Introduction

Since the late eighteenth century when the first scientific journal was published in Mexico,¹ scholarly journals produced in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) have experienced an impressive quantitative and qualitative growth. In the late 1990s there were 15,049 ISSNs registered in Latin America, and the Latin American Journal Collection included 2488 scientific journals (Estrada-Mejía and Forero-Pineda, 2010). As of May 2013, the Global Serials Directory Ulrich’s includes 5003 active academic scholarly journals from Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking LAC countries in its database (Ulrichsweb, 2013). Likewise, the Regional Online Scientific Journal Information System for Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal – Latindex – lists 6391 active journal titles in its directory and 3092 in its catalogue (Latindex, 2013). This is an uneven process, with many successful journals, pockets of excellence, innovative models, as well as failed enterprises, entrenched obstacles, and challenges (Delgado, 2011a, 2011b; Fischman et al., 2010; Holdom, 2005; RICYT, 2007). This chapter analyses the recent trajectory and the main challenges that LAC journals are facing, not only in terms of having a greater participation in the worldwide scientific arena but also to meet the multifaceted and diverse demands of the region’s knowledge production and distribution (Borrego and Urbano, 2006; Buela-Casal et al., 2006; Delgado, 2010; Utges, 2008).

The growth of journals in LAC

In the last three decades there has been both a quantitative and qualitative growth of scientific/scholarly journals published in LAC. This expansion is associated with many dynamics, some global, some regional, and others more local. At the global level, there has been the impact of information and communication technologies (ICTs), combined with trends to expand access to knowledge through open access initiatives (Steenkist, 2008). At the regional level, it is very important to highlight that over 75 per cent of the resources in research and development are provided by the public sector and, similarly, that the largest group of scholars and researchers are working at public universities and research centres (Didriksson, 2008). This extensive presence of the public sector in research and development has also been accompanied by the expansion of the higher education subsector, particularly master’s and Ph.D. programmes, and the strengthening of systems of science, technology and innovation has incentivized the creation of many scholarly publications (Fischman, 2011a). Coupled with the latter, several countries have created systems to evaluate their scientific publications, have established research incentives allocating resources for publication, and/or have rewarded local scientists and scholars for publishing in journals with high impact factors (Alperin et al., 2012; Delgado, 2011b).

Closely related to the extensive presence of publicly supported and regulated systems of science, technology and innovation (STI) – and as we will discuss in more detail in the next section – is the influence of the open access (OA) model,² the emergence of repositories of scientific/scholarly journals such as Redalyc or SciELO, and initiatives such as the Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales (CLACSO), LILACS and Latindex that offer services of bibliometric analysis (Babini, 2011, 2013; Cetto and Vessuri, 2005; Charum et al., 2002; Farga Medin et al., 2006; Meneghini et al., 2006; Steenkist, 2008; Utges, 2008).

LAC and open access

Arguably, one of the most influential factors for the growth of LAC journals in the last three decades has been the publication of periodicals using the OA model.³ A recent study by Miguel et al. (2011) shows that of the roughly 15,000 peer-reviewed journals indexed in 2010 in the Scopus database, the proportion of OA journals was 73.9 per cent for LAC, 4.9 per cent for North America and 6.9 per cent for Europe. Another indicator of the extensive and intensive use of OA among the scholarly community is the regional presence in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). As of May 2013, the LAC region had 1784 journals (19 per cent) of a total of 9397 publications in DOAJ. This amount is important when considering that the US had 1336 OA journals in DOAJ. After the US, Brazil ranked second in DOAJ with 663 publications. Other countries in the region – Colombia, Chile, Mexico and Argentina – are ranked among the top 20 countries in terms of the number of journals in DOAJ. A total of 20 LAC countries are included in this repository (http://www.doaj.org). See Table 16.1 for the presence of LAC OA journals in DOAJ.

