Author: Ángel Torres – Translation: Erika-Lucia Gonzalez-Carrion
The globalization process has arrived to the academic sphere of diverse modes, among them are, the open access , the concurrence of multiple languages, the scientific social networks , and of course the consortium journals.
The consortium journals emerge since the need of grouping those belonging to thematic areas in tune with the aim of setting up new spaces of publication for authors, giving greater international visibility and increasing the transparency of the editorial processes. In the end, the aim is to constitute specialized networks of periodic publications; independently if they come from universities, governmental entities or scientific associations that are interested in maximizing their diffusion.
The consortium of journals is based mainly in three aspects:
- Interchange of reviewers: Getting to know that the areas of knowledge are kept in permanent diversification, the fact of having associated publications facilitates the contact with profiles of experts in different themes.
- Notification of the publication of a new number: Through a constant communication among the editors of the consortium journals it is possible to advance in the preprint versions, later announcements and new numbers.
- Promotion of the journal in the website: It is included the link and the logo in the main page of the website of the consortium journal.
For its part, the scientific journal Comunicar, pioneer of this initiative, contains certain politics for a potential consortium. Among them it highlights that the agreement formalizes with open access journal that contains at least electronic version (physic version is optional), and that are found indexed as a minimum in a score of database including platforms of journal evaluation, selective newspapers libraries, engines of scientific literature and catalogues of international libraries. Nowadays, counts with a consortium of journals as Mediterránea de Comunicación, Fonseca. Journal of Communication, RIED. Revista Iberoamericana de Educación a Distancia, Diálogos de la Comunicación, Alteridad. Revista de Educación, among others.
In short, recognizing that Scopus contains 293 journals of communication, the fact of achieving a consortium among the 10% not only will mean a progress for the science and an advance for the same but for the thousands of authors that look for an opportunity of making public their researches.
