With just two years of existence, the Scientific Electronic Periodicals Portal (PPEC) from Unicamp is already a reference, having recorded 1.309.872 hits and 1.261.595 downloads, from 119 countries, during 2017. “These numbers show the success of the project in giving visibility to periodicals published by Unicamp. The 45 titles, published by the University's institutes, faculties and bodies, were scattered and often did not have a digital version or website, which compromised their visibility and qualification. Today, 30 of them are already available on the portal”, said Regiane Alcantara Bracchi, coordinator of the Unicamp Library System (SBU).
The SBU, with the support of the General Coordination of the University (CGU), is responsible for developing the project, which was created by librarian Gildenir Carolino Santos in his post-doctorate. According to Santos, the platform, in addition to bringing together publications published within the University, aims to guarantee the dissemination and access to these titles. To enter the Portal, publications must meet 13 basic requirements that aim to adapt them to international rules and standards. In this way, publications become indexed in large databases and gain international visibility.
Starting next year, journals that do not meet the requirements will have the support of an incubator, which will provide support so that they can develop and reach the required criteria. PPEC is an initiative within the scope of Open Access, a global movement, which aims to expand access to the results of scientific production, operating through the Open Journal System software.
According to Marina Vieira da Silva, editor of the Food and Nutrition Security Magazine (SAN), the presence on the Portal constituted an important milestone in the Magazine's history. “There is no doubt that the fact of being part of the Portal means that the Food and Nutrition Security magazine has a significant dissemination of its articles nationally and internationally”, she stated.
For the creator of PPEC, two factors were mainly responsible for the rapid growth in the number of accesses to the Portal: the DOI, an acronym in English for Digital Object Identifier, and the ORCID, an acronym in English for Open Researcher and Contributor ID. Both are persistent links, which allow journals and authors to be found on the internet. “Server changes and changes in researchers’ names compromise the recovery of scientific production, even altering the university’s productivity indicators”, explained Regiane. According to her, these tools function as “RGs” of published objects and researchers, with international validity.
The next project, which is being developed by the SBU team, is the University's open e-book portal. “These are initiatives that follow international trends, seeking to ensure greater visibility of research results and better qualification of the scientific publication produced here”, pointed out the coordinator.