Open access and the expansion of higher education in LAC

We would argue that the extensive and intensive use of OA in LAC needs to be analysed in connection with the profound transformations in the higher education systems during the period.⁴ This is not the place to elaborate in detail about these transformations,⁵ but we would like to highlight a few that directly relate to the use of journals in the region, such as: expanded enrolments; the consolidation of the private higher education sector, both for-profit and not-for-profit (in some countries the largest provider of higher education services); the acceptance of social sectors previously excluded from the universities; the multiplication of fields of study; the growth of graduate programmes (master’s, MBAs and Ph.D.s); the implementation of accreditation and national evaluation practices; the incorporation of new forms of delivery of classes (TV, hybrid, online); and the great expansion in the use of computers. Collectively, these transformations, coupled with the financial demands of controlling budget deficits, have undercut the previously undisputed prominent role of the national universities, making questions about the legitimacy of the traditional LAC model more pressing than ever.⁶

Most of these trends lead to an emphasis on ‘research productivity’ among universities in the region, including in those institutions with very weak traditions of engaging with scientific research. And as we have noted, in one sense, the dominance of OA could not be so extensive in the LAC scholarly community without the increasing role of research, science and technology in the region. However, it is also very important to consider that, as Estrada-Mejía and Forero-Pineda describe: ‘Many Latin American scientific journals had in effect been open access since their creation: the small size of the market for scientific journals forced a quasi-free distribution, centered on library exchanges and courtesy subscriptions. The costs of these publications were usually covered by subscriptions bundled with society memberships, university budgets or government subsidies’ (2010: 241).

The goal of offering free access to research publications under the OA model has been adopted by single journals, collections of journals and institutional repositories (Alperín et al., 2008; Delgado, 2011a; Farga Medin et al., 2006; Fischman et al., 2010; Hedlund et al., 2004; Holdom, 2005; Steenkist, 2008; Willinsky, 2006). In LAC the most extended notion is that journals should offer free access to the scientific knowledge, not only to the research community but to society as a whole. In that sense, LAC societies and their governments are facing three key challenges: first, the high cost of scientific journals, especially those which are deemed to be ‘high impact’; second, the invisibility of Latin American science in international scientific circles (Fischman, 2011b); and, third, the challenges of measuring and recognizing the ‘value’ of STI production within local communities in and outside the LAC region. OA appeared to be the most ‘efficient’ solution to these challenges.

The broad adoption of OA implies that almost all production in the region is available for any user to read, print and distribute without any form of payment (Hedlund et al., 2004). Several authors in the region (Cetto et al., 2010; Vessuri et al., 2008) consider that compared with previous periods and with fee-based journals the use of OA by the LAC scholarly community has enhanced the opportunities for any journal to be recognized and used (Delgado, 2011a, 2011b). In addition, the growing power of web-based search engines continues to increase the possibilities of levelling the playing field for accessing scientific information online.⁷

To sum up this section, the very extensive and intensive use of OA by journals in LAC has to be understood as resulting from traditions such as the very small size of the ‘scientific market’ (Estrada-Mejía and Forero-Pineda, 2010) and the vocation of many of its most noted intellectuals to be that of ‘public service’ (Fischman, 2011a), and the long tradition of the young attending universities and research centres to be at the foreground of the struggles of the democratization of their respective national societies.

Regional bibliographic indexes and catalogues

Another very relevant strategy developed over the last three decades among the scholarly community in LAC is the creation of indexes, catalogues and bibliometric services. Among these initiatives the oldest and largest is Latindex, a collaborative network of institutions that brings together and disseminates bibliographic information on serial scientific publications produced in the region (Cetto et al., 2010; Steenkist, 2008; Vessuri et al., 2008).⁸ The Latindex project (http://www.latindex.org) is an automated scientific periodical information system for LAC, Portugal and Spain sponsored by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. The system was created in 1995 to disseminate, provide access to and raise the quality of the journals published in the region. It seeks to:

The Latindex scholarly/academic journal collection has two databases. The first is a directory that includes an inventory of journals with basic characteristics such as ISSN, publisher, address and editor. The second product is the catalogue – to be included in the catalogue, periodicals should comply with the eight basic characteristics and at least 17 of the other criteria. Many of these criteria are already part of evaluative models to determine the quality of scholarly/research periodicals such as the scientific systems of the state of São Paulo, in Brazil, and the Colombian Bibliographic Index, Publindex (Borrego and Urbano, 2006).

