Graciela Muñoz; Atilio Bustos-González; Alejandra Muñoz-Cornejo

1. Sharing the know-how of a Latin American Open Access only e-journal indexed in the ISI Web of Science: the case of the Electronic Journal of Biotechnology Graciela Muñoz; Atilio Bustos-González; Alejandra Muñoz-Cornejo Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso - CHILE

2. Introduction Science and its communication are essential in science advancement and in building the knowledge society. Its success depends on social acceptance of new scientific results and an open and reliable communication system is of primary importance. The journal system has remained stable and scientists value journal articles as a recognized mean of communicating original, peer-reviewed and edited information. • The main barriers of the current journal system are: • the high costs of subscriptions • the sale of individual articles

3. In this way, when a bibliographic search is done, payment is necessary in order to have access to selected articles

4. Although the development of the OA movement is an important effort that promotes free online access to full text articles, the number of OA journals is low. Also the average impact factor is low (1.595), they are not well known by the scientific community and few of them are only electronic. Distribution by region of OA and only-e journals

5. In addition to the high costsof subscriptions and the low representationof OA journalsin international databases, technicalbarriers have also to be considered, as authors and publishers have not included enough the new possibilities that are based on the use of information technology. In this way less than 1% of the journals covered by the ISI Web of Science are only electronic and 0.5% are at the same time OA and only e-journals. These problems which interfere with an open communication system, can lead one to recall Plato’s myth of the cave. Can it be possible to imagine a parallel link between the problems of science communication and the walls of the mythical Greek cave?

6. Are Scientists and Society living in the Plato’s “Myth of the Cave”?

7. The traditional system of academic journals and the challenges of the digital environment The walls of the cave must be destroyed, scientists and society should be able to have direct access to the scientific information. Key changes must occur and more editors and publishers should commit themselves with an open and reliable communication system. Although the digital format offers an unique opportunity to cope with these goals, the adoption of only e-journals poses challenges to the editor, as some unsolved issues, as electronic archiving and uncertainty about future access, generate concerns and distrust in the scholarly community. In this way, it has taken some time for e-journals to become integrated into international databases, such as ISI and cited by other researchers in main stream journals, affecting the prestige (impact factors) of these journals.

8. The ISI Thomson Scientific and Impact Factors The Institute for Scientific Information, ISI, was founded in 1960 by Dr. Garfield. In 1992 was acquired by the Thomson Scientific & Healthcare, and now it is a sector of the Thomson Corporation known as Thomson Scientific. http://scientific.thomson.com/index.html

9. The ISI Thomson Scientific is recognized as an authority for • evaluating journals. Each year, nearly 2,000 new titles are • evaluated, but only 10-12% are selected. • The ISI Web of Science includes: (revised 15/05/07) • Science Citation Index (SCI) 6,639 journals • Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) 1,972 journals • Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) 1,159 journals

10. “The basic mission of ISI is to provide access to the world's most important and influential journals. This commitment extends to the evaluation and inclusion of electronic journals.” “E-Journals undergo the same rigorous selection as journals in print media. Publishing Standards, Editorial Content, International Diversity, and Citation Analysis are all considered.” Source: http://scientific.thomson.com/free/essays/selectionofmaterial/journalselection/ This gives clear evidence that both paper and electronic formats are equally reliable to communicate science. Thomson Scientific also publishes the annual Journal Citation Reports, which lists an impact factor for each of the journals of the SCI and SSCI.

11. The IF is a quantitative tool, which measures the frequency of citation of an “average article” from a journal in other publications covered by a citation index. IF calculation IF year 2007 = cites in 2007 of articles published 2006-05 total no. articles published 2006-05 Although traditional journals have attained high impact factors, being 49.794 the highest record in 2006, electronic journals rank in general in the lower half of journals in their subject category. Table 1 shows the highest impact factors of OA only e-journals ranking among the top 12%.

