Rodriguésia: 80 years disseminating Botanical Science

Abstract

The first volume of Rodriguésia was published during the winter of 1935, supported by the Instituto de Pesquisas Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro (Fig. 1). This year our journal celebrates 80 years of existence as the oldest Brazilian journal to publish articles exclusively in Plant Biology. Since its inception, over 1000 manuscripts have been published, authored by researchers from diverse Brazilian states and many countries in South and Central America, North America, Europe and Asia. Articles are reviewed by an editorial board composed of proeminent international researchers, some of them from American and European institutions. According to the base SCImago, the h index of Rodriguésia, an indicator of periodic citation, estimated in a period between 2011 and 2014, is seven. According to Scholar Google, the h5 (the h index calculated using only articles published in the past 5 years) has reached 8 while the h5 median (which is the average number of articles included in h5) is now at 16. Between 2011 and 2014, a considerable increase was recorded in relation to various ratings obtained by the journal, as seen in Table 1. This improvement reflects the position of Rodriguésia that allies its strong tradition to a continuously evolving attitude looking towards the future. Strong assets that contribute to this journal's posture are free access to all papers and the fact that this journal does not belong to any society, requiring no annual fee or any other type of membership or payment from publishing authors. Recently its website has been moved to a new electronic submission platform using the ScholarOne system by Thomson Reuters. The entire contents of the journal, from 1935 onwards, were digitalised, stored and made available on its website. Since 2012 Rodriguésia has been indexed in Scielo and SCImago bases, ensuring more visibility for the journal, with increasing number of article citations. Another important achievement is the availability of the entire digitised collection via the JSTOR base. Future aims include an increase on the number or articles submitted for publication, as well as of the articles in English, the reduction of the time elapsed between submission and acceptance of papers, and finally to index Rodriguésia in the Core Collection of the Web of Science, by Thomson Reuters, in order to receive a JCR index, a measure widely used to evaluate journals in the scientific arena. The journal has a policy of not restricting the number of pages in order to encourage valuable floristic studies or taxonomic revisions that are often denied space in many modernized journals. Rodriguésia has welcomed the publication of special volumes with themed articles to increase visibility of publications. Starting in 2005, a special issue dedicated to the Araceae family with the contribution of Brazilian and foreign scientists. During the same year the journal celebrated its 70th anniversary with a special volume dedicated to contributions towards the Flora of the Reserva Ducke, the first flora of the Brazilian Amazo...