As of May 2013, the Latindex directory contains basic information on 19,997 periodical publications,⁹ and the catalogue has 3092 scholarly/academic journals (Latindex, 2013). Latindex functions on the basis of regional collaboration with country members through a responsible institution or agency. Present members of the system operate through institutions in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Spain, Uruguay and Venezuela (Cetto and Vessuri, 2005; Vessuri et al., 2008).

A second initiative that is also quite relevant and influential in the region is the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO), which resulted from a collaborative project between the Regional Library of Medicine (Bireme) of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the Foundation for Research Promotion of the State of Sao Paulo (FAPESP) in Brazil. SciELO started as an electronic library in 1997 publishing digital versions of a selected collection of Brazilian scientific journals. Soon it expanded to the rest of LAC and today it is the biggest OA platform published in the region. It hosts OA journals from a broad array of disciplines but has an emphasis on the social sciences and health disciplines (Meneghini et al., 2006; Meneghini and Packer, 2008; Packer, 2009; Packer and Meneghini, 2007).

In addition to the LAC countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela), Spain and Portugal have joined the initiative. Since 2002, the project has also been supported by the Brazilian Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq). Each country joining the SciELO initiative receives technical support from the central office (the maintenance and actualization of programs that make the sites possible, among other aspects, are carried out by the main platform). However, no SciELO subdivision gets any monetary help from the Brazilian base. Including the national repositories, the whole SciELO platform hosts more than 800 scientific journals (see Table 16.2). Every single one of them has the approval of the highest scientific entity of each nation. This approval guarantees the quality of every article (Meneghini et al., 2006; Meneghini and Packer, 2008; Packer, 2009; Packer and Meneghini, 2007; Steenkist, 2008).

A third initiative that is also recognized and influential is Redalyc. With the motto ‘Science that is not seen does not exist’, the Redalyc project officially began in the year 2002. In its first stages it published only journals related to social sciences and humanities. Due to its great success and rapid growth, by 2006 Redalyc had received the first journals on the natural and hard sciences. The project was well received and it continued to expand. By June 2007, Redalyc stored 374 specialized journals (291 dedicated to the social sciences and the humanities and 91 to natural sciences) and almost 60,000 articles across all kinds of disciplines. By 2011, it was already hosting more than 750 journals and almost 190,000 articles (Aguado et al., 2008; Steenkist, 2008) (see also Table 16.2). From 2010, Redalyc had evolved to include sections by thematic fields, countries, other organizations such as CLACSO, and a scientometric atlas using the methodology of the SCImago group.

Table 16.2 shows that Brazil, Colombia and Mexico have the highest number of journals in the largest regional repositories. Brazil has more journals in SciELO (243 out of 844) and Mexico has more journals in Redalyc (174 out of 783), which could be expected given that SciELO’s headquarters are located in Brazil and Redalyc is developed in Mexico. Colombia has the second largest collection of journals in both repositories separately (122 in SciELO and 145 in Redalyc) and combined (267 out of 1627). These numbers do not show the rate of overlap but, in general, both collections are independent.

Other important regional initiatives

CLACSO is a non-governmental organization whose objective is to promote research and teaching in social sciences. Members of CLACSO include 293 research centres and more than 500 graduate programmes from Latin America, the Caribbean, North America and Europe. One of CLASCO’s most important projects is the network of digital libraries. It includes a portal of 97 OA social science journals, access to online versions of books published by CLACSO and several documents about online publication. As mentioned above, the CLACSO collection was included in the portal of Redalyc.

