Press Release

Challenges will put countries on network to find best solutions to scientific dissemination

Linda Rowan, senior editor of Science magazine described standards to high level of the scientific publication

Santiago, 30 of September - The participants of the International Conference on Scientific Electronic Publishing in Developing Countries had noted soon in the beginning of the event that the scientific spreading for the Internet has a great future, but need to pass over some challenges. The success is supported by the cooperation between countries to find the best tools and the form most efficient to handle the necessities of the users of the scientific information.

In the opening lecture, Abel Packer, director of BIREME (Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences Information) and coordinator of the SciELO design (Scientific Electronic Library Online), affirmed that the conference must bring refresh on the development in global the scientific communication, especially for developing countries with sights to magnify the regional visibility and scientific presence of periodic and the local ones.

Maria Cristina Lazo, of the Comissión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica (CONICYT) of Chile explained that the agency assumed as main challenge to give a positive reply to the request of the President of Chile to have an efficient entity in politics of science communication and technology. "This conference means an important step for the communication of results in scientific research", said. "Each new study remains unknown until being divulged. That is the importance of the communication."
As per Maria Cristina is responsibility of the CONICYT to guarantee that the Chilean scientists and researchers are in contact with the world, surpassing the physical isolation. To allow this, centers of excellence in most diverse sciences, as mathematical, oceanographic, astrophysics and molecular biology, had been created. The CONICYT intends to develop local centers of communication prioritizing university, governmental centers of inquiry and projects that they offer regionally results. "All the research efforts becomes poor without efficient services of diffusion, therefore it does not have critical, the information contribution and the exchange of data", declared Maria Cristina.
The speaker explained that the CONICYT maintains deep support on scientific magazines, which includes update actions to the publishers of national scientific magazines (by courses, seminaries, etc.), operation of Latin American pointers of scientific production as the Latindex and the elaboration of scientific magazines in electronic format. In this aspect the SciELO is considered a success for the CONICYT. They are about 30 a thousand daily visits. As much that the Chilean government established that the factors of calculations of scientific indices of impact must include the magazines that are part of the SciELO collection.

Neruda

Sir Roger Elliot, chairman of the Committee for the Dissemination of Scientific Information (ICSU), desired welcome to the participants on behalf of the entity. It described the organization that intends to take the dissemination of the scientific information to the largest possible number of people. "And the participation of the developing countries is important for the achievement of this project", concluded Sir Elliot.
Finally, Carlos Wörner, vice-director of Inquiries and Advanced Studies of the Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso, that co-ordinates the ICSEP, together with BIREME, preferred to leave that the words of the poet Pablo Neruda complimented the participants of the event. "To be porteño also means to be citizen of the world. Neruda said: I declare my love Valparaiso. I wish that all you can be fallen in love of Valparaiso."

Ways of the Internet

In the first conference of the ICSEP, Linda Rowan (Lrowan@aaas.org), senior editor of the Science Magazine, presented the aspects that, in her opinion, are basic for the improvement of a vehicle of global cooperation in the scientific communication.

Quality: In 1991 there were seven electronic scientific periodicals. Currently there are 6000 headings are available in the Web. Only the HoghWire Library of Science and Medicine has more than 12 article million for consultation. The amount brings doubts regarding the quality. Therefore, Linda believes on the importance of peer-review.

Publication speed: To optimize the time, the Science works with article submission on-line or revision on-line.

Speed of dissemination of the information: The senior editor of Science only found one periodic - Journal of Biological Chemistry that publishes the results of a research up to 24 hours of its approval. The texts are used without formatting or revision. The Science in its express service keeps an average of three new works published per week, leading about ten days between the approval and the propagation. In this express service it does not have correction of the original text.
Some electronic publications need 14 days to spread a new article and the majority of scientific periodicals publish the results of a research 30 days after its approval.
Linda left to participants the quarrel of the validity to divulge a text without correction to reduce the publication time. "Remember that a scientific work takes months and years be published in scientific printed matters."

Dissemination of results: "Traditional Scientists affirm that a study she must be divulged on the Internet. Youngest Scientists believe that there should be only dissemination of scientific information in web ", with this phrase, Linda initiated the description of the types of divulgators considered for Science: individual (direct access, personalized contact), institutional (economic, used by small companies and even for countries as China), databases (HighWire, Health InterNetwork - see its addresses below) and the authors.

Search: Another important point to the advance of the science dissemination. It is necessary to be fast, friendly, to offer many options to the user.

Reading: A constant claim of the sites users is the legibility of the texts. To minimize the problem, Linda presented a series standards more commonly used and efficient.

Scientific information and data:
Format - PDF
Text - Word/Latex
Images - TIF/JPG/PS
On-line - HTML
Archives - XML/SGML
Download - PDF

Language and symbols:
www.stixfonts.org

For web:
Page of the W3C. It has focus on the universal access, the Web semantics and the safe and trustworthy Web. In its strategy of desing, the W3C searchs interoperabilidade, constant evolution and decentralization.

Additives: When Internet was created, one of the first conclusions on the subject it was that the Web would be the point of convergence of the most diverse forms of communication. Besides this is not plentiful, the net allows the additive use that values the service given to the user of electronic scientific publication. It is allowed and stimulated the addend dynamic information (videos, audio), educational issues, news, commentaries, supplemental archives, interactivity, data, on-line quarrels, among others resources. For the future, Linda believes that the scientific publications will be only electronic, will have interactive revision of works, international and networking data bases, it will be incorporated tools of the robotics and artificial intelligence, will have DOI (Digital Objects Identifier) and DHI (Digital Human Identifier).

Sites suggested by Linda Rowan:
Databases
HighWire - highwire.stanford.edu
Health InterNetwork - healthinternetwork.org

Author
Preprint server
arXiv.org (physics)
preprint.chemweb.com (chemistry)
cogprints.soton.ac.uk - (psico and bio)
www.osti.gov/preprints/index.html (Search Engine)

Standard for web
W3C - www.w3.org
Internet2 - www.ampath.edu

www.scienceonline.org

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