Radiologia Brasileira - Publicação Científica Oficial do Colégio Brasileiro de Radiologia

Edson Marchiori; Giovanni Guido Cerri; Fernando Alves Moreira

Editors for Radiologia Brasileira

For the last years, the Colégio Brasileiro de Radiologia Board of Directors and the publishers of the journal Radiologia Brasileira have devoted their best efforts to make it fit the international standards, with the main objective of getting it listed in international databases (Medline and, particularly, ISI). The major advantage of our journal indexing will be the increase in the visibility of the Brazilian radiological production, considering that our articles would start to be found in the main international search sources, especially PubMed.

An online review system was implemented, speeding up the overall review process and allowing the manuscripts evaluation by two or even by three reviewers. Additionally, an integral English version of the journal is available online and can be accessed by researchers worldwide. The number of original articles published by the journal has considerably increased, since they were given priority over case reports and review articles towards an even higher compliance with the criteria for journals indexing in international databases.

The extremely relevant role of the Editorial Board in this process cannot be disregarded. Extremely busy professionals anonymously devote part of their scarce free time to evaluate and review the manuscripts, submitting comments and recommendations, accepting or rejecting them, and guaranteeing the most important aspect of a journal: the quality and scientific strictness. These reviewers' workload has doubled in the last year, when the manuscripts started being evaluated by two reviewers.

Nevertheless, additional steps must be taken, requiring the indispensable collaboration of our Editorial Board and national authors. For a journal to be accredited in international databases, it needs, above all, to be cited. It is essential that national authors cite our journal in their manuscripts, especially in those published by the international literature.

Another requirement for submission of our journal to Medline is a drastic reduction in the number of the Editorial Council members. On the other hand, the journal will need their work, and the number of reviewers must be increased. So, in 2008, we will follow the example of the majority of international journals: a Reviewers Board will be constituted, and the members listing will be published in the last issue of the journal for 2008; with the Editorial Board (which must be reduced at half) maintaining the representatives for each subspecialty who had the most active participation in the manuscripts review during 2007. The number of reviewers will be proportional to the number of manuscripts received for each subspecialty (some specialties had many representatives with a low demand for reviewing manuscripts in that area. On the other hand, other subspecialties with a high number of manuscripts had few reviewers). We count on the comprehension of all members who will understand that their role is critical either in the Editorial Board or in the Reviewers Board. The division was merely administrative, to meet the Medline requirements.

We count on the support of our collaborators in this initiative, considering that the listing in Medline represents a great challenge for the Brazilian radiology and will benefit the community as a whole.