An important part of scientific development and communication in LAC is related to the creation of networks, which are an essential foundation for academic journal writing and scholarship. The biggest part of Latin American scientific production has remained dependent on universities and faculties. In 1992, the Organization of American States (OAS) approved the creation of the Hemisphere Wide Inter-University Scientific and Technological Information Network (RedHUCyT), and provided it with funding as seed capital. The main objective of RedHUCyT is to link up member states’ institutions to the Internet for STI information exchange. OAS also supports (among others) the following regional science and technology information systems (Cetto and Vessuri, 2005):

In particular, RICYT was set up in late 1994. From its inception, RICYT has conducted its activities in co-ordination with OAS. This co-operation strategy was strengthened when the Network became responsible for carrying out the Regional Science and Technology Indicators project financed by the Inter-American Council for Integral Development (CIDI). RICYT’s general objective is to promote the development of instruments for the measurement and analysis of STI in LAC and the Iberian Peninsula with the aim of gaining in-depth knowledge of science and its uses as a policy instrument in decision making – taking into account the analysis of the specific problems of the region – in areas such as bibliography, bibliometrics, the institutional organization of STI statistics, and the training of specialists in indicators and other subjects (ibid.).

National agencies and experiences

In general, LAC governments have created agencies, or reinforced existing ones, to promote the development of scientific/scholarly publications. In some countries, such as Argentina, Venezuela and Brazil, they have created Ministries of Science and Technology. Along with the agencies, legislation for STI has been enacted.

In LAC, national programmes have been created to categorize periodicals and evaluate the performance of scientists, the effects of budget cuts, the efforts of editors to increase the quality of scientific publications, and the growing relevance of secondary publications and information services (Cetto and Alonso, 1999). Many countries have developed national bibliographic databases. In the 1980s, countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela and Colombia created initiatives to evaluate scientific/academic journals (Charum, 2004; Gómez, 1999; Gómez et al., 1998). For instance, the Centre for Spanish Information and Documentation (CINDOC) has a database of Spanish authors which allows them to generate bibliometric studies of their publications as well (Charum et al., 2002). Argentina recently started to make concrete steps in order to get publications indexed by CAICYT, the government agency that is also responsible for relationships with Latindex and SciELO (Utges, 2008).

The development of Brazil’s scientific and technological infrastructure, as well as the training and expansion of its scientific community, are recent events when compared with developed nations. For the medical sciences, the turning point in this process was the foundation of the Oswaldo Cruz Institute in the city of Rio de Janeiro in 1908. For decades this was the main Brazilian institution devoted to medical research (Mendonça de Araujo et al., 2005). The programme for the development of Scientific Publications of the Ministry of Science and Technology (CNPq-FINEP) was created in 1982 with the purpose of assigning resources on a permanent basis, transferring information as part of the science and technology policy that included financial support, and improving tools for dissemination. It is limited to scientific and technological periodicals (Pessanha, 1999). There is also FAPESP, which was created by a mandate of the political constitution of the State of São Paulo and which finances scientific publications. As mentioned earlier, the SciELO project was created by FAPESP (Nardi, 2008). The Brazilian Agency for the Co-ordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) co-ordinates the Qualis system for the evaluation of periodical publications. It includes a ladder of categories – A, B and C (A being the highest possible) – at national and international levels (ibid.). Its system of categories is similar to that of Colombia.

What is ahead for LAC journals?

The language of publication is perhaps one of the most pressing issues in the discussion about the future of the LAC journal. The globalization of English as the common academic language has been amply discussed (Altbach, 2004; Bergeron, 1999; Bjorge, 2007; Meneghini and Packer, 2008), with some commentators such as Steenkist (2008) pointing out that LAC journals might serve as a means to distribute regional scientific contributions but they might also remain on the margins of the global scientific community if they continue to publish their contents only in Spanish and Portuguese.

The pressures to publish in English can also contribute to making the work of some of the most talented and best recognized LAC scientists exclusively available in English. Some researchers and commentators (Bergeron, 1999; Meneghini and Packer, 2008) have argued forcefully that Latin Americans cannot abandon the expression of local scientific and technological developments in their own language because to do so would run the risk of alienating their own research and development community, as well as public support for that community.

