medical journals⁽¹⁾. Radiologia Brasileira has benefited from two recent events, namely, its indexation at the Scimago database, and the adoption by Capes of such a database as a journal evaluation criterion.

The recent changes implemented in the Capes' system of postgraduate programmes assessment have brought to the Brazilian scene what is already a reality in the international scientific environment: the increasing role of Scopus/Scimago, a database created by Elsevier which is comparable to the most traditional and, until recently, the unique and widely used Thomson Reuter's ISI-Web of Science database^(1–3). The Scimago database has gained recognition for covering a greater number of scientific publications, including all those journals indexed at ISI-Web. It covers about more than twice the number of journals included in the ISI-Web coming from a three times greater number of countries. A range of studies comparing both databases have not clearly demonstrated which is the best, considering that each of these databases presents advantages and disadvantages^(1–3). It is important to highlight that both databases belong to business enterprises, and that ISI-Web operates on a paid-access basis, and Scimago, on a free-access basis.

The journals are basically classified on the basis of their impact factor (IF – Thomson Reuter impact factor, calculated by ISI-Web) or of the equivalent factor calculated by Scimago, the Cites per Doc (C/D). Both factors present similar calculation formulas: they are calculated from the number of citations, over a determined year, of articles published by the journal in the two previous years, i.e., the impact is directly proportional to the number of citations received by the journal. By means of the Webqualis system, Capes classifies the journals as follows: A1 – IF or C/D > 4; A2 – IF or C/D between 2.8 and 4; B1 – IF or C/D between 1.6 and 2.8; B2 – IF or C/D between 0.8 and 2.6; B3 – IF or C/D between 0.2 and 0.8; B4 – IF or C/D < 0.2 or no impact at PubMed, SciELO, ISI, Scimago; B5 – Lilacs database^(5,6).

With the RB indexation at Scimago, the journal started to get higher scores, being classified according to its impact, independently of its indexation at PubMed or at ISI-Web. From the previous grade B4, RB was already classified as B3 in 2012. The only way to continue improving our ranking is receiving the maximum possible number of citations. It should be highlighted that only citations made over the two previous years are of interest for the purposes of such a classification.

The researchers in the field of Radiology, with special emphasis on those participating in stricto sensu postgraduate programmes evaluated by Capes, shall be benefited from these changes, not only in the evaluation of the programmes they belong to as well as in their own personal evaluation in case of application for research scholarships in funding & support agencies. On the other hand, the whole professional community can give their contribution to the advancement of this process: the only way to continue improving the RB ranking and impact is that all the colleagues feel encouraged to increasingly cite the journal on their scientific papers published in other indexed journals. In this way, the journal will be internationally accepted on a solid and consistent basis by the scientific community.


REFERENCES

1. Marchiori E. The challenging indexation of Radiologia Brasileira. Are we able to collaborate in this process? Radiol Bras. 2011;44(2):v.

2. Rocha-e-Silva M. Impact factor, Scimago Indexes and the Brazilian journal rating system: where do we go from here? Cinics. 2010;65:351–5.

3. Spreckelsen C, Deserno TM, Spitzer K. Visibility of medical informatics regarding bibliometric indices and databases. BMC Med Inform Decis Mak. 2011 Apr 15;11:24. doi: 10.1186/1472-6947-11-24.

4. Rew D. SCOPUS: Another step towards seamless integration of the world's medical literature. Eur J Surg Oncol. 2010;36:2–3.

5. Carvalho ACP. What can we cite from Radiologia Brasileira? Radiol Bras. 2012;45(3):vii–viii.

6. Carvalho ACP. The journal Radiologia Brasileira. New possibilities of development in face of changes in Capes criteria. Radiol Bras. 2012;45(2):v–vi.










(Chief-Editor of RB).