This is the second time that both journals achieved to get the same fund, which aims at optimizing the editorial process and improving the international visibility of each one of them. In this call, the project was in first place at the national level among the selected projects.
Two journals of the Universidad de La Frontera (UFRO) got ANID (“Chilean National Agency for Research and Development”) project funds approved that will allow them to optimize their processes and to aim for national and international positioning. These journals are “Cubo, A Mathematical Journal”, edited by the Department of Mathematics and Statistics since 1985, and “Perspectivas de la Comunicación” (Perspectives of Communications), which started in the year 2000 under the wing of the Doctoral Program in Communications.
It has not been easy for these open access journals, but thanks to the constant hard work, Cubo achieved to be part of prestigious databases such as Scopus, DOAJ and SciELO-Chile, and Perspectivas de la Comunicación achieved to be part of SciELO in the Emerging Sources Citation Index of Web of Science.
“It is a complex task to maintain a journal that comes from a region in a country that is not that known for its science and very centralized, and moreover in a field such as mathematics, which requires a high technical level in the process of knowledge generation. In fact, there are only two mathematical journals in Chile,” explained Dr. Mauricio Godoy, the editor of the Journal Cubo. Together with the industrial engineer Ignacio Castillo, he began to digitize all previous editions in order to improve the level of the publications and to seek funding to strengthen the journal. In this context, they got a project fund approved in 2016, which allowed them to develop an online portal for academic journals UFRO, among others.
This first project was essential for the journal to emerge again. It was not only accepted in Scopus, but also authors from different countries started to publish in it, giving it more visibility at the international level. Last year, the journal received more than 250 manuscripts from France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Mexico, USA, India, Saudi Arabia, China, South Korea, etc., but it publishes only about 30 articles a year. “We reached a level where we need to improve and optimize the editorial process in order to improve the productivity and efficiency of the journal. Those are some of our main challenges regarding this project,” said Ignacio Castillo, who is in charge of this process.
GOALS: INDEXED IN WOS AND LEADER IN LATIN AMERICA
This new fund will allow carrying out several activities to achieve these new goals, such as to advance to the category of emerging journals in the Web of Science (WoS), what implies to meet strict editorial, scientific and management parameters. But the work towards this aim has already begun, with a data analysis, in which also some undergraduate students are participating. At the same time, the editors will make use of different consultancy services for the editorial process, as well as of technological platforms to facilitate the reviews and to reach a certain branding and brand positioning at the national and international level. In addition, this new project will allow to update the journals’ websites and to add new features.
One of the important proposed ideas is the establishment of a Network for Latin American Mathematical Journals, considering the high level of the researchers and the low number of publishing houses. “There are very few Mathematical Journals in Latin America that are indexed in WoS and we want to understand the reason. There are top-level mathematicians in Latin America, but they prefer to publish in other countries, since the Latin American Journals are not very well-positioned at the international level, but if we had a network, we could help each other to reach another level,” concluded Dr. Godoy.
REACH SCOPUS AND INCREASED INTERNATIONALIZATION
The objectives of the journal “Perspectivas de la Comunicación” within this project are equally challenging. There are five communication-related journals in Chile. Two of them are indexed in SciELO and one in Scopus. “Perspectivas de la Comunicación” is the second most important journal in its field in Chile and sets an example in Ibero-America.
“With the help of the previous ANID project funds we received, we managed to be part of SciELO since 2019. Now, we want to be Scopus indexed, but we have to meet certain criteria for that, such as a certain percentage of articles in English. That is one of our main focuses at the moment,” explained Dr. Carlos del Valle, the director of the journal. Therefore, the journal will publish at least two bilingual issues and although there are many international collaborators, the challenge is to attract English speaking reviewers and authors.
The new project will also allow making use of consultancy services in order to find optimization strategies with IT-support for the management processes, as well as to strengthen the collaboration networks and to ensure greater international visibility.
The journal “Perspectivas de la Comunicación” publishes two issues a year, but since a couple of years, it started to make use of the system recommended by the international indices. “We publish the articles according to their evaluations, thus the authors can access their publications, a procedure that adds another dynamic to the process,” explained Dr. Del Valle, adding that, since 2007, the journal is published online only. This is because of the sustainability commitments of the university.
It is also worth mentioning that UFRO has eleven scientific journals at the moment, of which two are indexed in WoS, three in Scopus and four in SciELO.
PROJECT DETAILS
Title: “Optimization of the editorial process and improvement of the international visibility of the journals CUBO, A Mathematical Journal and Perspectivas de la Comunicación” (“Optimización del proceso editorial y mejoramiento en la visibilidad internacional de las revistas CUBO, A Mathematical Journal y Perspectivas de la Comunicación”).
Code: FP210007Duration: 24 months
Team: Mauricio Godoy Molina (researcher in charge), Rubí E. Rodríguez, Ignacio Castillo Bello, Carlos del Valle, Rubén Sánchez and Daniel Caro.
