RBGO – A journal to support gynecology and obstetrics research in Latin America

Abstract

I n 2016, the Brazilian Federation of the Gynecology and Obstetrics Associations -FEBRASGO began a major restructuring process of the RBGO -Revista Brasileira de Ginecologia e Obstetrícia with significant changes in its editorial policy. Since that date, after the editorial board was reformulated, the articles began to be published in English with absolute regularity and the journal was registered in the main international databases. Given the RBGO's commitment to following several aspects of the open science movement, it has become an open access journal and authors are not charged any fees for publishing their articles.During these eight years, the indicators in its indexing sources were always increasing and, according to data provided by Thieme Publisher (RBGO's partner publisher), from January to October 2023, researchers' access to RBGO's abstracts or full-texts reached the mark of 332,000 and 240,000 respectively, coming from researchers from all over the world, from data analysis by the origin of the access IPs. In 2023, the RBGO achieved Impact Factor 1.2 granted by the Web of Science (WoS) -Journal Impact Factor Trend 2022, (1) and nowadays, it is an internationally recognized journal.The RBGO stood out in our continent and according to data from the 2022 Scimago Journal & Country Rank, it ranks first among Latin American Gynecology and Obstetrics journals, with SJR 0.29 and H Index 27. (2) These indicators are not very significant when compared with the major journals in Europe and North America. Although Latin American authors actually prefer to send their articles to international journals because of their greater visibility and projection (3)(4) , the costs of publishing an article in internationally renowned journals of Europe or North America are prohibitive for the vast majority of Latin American researchers. Nowadays, it is not uncommon for journals to charge fees above US$5,000 per article published. For this reason, it is greatly important that Latin America has its own journals edited with quality and internationalized to publicize and give visibility to the research developed here, so that the academic world can have access to its social and scientific reality.Good quality science, both in basic and application areas, is produced in several research centers in Latin America. In Brazil, postgraduate courses at Master's and Doctorate levels have become the largest source of medical research. Reaching the rest of the world with the product of this science is strategic and in the interest of everyone, particularly the governmental or private bodies and institutions that fund research. Such objectives need, must and can be achieved in line with the new open science policy gaining followers around the world.Brazil has long occupied a prominent place in global scientific production. In 2022, it ranked 13 th in the number of scientific publications, with a production of 78,940 articles published in journals indexed in the WoS. (5) Even though this is an expressive number, it is known that Brazilian ...