Our concern is that the rationale to use incentives to publish solely in English is not adequate because it does not consider the need to train the next generation of local talent, and may even contribute to creating a more serious problem (Alperin et al., 2012). Some journal editors, as well as authorities in the systems of STI, appear to have an either/or frame of reference, as if the only possibility is to decide whether to publish either in local languages – mainly Spanish and Portuguese, while including titles and abstracts in English – or in English-only journals. Undoubtedly, there is a need for capacity building in LAC to improve scholarly/scientific writing in English (Delgado, 2011a), but the real challenge is to find feasible ways of reaching international audiences where English is the lingua franca, as well as having a more local scope.¹⁰

Another pressing issue is the exponential growth of scientific literature worldwide, which has provided fertile ground and encouraged great efforts to control the quality of the bibliographic information in order to articulate the national and international scholarly systems in STI. In LAC some of those efforts included the development of systems of journal certification according to national regulations, the meeting of international standards for scientific periodical publication, and inclusion in bibliographic indexes and databases, which increases their international visibility (Charum, 2004; Charum et al., 2002). However, academic journals from LAC have not fared well in terms of being included in mainstream bibliographic indexes. The titles included in the largest and most prestigious databases, such as Thompson Reuters’ Web of Knowledge and Elsevier’s Scopus, represent less than 10 per cent of those published. However, publications indexed in these databases are usually called mainstream journals (Utges, 2008).

Those databases, regardless of their international and multidisciplinary character, have thematic, geographic and linguistic biases that must be considered in evaluation. The way in which impact is measured, the linguistic preference for English-language titles and the lack of coverage of local publications in languages other than English, and the selective inclusion of articles have all been criticized (Meneghini and Packer, 2008; Utges, 2008; Vessuri et al., 2008). Borrego and Urbano (2006) have highlighted some of the objections existing in the literature about the Thompson Reuters indexes:

In addition, Cetto and Vessuri (2005) argue that the data included refer to mainstream science but do not cover fully all forms of co-operation, especially among colleagues from LAC. It is important to remember that to a great extent Latin American scientists publish their work in periodicals not surveyed by Thomson Reuters, especially in the most applied areas or those areas of more particular local interest.

Another relevant challenge when reflecting about journal publication in LAC is the lack of an effective national and regional system of scholarly communication. Poorly funded libraries and national archives have often meant that the science from the region is invisible even to its own scholars. Across all fields, researchers often know more about research from countries outside the LAC region. Political discourse about the importance of science and technology is abundant yet little is done to generate real developments (Utges, 2008). Frequently, scientists who choose to publish in local journals are accused of trying to avoid the barriers and difficulties of publishing in more prestigious international journals. Although this may be the case when the article raises isues of broad international interest, this is clearly an allegation that should not be generalized. It is logical that somtimes, or in some areas, the main scientific audience targeted is a national or regional one. There is a national vs. an international audience in the mind of most Latin American researchers (Meneghini et al., 2006).

Closely related to the previous point is the need to consolidate and appropriately fund the national and regional systems of higher education. The Taskforce on Higher Education and Society, in accordance with the World Conference on Science (Budapest, 2 July 1999), claimed that higher education is an absolute and irreducible prerequisite to developing a strong STI base. A well-developed higher education sector is fundamental: it allows countries to generate new scientific knowledge, to wisely select and implement existing technologies, and to adapt them effectively to local circumstances (Taskforce on Higher Education and Society, 2000; World Bank, 2002). In the last two decades several LAC countries have developed a series of reforms of their higher education and science and technology sectors. In many cases the reforms are conditions included in loans granted by international financial institutions like the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) (Delgado, 2011b; de Moura et al., 2001). For instance, in the mid-1990s the Colombian Institute for the Development of Science and Technology (Colciencias) and the Colombian Observatory of Science and Technology worked alongside the National Committee of Indexation and Homologation (CNHI et al., 2006) to develop a national bibliographic index for journals (Publindex). The creation of Publindex was part of the national STI policy and was included as one of the conditions for receiving a number of loans to develop that sector (Charum, 2004; CNIH et al., 2006; Colciencias, 2006; Delgado, 2011b).

