Abstract

The positive and negative effects of policies aimed at encouraging scientific output by university professors in Colombia, in addition to those that apply to higher education institutions in the quality accreditation process and in national budget resource allocation, are discussed. Although Colombia reported the highest rate of growth among Latin American countries in the Scopus database and is improving its scientific communication practices, the country now has the challenge of combining these performance results with a greater emphasis on quality indicators. In order to achieve greater international visibility, policy adjustments related to improving scientific production are needed, as well as a more efficient incentives system for researchers and higher education institutions. New policy provisions are beginning to be focussed in this direction.

Abstract

The main features of 207 Spanish health sciences journals active in 2014, and their visibility in six biomedical and multidisciplinary databases are described. Of these databases, Scopus and Ibecs provide the best coverage of these journals, and Medline and WoS the worst. The discipline best represented is medicine, followed by psychology, nursing and pharmacy. Among the observed characteristics, there were an absence of journals published exclusively on paper and the presence of journals published in English or bilingual Spanish-English and with open access. The article includes the journal list, which can be a reference tool for researchers selecting target journals for publication, for publishers in the health sciences areas and for information scientists for use in their database management tasks or in advising other professionals.