It is the largest peer-reviewed database of abstracts and literature citations. Scopus indexing adds visibility to the journal and attests to the quality expected by the scientific community

 

In January, the International Journal of Cardiovascular Sciences (IJCS), which is part of the portfolio of journals published by the Brazilian Society of Cardiology (SBC), got indexed in the Scopus database, owned by Elsevier. Scopus is the world’s largest indexer of scientific content. One of the main advantages of having a journal indexed to this database is the international visibility that the Scopus structure provides.

 “For many years, we have struggled to achieve this indexing. Scopus includes thousands of medical journals and it is in this database that the best scientific journals in the world are found. The cardiovascular journals published include Arquivos Brasileiros de Cardiologia (ABC Cardiol), the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, Circulation, and the European Heart Journal. Therefore, it is a database with the best publications in the world, and our indexing is a seal of quality, as it means that the IJCS has very strict high-level technical and scientific criteria. One of the facts that brings us even more joy is that “we do all the work ‘in-house,’ at SBC, with the determination and quality of an admirable team that ranges from the editorial department, reviewers, members of the editorial board, up to the editors,” celebrates Cláudio Tinoco Mesquita, editor-in-chief of the IJCS.

Being the author of an article in a journal indexed in Scopus ensures greater chances of citations, and of becoming a contributor to new publications. For the IJCS, this indexing process is also an avenue for the recruitment of new qualified members to join the board of reviewers. The benefits extend to other aspects, such as: greater visibility and chances of attracting international collaboration, greater possibility of generating an increase in citations and getting more readers to the articles, in addition to the fact that it is part of a wide community of specialists in different areas/disciplines.

Scopus requires journal editors to be mindful of a range of criteria, such as: peer review, diversity in the geographical distribution of editorial staff and authors, quality of content, academic contribution to the field of knowledge, quality and compliance with the scope and declared objectives, citations of articles, regularity of publication, online availability, and others.

According to Mesquita, the new organization of the journal’s website, with a section for indexing the articles and search resources represent a distinctive feature for the recent achievement.

“We have implemented editorial policies to prevent plagiarism, encourage gender equality, open-access publication, and public data for checking and auditing purposes. We started to receive preprints, which speeds up science, and we have been increasingly active on the social media.  The IJCS meets the international criteria of a quality scientific journal,” says the editor-in-chief.

Submission to Scopus took place in 2019 and the long-awaited positive result was finally received.  With Elsevier’s approval, the IJCS will now have an impact factor (SJR Indicator), which is the rate of utilization of the journal’s articles, which shows how many times the articles were published in a given period. The higher the impact factor, the better the journal quality.

The IJCS indexing to Scopus took place seven months after ABC Cardiol, the main channel of cardiovascular research in Brazil and Latin America, also organized by SBC, reached its biggest impact factor ever: 2.0.

“Now IJCS will also have an impact factor, like ABC Cardiol. This will ensure that we meet the criteria established by Brazil’s authority for assessment, accreditation and quality assurance of masters’ and doctors’ programs — CAPES. CAPES categorizes journals according to impact factors into quality strata that help researchers choose which journals they will submit their articles,” says Mesquita.

With Scopus indexing, the IJCS has guaranteed inclusion into these CAPES strata, supporting the publication of national science, especially cardiology science, in a high-quality journal, positively impacting science and society.

“It is a great effort, so we must thank the entire editorial team, authors, reviewers, editors, and the directors of SBC. It is a large group that worked for this achievement to occur. It is a joint win,” reiterates the editor-in-chief.

 

IJCS

 

The IJCS is a journal that publishes scientific manuscripts on cardiovascular topics with emphasis on original manuscripts that cover epidemiology aspects, multidisciplinary studies, evaluations of healthcare quality, clinical study designs and single-center and multicenter studies to help disseminate scientific research on cardiovascular sciences.

Founded in 2015, the journal has 49% annually approved and, like ABC Cardiol, its content is available on the main platforms of scientific publications worldwide.

With the growth of its scientific importance, the IJCS has become a journal with a multidisciplinary cardiovascular profile, addressing current topics, such as COVID, gender equality, profile of cardiovascular diseases in vulnerable populations, impact of new technologies, including artificial intelligence, wearables, impact of climate change and others.

From 2017 to 2020, the IJCS achieved the following metrics on SCIELO: 390 published articles, including 191 original articles, 96 citations of IJCS by articles published in SCIELO in that period, and 573,736 accesses to IJCS documents on SCIELO. The IJCS published articles that totaled 379 citations of articles from Arquivos Brasileiros de Cardiologia.

Considering the strategic principles of increasing scientific visibility, qualification of scientific production, social impact, internationalization, sustainability and gender equality, the management proposed seven objectives for the IJCS from 2022 to 2026.

These include: indexing in the international databases Scopus, Web of Science and Pubmed; an impact factor greater than 1.0 at the end of 2026; larger number of international submissions and foreign-affiliated reviewers; greater visibility and interactions of articles and posts on the social media; fund-raising from public and private agencies to finance publishing activities; greater balance in the number of men and women in the editorial board; and encouraging gender equality in published research.

“The IJCS is still a young journal, but it has been doing a first-rate job and receives a significant number of publications. It is considered a journal with the potential to promote scientific development in the field of cardiology,” describes Mesquita, mentioning the dozens of citations, the soundness of its review process and the scientific integrity of its articles. Mesquita believes that the future of the IJCS is linked to its indexing in international databases.