One of the pillars of BIREME’s mission, as a specialized center of the Pan American Health Organization / World Health Organization, is to promote and improve the publication of scientific research results and clinical observation to support health systems and evidence- based decision-making. This has been done in numerous ways, such as through face-to-face and online scholarly communication courses, participation in congresses, seminars, and webinars in Brazil and in LA&C countries, and making available specialized information sources, such as the Scholarly Communication in Health VHL. This portal has just been updated to follow the relevant changes that have taken place in recent years in this area.
The new interface of the Scholarly Communication in Health Sciences VHL with interfaces in Portuguese, Spanish, and English, was designed to contemplate scientific journal editors, journal editorial teams, authors, peer reviewers, librarians, information science professionals and students, and all those who seek to know more about the specialized process of writing and publishing scientific research outcomes in health sciences in Latin American and worldwide journals.
The information sources that are available on the portal were selected with the aim of meeting the users’ information needs in scholarly communication in health sciences.
The following sources of information are available on the SCH VHL:
Thematic Areas – Through search strategies, we selected scientific and technical literature indexed in the databases of the VHL Regional Portal on the following topics: Open Access; Peer Review; Open Science; Ethics and Authorship in Publication; Bibliometric Indicators; Editorial Policies; and Preprints.
Standards and Guidelines in Scholarly Communication – We list the main world scientific associations and societies that publish standards and guidelines of good practices in scientific communication, with resources such as flow diagrams and conduct procedures to resolve potential conflicts.
Courses and Training activities – Links to courses on access to health information and scholarly communication are indicated in the languages that correspond to each interface on the portal. The courses, published on the PAHO/WHO Virtual Campus for Public Health, were created by specialists and those that are approved receive certificates.
Databases Journal selection criteria – The indexing of journals in regional and international databases is synonymous with prestige. Indexing criteria and, in some cases, submission forms from the main bibliographic databases in the health and multidisciplinary areas are available.
Indexing status of health science scientific journals in databases – An Excel spreadsheet stored in Google Docs contains the indexing status of scientific journals in health and related areas from Latin America, Portugal, and Spain in the databases LILACS, SciELO, MEDLINE, Web of Science, Journal Citation Reports, and Scopus. It is possible to download and select journals by country and indexing base, using more than one filter simultaneously.
Scholarly Communication Blogs – Blogs bring what is most innovative and current in the scientific community debates around the world. They allow comparing different aspects and positions on innovative practices in scientific publishing, exposing pros and cons, so that the different actors involved can make informed decisions and keep abreast of the latest trends on the subject. We’ve listed the most relevant blogs internationally for you to participate in the debate, as most of them allow reader comments.
The VHL Scholarly Communication in Health, strictly speaking, should not be called a Virtual Health Library, as it does not have an Advisory Committee, which is the group of specialized institutions that guide the selection of information sources available to users. For more details, please, consult the VHL Model.