Higher education institutions are responsible for 80 per cent of the research produced in Latin America. This production is more likely to be generated in public universities since they have a better infrastructure and greater access to funding. However, it is the private sector that has seen increased growth in recent times (Chapman and Austin, 2002). Most of the research produced in LAC comes from universities and, to a lesser degree, from research laboratories, hospitals, scientific associations and private publishers. Likewise, most scientific/scholarly journals are also published by major public and private universities. In addition, a number of studies have shown how university presses are weak and do not focus on the publication of journals (Delgado, 2011a; Rama, 2006; Uribe, 2006).

Finally, the financial sustainability of LAC journals is an unavoidable challenge. In 1998, Odlyzko predicted that journals would be published mostly in digital formats, and that electronic publication would reduce publication costs to up to a fourth of the print versions (Odlyzko, 1998, 2004). The contemporary dynamics of funding journal production and distribution in the region are still dominated by very weak ‘profit’ opportunities, a small commercial sector and the expansion and transformation of traditional academic units within universities as the more oft-used model for journal publishers (Delgado, 2011a; Fischman et al., 2010). In a small number of cases, governments provide some funding for the publication of journals (e.g., in Brazil and Chile). In many more cases, institutions (universities and research centres) must allocate funding for publications from their budgets, since sources of revenue such as subscriptions and advertisements are disappearing or shrinking (ibid.). The financial benefits of a journal developing a high reputation may be great in some countries and non-existent in others, but in all cases the ‘publishing’ institutions must find the financial means to secure their continuity. In short, the future sustainability of scholarly journals in LAC will depend not only on the continuous use of OA models and repositories but also on how this mix of old traditions and new technologies will balance the challenges of keeping the costs of publication very low (including financial compensations and/or changing teaching conditions of editors and assistants [for example, reducing the teaching load to dedicate time to editorial activities], ICT capacity and training, which are often overlooked) with the more scholarly-oriented issues of relevance, quality and social impact.

Conclusion

As we have argued throughout this chapter, LAC academic journals have shown substantial growth, presenting a potent regional voice; however, the region still lags behind in the global exchange of ideas. In this multifaceted and diverse process, the innovations in ICT, and especially the extensive use of OA, have played a key role. The analysis presented here shows that many scholars, research centres and universities in LAC are working towards the consolidation of an emerging model of scholarly publication that takes place mainly in universities and relies almost exclusively on OA models of distribution with support from the public sector. Countries such as Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Argentina are leading this trend.

Other elements that appear to be contributing to the consolidation of this emerging model of journal publication are the adoption by those countries of international initiatives such as DOAJ, the regional collaboration modelled by CLACSO, Latindex, Redaylc and SciELO, and the use of repositories, indexes and networks. Alongside these are national reforms of the higher education and STI sectors, including incentives to promote scholarly productivity.

Before concluding, we want to highlight two pressing challenges. First, it is very important that the region’s academic journals find effective ways of developing funding models that make existing scholarly projects economically sustainable as well as scientifically and socially relevant. Second, academic strategies should be developed that will be attractive to national and international authors as well as to users of scholarly journals. The latter implies obtaining scientific and scholarly recognition from the local and international academic community, finding innovative ways to break the language barriers, continuing to develop the STI capacity, and serving the needs of the general community.

These two pressing challenges will not be easy to address, but throughout the almost 300-year history of scholarly and academic research journals in LAC this sector has shown remarkable resilience, a great capacity for adaptation and, in the particular case of the use of OA, a great deal of leadership. We are not minimizing the problems, nor are we ignoring regional inequalities, the risks of the commercialization of scientific knowledge, the brain-drain away from the region, nor language imperialism. In the face of these difficulties, the very diverse scholarly communities in LAC have also produced, against many odds, very innovative and rigorous ways of making their scientific knowledge and technological discoveries visible and relevant. Theirs are not small contributions, and we are confident about the potential of the region.