O Brazilian Journal of Geology atingiu nível internacional no sistema QUALIS

Abstract

Superior (CAPES) is the most powerful and efficient tool for classification and stratification of national and international journals used for dissemination of scientific articles, thus being adopted as the evaluation basis of various Brazilian science research agencies. Quality of the scientific production from graduate programs in the country is indirectly assessed throughout classification analysis of scientific journals. The criteria governing this stratification are defined from international databases, such as the impact factor ISI/JCR and SCImago Journal Rank (SJR). Since many Brazilian journals are not indexed in these bases, each publishing vehicle is individually classified by criteria like publication frequency and editorial policy adopted. This evaluation mechanism is leading many publishers to strive for excellence in their products, indexing journals in several databases and using English as their language of publication, allowing more visibility to the international audience and contributing to a greater number of citations of articles. To better clarify the geoscientist community, it is relevant to point out that since 2008, when it was implemented, QUALIS system is annually updated and reviewed by a committee of experts representing the most diverse knowledge areas of the Earth Sciences (Geology, Geophysics, Oceanography, Meteorology and Cartographic Sciences). Journals are classified into seven categories, being A1, A2 and B1 that are defined as high rank international circulation newspapers, in which the first includes scientific journals with the highest impact. Together with low rank titles, the vast majority of domestic or national journals in their countries is identified with the B2 to B4 levels, while class B5 gathers publications of smaller scope, considered as of regional circulation or non-regular basis, of less than two issues per year. This classification is completed with level C, which represents all vehicles for popular science as well as those titles that do not have a clear editorial policy or follow the publication criteria considered suitable for Geosciences. It is important to observe that each knowledge area of CAPES publishes a list of journals according to its own criteria so that the same journal can receive different QUALIS ratings without generating inconsistencies, since the value and relevance are what matters in each area. Since the implementation of the QUALIS system, the former Revista Brasileira de Geociências, our RBG, and presently Brazilian Journal of Geology, was situated among the national journals with QUALIS level B2. The policy implemented by the current BJG Editors was decisive in changing the journal direction, in particular the decision of online submission, the publication in English of four issues per year, the time interval reduction between submission and publication, the indexing in the Scopus and SciELO databases and, finally, its entrance in the Thomson Reuters' Web of Science. These efforts resulted in a new classification of the BJG in the QUAL...