Portuguese Version

Year:  2003  Vol. 69   Ed. 6 - (0º)

Editorial

Pages: 730 to 730

PDF PT  

The beginning of the digital journey

Author(s): Henrique Olival Costa

At every year-end, we tend to look back and see what has been done and what is there to be done, we remember our journey of mistakes and hits, accomplishments and frustrations. This year we have a special reason to look back, since we are finalizing the annual volume that is going to celebrate our anniversary. We are celebrating 70 years of RBORL. Having started its edition in 1933 as Revista Paulista de Otorhinolaryngology (Sao Paulo Journal of Otorhinolaryngology), under the support of Mario Ottoni de Rezende and Homero Cordeiro, it managed to keep the same quality and periodicity throughout 70 years of history. Except for a small period in the 60's, RBORL has always had its annual volume comprising the 6 bimonthly editions, which shows the great creative and productive capacity of our specialty since the beginning of last century. We are all aware of the difficulties of organizing a periodical and being acknowledged to serve as reference for the whole medical group.

Currently, we can celebrate the national relevance of RBORL and we do expect that in the near future we will also represent a source of clarification and knowledge for all those interested in Otorhinolaryngology all over the world. This is the second reason for celebrating: the website of the journal is ready and it can be regularly accessed through the internet address www.rborl.org.br.

The Online Journal (RBORLine) is an old ambition that we have tried to manage so that it would not be one more website or simply a digital journal. For about 6 years we had maintained the complete text of the articles in Portuguese and English at the website of the Brazilian Society of ENT, but it was not a suitable place to give visibility and provide opportunities to users. In the newly created page we organized a series of services to readers, authors and reviewers that we believe will be helpful for those who write, read and critically appreciate the scientific papers. Through our digital address we will receive the articles sent to publication and the free communications to the congresses of the year; the operations of the journal will be made online, with suggestions from reviewers, and answers to authors will be given through the web. The authors will also count on help services such as packages of statistical software, criteria for definition of scientific papers, tips for systematic reviews, information to the authors, submission letter, term of authorship, dictionary of key words in English and Portuguese and a system to find the submitted paper that automatically reveals the current status and the assessment step of the paper. The reviewer will have a page to receive the articles with a system of automatic reviewing that will make specific questions about each segment of the scientific work to be analyzed, plus a help system on Methodology and Statistics. Since it is a reader-dedicated website, we tried to make it friendly to those who come to visit it, such as a search mechanism that comprises not only all articles published in RBORL since 1933, including diagrams, graphs and photos, but also counts on integration with database of ENT journals such as LILACS, EMBASE and Medline. Therefore, the reader can search the website and see all articles from 70 years of the journal, as well as others from ENT journals in Brazil and in the world. We will also offer a special service to SBORL members to access the complete text of the articles, with no additional cost. In order to avoid competition between the website and Scielo concerning counting of accesses to the journal, we adjusted a joint counting system that will mark all the times that a complete article is accessed and this will provide information about level of interest in the topics. This is an extremely important service since together with index of citation and impact factors, they signal to international indexing agencies about the level of use of the periodical in professional decision making and educational initiatives.

Apart from these services, RBORLine will provided history of the journals and a hall of fame with all the editors in the history of the journal.

All in all, we succeeded in the printed version of the journal and we expect to rely on your visit and appreciation of the website so that we can start to write the successful history of RBORLine. Currently, about 20% of the 130+ ENT journals indexed at Medline have electronic formats available, as well as 19 of the 25 ISI indexed journals. There are no studies showing the impact of this fact in journal searches, but we can observe that the first journals classified as of impact for ISI are those that provide online electronic access to the complete text.

Our purpose is to be among the best and we are already among the few that have digital text and bureaucratic and editorial structures online. Even though we are in the implementation step yet, we welcome all suggestions from readers so that we can always work aligned with the wishes of our subscribers and readers.

Hope you all enjoy it.
Happy New Year to You All!
See you at RBORL Website

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