12. Table 1.Ranking of impact factors of the top 12% OA only e-journals

13. The Latin American Context The journals of Latin America have a low representation in the the ISI Web of Science (44 journals are covered by the SCI), representing a 0.6% of the total of journals on a worldwide basis. The ranking of the impact factors of these journals is between 0.078 and 3.234, with an average value of 0.442. Table 2. Comparison between OA and non OA Latin American journals covered by the Science Citation Index * Only 1 journal is only electronic

14. The case of the Electronic Journal of Biotechnology Articles are published in HTML and PDF formats.

15. It is an Open Access – scientific - international - peer-reviewed journal and belongs to the 0.5% core of OA only e-journals covered by the ISI Web of Science. The impact factor is 0.725, over the IF average of journals in Latin America. It is positioned in number 6 in the ranking of IF of the 44 Latin American journals. To maximize visibility, it is located on two servers, in the Northern hemisphere (http://www.ejbiotechnology.info) and also in the Southern hemisphere (http://www.ejbiotechnology.cl). In March 2007 it received more than 110,000 visits and over 1 million hits per month. The knowledge and skills developed during our 10 years of publication can be summarized in seven commitments:

16. 1. Commitment with Internationality Editorial board internationality The editorial board is international, conformed by 72 members, 34% from North America, 33% from Latin America, 28% from Western Europe, 3% from Near East, 1% from Pacific and 1% from Asia. Dr. James D Watson (Nobel Laureate) is the Honorary Member of the board.

17. 1. Commitment with Internationality Corresponding authors internationality Internationality also applies to authors as they come from nearly each region in the world.

18. 1. Commitment with Internationality Subscribers internationality International diversity of the subscribers to an email alerting service of the Electronic Journal of Biotechnology.

19. 2. Commitment with Quality The journal follows the high standards of scientific publications recommended by the ISI Thomson Scientific. Editorial board members are selected by their publishingrecords. A prominent Honorary Member and a well-recognized editorial board are among the best guarantees for the scientific quality. The journal follows international editorial conventions. Complete bibliographic information for all cited references is essential and also 75% of the cited bibliography must be from the last decade and at the same time from ISI indexed journals.

20. 3. Commitment to Academic Rigor in the Peer Review Process We follow an independent, international and blind peer review process. Evaluators are selected by their expertise from international bibliographical databases and the success of this system is demonstrated by the quality of the revisions performed on each manuscript, and also because several reviewers have subsequently submitted their manuscripts to the journal in order to be considered for publication. The refusal of manuscripts has been increasing with time, reaching at present over 70% of rejection.

21. 4. Commitment to Transparency

22. 5. Commitment to Scientists The editor is obliged to scientists, and must acknowledge within three working days the reception of a manuscript. Also, the editor has to respond to the requirements of every author and reader, independent of their academic position and geographic location. The commitment to the scientific community is also demonstrated by the support of an Open Access journal.

23. 6. Commitment to Innovation The journal provides a good graphical user interface which enhances the usability of the website. This is based on the scientists’ requirements of speed and efficiency which are necessary for the identification and retrieval of articles and information of interest. Also we have adopted the DOI system, which provides a persistent and unequivocal identification of each article. It allows the use of CrossRef, a citation linking system that permits a researcher to click on a cited reference and link directly to that reference on the publisher’s platform. Also, the use of searchable descriptive metadata increases the accessibility of the journal to search engines.

24. As for example, if the term “journal biotechnology” is searched in Google, one the first websites to be retrieved is the Electronic Journal of Biotechnology journal of biotechnology

25. 7. Commitment to Cooperation • The Electronic Journal of Biotechnology welcomes • cooperation with any group interested in communicating • scientific results in the area of biotechnology. • In this way, we have interacted with: • Bioline International • REDBIO/FAO Co-operation Network on Plant Biotechnology • for Latin America and the Caribbean. • UNESCO. We provide CD-ROMs with the journal’s website which are distributed by UNESCO to the least developing countries, which allows for a shortening of the digital gap between countries with and without internet facilities, as the CDs also contains the browser IE.

26. In Summary Open Access only electronic journals offers a unique opportunity to fulfil the increasingly public demand for making scientific information more accessible, visible and usable. Scientific knowledge must be made public, as it is a right of education and essential to human development. The problem of the distrust in electronic communication must be overcome by the inclusion of more e-journals in international scientific information systems. The ISI Thomson Scientific database publishing company has ensured that both paper and electronic formats are equally trustworthy and legitimate to communicate science.

27. Thanks for your attention! Vienna Austria, June 2007