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Revista de Biología Tropical

On-line version ISSN 0034-7744Print version ISSN 0034-7744

Rev. biol. trop vol.47 n.1-2 San José Jun. 1999

 

The scientific journal that researchers want for the 21st. century:

the problems of language and scope


The 21st. century approaches and we asked our Editorial Board and the International Scientific Board about changes that would benefit the journal and the readers that it must serve. Some of the suggestions were the basis for changes that have been made in recent issues, but others were controversial and became part of a questionaire that we sent to the 600 authors who had published most recently in the Revista. We received 103 answers and analize them in this editorial.
For years the journal has had a bilingual (Spanish and English) title, but this is not reflected in its official abbreviation; 61 % of the respondents want to maintain the traditional Rev. Biol. Trop. abbreviation, but a respectable 39 % wants an abbreviation that reflects the English name (a combination is preferred by 11 %), so we do not discard a future modification, especially because globalization and the Internet are making cultural borders more diffuse.

Most authors (91 %) rejected the idea of specializing the journal to cover only those fields for which more papers are received: they argued that researchers are often subscribed to specilized journals, they feel the need for a journal in which they can overview what others are doing, specially in the Neotropics. This also indicates that the journal should publish more synthesis papers. Traditionally we only publish invited reviews from well known authorities. As a rule, unsolicited reviews lack the significant discoveries that experts can extract from the literature. We expect to have a future minireview series with extremely updated information.

There is no doubt that English is the language of science and we prefer it, but a bilingual policy was supported by 73 % of the surveyed researchers (only a minority feel prepared to write English, albeit practically all of them can read it), 18 % believe that papers in English should receive priority and 10 % that English should be the exclusive language of the journal. A geographic trend was identified: scientists whose native language is not Spanish stated that English should be the only language throughout the journal. Unless the current situation changes, our decision is to accept papers in both languages but to guarantee access to the international scientific community with detailed abstracts and bilingual figure captions and table headings.

In conclusion, researchers with an interest in the tropics want the International Journal of Tropical Biology and Conservation Revista de Biología Tropical to be updated but without radical changes: apparently they like what we have accomplished to date.
 

Julián Monge-Nájera

Editor
julianm@cariari.ucr.ac.cr
editor@biologia.ucr.ac.cr

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