El modelo SciELO en España: un proyecto pionero de acceso abierto / The SciELO model in Spain: a pioneering open access project

El proyecto SciELO se constituye como una iniciativa pionera del movimiento de acceso abierto para la publicación de revistas científicas editadas en países en desarrollo y de habla no inglesa. El artículo comienza revisando los orígenes del proyecto SciELO en Brasil en 1998 y su desarrollo como red cooperativa extendida a 14 países iberoamericanos y Sudáfrica. A continuación, se centra en la iniciativa española, SciELO España, que comienza a funcionar en 2001 con 4 revistas y que en la actualidad incluye 60 revistas y más de 40.000 artículos. Asimismo, se destacan los hitos conseguidos a nivel científico y de respaldo de la comunidad de editores científicos, como lo demuestran las cifras de visitas y descarga de contenidos que recibe, así como la incorporación de sus revistas en índices internacionales de prestigio como Web of Science y Scopus

The SciELO project is a pioneering initiative of the Open Access movement for the publication of scientific journals in developing and non-English-speaking countries. The article begins by reviewing the origins of the SciELO project in Brazil in 1998 and its development as an extended cooperative network to 14 Ibero-American countries and South Africa. It then focuses on the Spanish initiative, SciELO Spain, which begins operating in 2001 with 4 journals and currently includes 60 journals and more than 40,000 articles. It also highlights the milestones achieved at the scientific level and support of the publishing community, as evidenced by the number of visits and content downloads hat it receives, as well as the incorporation of its journals in prestigious international indexes such as Web of Science and Scopus

Publish or perish: Need for bibliometric and access reform.

Not available.

Death of scientific journals after 350 years.

Scientific journals have virtually disappeared as subscription-based familiar paper copies. These have been replaced by article by article access on internet sites (either subscription based paid for by libraries in multi-journal often million dollar 'Big Deal' packages or by author prepayments of thousand dollars 'article processing fees' (Omary and Lawrence, Dealing with rising publication costs. The Scientist 2017;31:29-31), followed by open access. The result appears to be the death of the traditional scientific journal as a familiar means of communication, after nearly 350 years from the time of Anton van Leeuwenhoek and Robert Hooke (for two early microbiology examples). Rather than journals with page numbers, individual reports are accessed using titles or manuscript file code numbers. This commentary is knowingly provocative, describing the rapidly changing situation in scientific publication at the beginning of the 21st century and predicting a bad future, basically the end of the long-time most-used vehicles for scientific communication, the paper scientific journal with volumes and pages. This view is not particular to this author and appears frequently today (e.g. The Scientist 2012; https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2016/10/26/revisiting-why-hasnt-scientific-publishing-been-disrupted-already/). This negative conclusion offers no better possibilities, as it is concluded that it is already too late and too far along this pathway for any meaningful middle ground. This commentary is intended for a broad group of potential readers, including authors and readers of this journal (who are active microbial scientists who need to adapt to individual manuscript identification numbers replacing page numbers), as well as the larger community interested broadly in scientific communication, and even our institutional librarians (who have experienced the disappearance of paper copies from their shelves, and especially unsustainable rapid increases in money costs at a time of very limited resources).

Negative Effects of "Predatory" Journals on Global Health Research.

Predatory journals (PJ) exploit the open-access model promising high acceptance rate and fast track publishing without proper peer review. At minimum, PJ are eroding the credibility of the scientific literature in the health sciences as they actually boost the propagation of errors. In this article, we identify issues with PJ and provide several responses, from international and interdisciplinary perspectives in health sciences. Authors, particularly researchers with limited previous experience with international publications, need to be careful when considering potential journals for submission, due to the current existence of large numbers of PJ. Universities around the world, particularly in developing countries, might develop strategies to discourage their researchers from submitting manuscripts to PJ or serving as members of their editorial committees.