Ciência & Saúde Coletiva enters its 30^th year of existence when social communication - and consequently scientific dissemination - is undergoing a whirlwind of transformations. Like indexed Brazilian journals, it is part of this process. Clarivate’s annual report¹1 Clarivate. Panorama das mudanças na pesquisa no Brasil: aproveitando oportunidades de crescimento [Internet]. 2024 [acessado 2024 set 10]. Disponível em: https://www.abcd.usp.br/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Relatorio_panorama_da_pesquisa_brasil_clarivate-capes-agosto-2024.pdf.
https://www.abcd.usp.br/wp-content/uploa... helps to understand this journey’s intricacies and complexity.

From 2019 to 2023, Brazil remained in 13^th place in the number of indexed publications (458,370) globally, and 54.4% of its articles were in open access. In this case, the country’s ranking is intermediate. Although the number of articles has fallen, relevant advances have been observed in this period: the gold standard open access publication levels increased from 36% to 41%; the percentage of articles involving international co-authors increased from 28% in 2014 to 38% in 2023; the country has had significant collaboration in the relationship between science and industry, mainly with the pharmaceutical sector in the production of clinical trials: 25% of articles involve this type of cooperation. Also, Brazil is among the top 20 countries conducting research on artificial intelligence, with 6,304 publications between 2019 and 2023.

When compared to the BRICS countries, Brazil stands out for the orientation of its production towards the United Nation’s (UN) “Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs) in the following themes: Health and Well-Being; Poverty Eradication; Quality Education; Gender Equality; Life Below Water and Life on Land; Peace, Justice and Effective Institutions. It also displays relatively high levels of cutting-edge research in topics related to environmental, medical, and biological sciences. Between 2014 and 2023, most research articles (190,575) were in Health Sciences, representing 27% of the country’s production. This sector has the highest average citation impact normalized by category (1.05, against a world average of 1.00), and the highest proportion of articles (8.1%) among the 10% most cited globally.

Ciência & Saúde Coletiva has a thematic focus and publishes research articles of scope and significance for the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS)²2 Minayo MCS, Gomes R, Silva AAM. O DNA da Ciência & Saúde Coletiva. Cien Saude Colet 2020; 25(12):4646.. Some issues addressed in the 2024 editions were innovative soft and hard technologies; development of democracy in the health sector, particularly, universalization and quality of services, and care for the most vulnerable populations. Two relevant editions stand out due to their themes, one on the health sector during the military dictatorship, discussing the 60 years since that disastrous event, and another on the health of the Indigenous population.

More than 2,000 articles have been submitted this year, of which less than 10% were accepted. Three hundred twenty-nine were published in Portuguese, of which 295 (89.66%) were translated into English, and 60 (18%) into Spanish. Although Brazilians are the main authors (1,393), the journal has had the collaboration of Portuguese (37), Spanish (20), Americans (9), English (8), Argentines (8), Mexicans (3), Canadians (2), Colombians (2), Chileans (2), French (1), and Ecuadorians (1). Notably, the journal has received originals from many different parts of the world, not all of which were of good scientific quality.

The recognition of Ciência & Saúde Coletiva was a significant point in 2024. The journal received the maximum rating (A1) in the CAPES evaluation. It continued to rank first among all Brazilian journals in the h5 index (80/102). It reached the Scopus gold standard in the number of publications, coming in behind only Nature Reports and PlosOne.

However, two points deserve attention besides the constant need for updating: the Journal’s impact has dropped according to the Web of Science, as it is now rated at 1.00 (which is the world average). Also, at this point, there is a longer than reasonable amount of time elapsed between the approval of the article and its indexing. The editors and the entire executive team are keeping a watchful eye on the course correction!

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History