The Brazilian Society for Pulmonology and Tisiology has its roots in the foundation of the Brazilian Federation of the Societies of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases in 1937, but it was only in 1978 that it acquired its present title.1 Since then, initiatives for the closer links with the Portuguese Pulmonology Society have been increasing, evidenced by the growing number of binational congresses which have taken place over recent decades.
At the moment, those responsible for the editorial direction of both magazines have decided to take further steps towards a greater unity between the two periodicals, aiming to grow and consolidate the profile of respiratory science coming from Portuguese-speaking countries, and in this way strengthen its role on the international scene of magazines associated with respiratory medicine.
The Brazilian Journal of Pulmonology was founded in 1975 so it will be 40 years old this coming year. Over the past few years a number of initiatives have proven highly relevant in the internationalization of the journal. In 2002, the journal was indexed in Scielo platform (Scientific Electronic Library Online) which is a Brazilian platform for dissemination of scientific journals electronically. This indexing gave access to all newspaper articles, increasing visibility, especially in our own country. In 2006, the journal was indexed in Pubmed and as a direct result there was a significant increase in the number of submissions to the journal in recognition of the international visibility now achieved2. Obtaining the impact factor of Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Knowledge was also instrumental in the growth of our journal and allowed us to further examine all the metrics associated with the scientific publishing process, now also taking the top international magazines as effective benchmarks for comparison3.The same can be said regarding the citation indexes of Scimago platform. Our latest impact factor was 1,268, according to Thomson Reuters, while our last index Cites / 2-years of Scimago was 1.454. If the metric associated to the scientific community is not an end in itself as a measure of quality of a journal, it certainly provides support for planning sustainable growth.
It was by considering the evolution of our indicators over the last few years that this year new initiatives were materialized. From 2014, we began to make the content of our newspaper available in Pubmed Central (PMC) which is the free file periodic the National Institutes of Health / National Library of Medicine4.
Like this, when doing searches in PubMed, any researcher will have direct access to the full electronic version of all manuscripts published in our journal, in its English version. It is worth mentioning an editorial option of accepting articles in Portuguese, Spanish and English and being responsible for the English version of submissions in the Latin languages.
We believe that the presence of the full English version of all accepted articles in our publication on such a platform of dissemination will lead to significantly greater visibility of research published in our journal.
To speed up the submission process and ensure greater flexibility, we have this year also changed our platform. We are now finalizing the transition to the Scholar One platform. In addition to a more user-friendly interface for the researcher, this platform allows greater control of the entire publishing process, thereby facilitating the communication between researchers and the editorial board. All of these changes have allowed us to create a new baseline for the desired new level of growth and internationalization.
It was following such measures, taken by each one of the journal to create a base for a new phase of growth that the editorial boards of the RPP and the BJP realized that a closer tie between the publications would be the natural next step.
We started by making available to all Brazilian pulmonologists a summary of the RPP, with each new edition, giving more direct access to the manuscripts by more direct links on the BJP's website. The same will happen on the RPP site; readers will have access to links to JBP items. We hope in the near future, be able to post links to all articles in both journals, to all members of the Portuguese Companies and Brazilian Pulmonology via email in the form of a newsletter in every issue of each journal.
We hope to create a new chain between both companies, using this “virtual” link as a first stage of this construction. That mutual interest in respiratory medicine and science produced/published in both countries is increasing, stimulating everyone towards an even stronger participation in our societies, along with the interaction between them, a fact that is reflected unequivocally in the increasing development of the Portuguese Journal of Pulmonology and the Brazilian Journal of Pulmonology.
