25 anos de Cadernos de Saúde Pública

Abstract

This January 2009 issue of Cadernos de Saúde Pública/Reports in Public Health (CSP) launches the journal's 25th year of uninterrupted publication. Throughout this quarter of a century, CSP has made such great strides that it now enjoys an outstanding position not only among scientific journals in the Brazilian health field, but also among its peer publications in Latin America as a whole. During these 25 years, CSP has undergone important changes, ranging from its physical and editorial composition (layout, type of paper, and printing technique, among others) to its periodicity and the full, free, worldwide availability of all 161 issues (including the current one) through the SciELO Electronic Library. The journal's periodicity increased from bimonthly to monthly in 2006. This decision required not only revamping the journal's entire production system, but also expanding its financial investments. Monthly publication led to significant growth in the total number of articles published per year, thus better serving the Brazilian public health research community. One striking characteristic of CSP's history has been its rapid internationalization, as reflected by its coverage in the main international indexing databases in health, especially MEDLINE and Web of Science. Such indexing has been crucial for expanding the dissemination of research output by Brazilian authors outside the country, besides attracting more foreign authors to publish in CSP. The growing presence of foreign authors-not just from elsewhere in Latin America, but also from Africa, Europe, and North America-has made CSP a publishing forum that clearly transcends Brazil's own borders. Some comparative statistics will provide a more detailed view of the journal's first 25 years in print. In 1985 (volume 1), CSP published a total of 25 articles. During the first ten years, the mean number of articles per volume was 40. By the year 2008, CSP published 347 articles, nearly nine times more. The main goal of CSP is obviously not just to publish more and more articles, rather to meet the highly qualified demand for publication as best possible, with an unswerving focus on the basic principle of peer review. The journal thus draws on a network of hundreds of experts whose names are listed in a special acknowledgements section published at the end of each year's December issue. In 2008 a total of 753 researchers issued reviews. In recent years, CSP has received more than a thousand submissions per year, with an approval rate of 18%. Due primarily to the rapid growth in Master's and PhD programs in public health in Brazil, besides the increased availability of research funds through various funding agencies, we can expect this demand to increase even further in the coming years. The editorial staff at CSP is fully aware of its responsibility to the Brazilian scientific community and has worked tirelessly to ensure the efficient publication of the best possible selection of original papers. CSP celebrates its 25 th anniversary by launching an important innov...