Author: Ignacio Aguaded – Translation: Erika-Lucia Gonzalez-Carrion
The Higher Council for Scientific Research of Spain and Universia have recently presented the ranking REDIB (Ibero-American Network of Innovation and Scientific Knowledge, platform that offers the first classification of Ibero-American scientific publications, developed with data from Clarivate Analytics, the company that is the owner the Web of Science (WoS). The new ranking clarifies the Latin American panorama of scientific journals, using a novel methodology, computing not only the impact of scientific journals in the region, but also the published articles.
The recently published ranking can be consulted at https://bit.ly/2L3Bmv7, and has a coverage of 943 journals (out of the 2,356 that exist in the total database) (https://bit.ly/2IObkyv), selecting those that are in the WoS database from 2011 to 2016 and are open access, with wide coverage thanks to the inclusion of the ESCI (Emerging Source Citation Index) journals.
his initiative arises from an agreement between REDIB and Clarivate Analytics, to consolidate an Ibero-American bibliographic information system with editorial and scientific quality indicators, based on this platform of aggregation of Ibero-American scientific content in electronic format, in Spanish or Portuguese. Universia/Santander, a network of Ibero-American universities that collaborates in the development of indicators for researchers, evaluators and managers of scientific policies, joins the initiative.
This ranking will undoubtedly support the visibility of Ibero-American research in the world through the consortium with WoS, and therefore is a laudable initiative since there were no quality Ibero-American products, with global coverage, which based on citations, will classify the magazines of our region.
Although the product has limitations, as has already been indicated in some forums: it covers only one third of the journals in the database, it leaves out those journals that are not open access (including JCR), but it is not an initiative of great value and opportunity because it allows us to have for the first time with an Ibero-American product, based on the real impact of citations of the prestigious WoS, clarifying the panorama and creating the scientific corpus in the region.
«Comunicar» journal (JCR-Q1 in Communication and Education in 2017, in Scopus Q1 in 2017, and 1st in Google in its top-100) remains in this ranking also as the first in all areas (https: // bit.ly/2L3Bmv7) (https://bit.ly/2xjjIAE).
