O Scientific Electronic Journals Portal (PPEC) from Unicamp is completing one year on the air with good reasons to celebrate. Between December 2015 and November this year, the platform managed to increase access to publications published in institutes, faculties or bodies of the University from 34 thousand to 460 thousand. Internet users from more than 70 countries visited the page to read articles and download. In addition to the numbers, the project was awarded third place in the 6th edition of the PAEPE Career Professionals Award, aimed at Unicamp employees.
The project created by employee Gildenir Carolino Santos during his post-doctorate at Unicamp was implemented by the Unicamp Library System (SBU) with the support of the General Coordination of the University (CGU). Santos, who is currently responsible for the platform, says that 27 journal titles are available from a total of 45 publications published in units of the University. The system adopted for page management is the Open Journal System (OJS).
There are a series of criteria that journals must meet to be on the portal, such as publishing original articles of a scientific nature; have national and/or international coverage and publish at least five original articles per issue. But there is also great assistance from the PPEC team, which helps editors with all issues of standardization and bibliographic guidance, in addition to offering training.
Of the 27 journals available, seven are indexed in international databases. “The initial idea of the project was to create a platform that brought together all these periodicals, ensuring greater visibility for publications. But what also happens is the qualification of journals since there are a series of requirements that they need to fulfill”, highlights the SBU coordinator, Regiane Alcântara. One of them is qualification through the Qualis/Capes system, in strata A and B.
According to Gildenir, indexing periodicals is a requirement for receiving resources. Journal articles available on the portal receive the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to identify the document on the Web. The portal is the only one in Brazil to have an ISSN (International Standard Serial Number), an acronym in English for International Standard Publication Number Serials, the internationally accepted code to individualize the title of a serial publication.
For the SBU coordinator, the work carried out at PPEC demonstrates that the library system has assumed new skills, because the work carried out is with information. “We offer this support to the University in carrying out its activities.”
Among the 27 journals available, at the top of the ranking of the most accessed is the magazine Conexões, from the Faculty of Physical Education at Unicamp, today with more than 75 thousand accesses and downloads. According to the associate coordinator of SBU, Valéria Martins, previously periodicals were very restricted to the community to which they are linked, but currently portals are also becoming databases and sources for research. “With this, there is an appreciation of national scientific production since the only national database is Scielo. These portals complement scientific production, and with open access”.
