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Universitas Psychologica

Print version ISSN 1657-9267

Univ. Psychol. vol.4 no.1 Bogotá June 2005

 

EDITORIAL

 

The fundamental mission for a journal is to give visibility to the knowledge and that demands today set of complex practices to multiply the diffusion of publications for the inclusion in directories, catalogues, data bases and indexing systems.

These information systems demand of the publisher skills that go beyond his traditional functions (article attainment, communication with the writers, valuation, shipment to arbitration, evaluation and correction of style, among others) and force the publisher to think -specially in the case of the university journals- about distribution processes, trade, diffusion and spreading, because these information systems allow universities and institutions commissioned to produce or to finance knowledge, to set up indicators that give account of the rate of return of the investment in investigation.

On the other hand, the evaluation of impact of publications which the results become visible of such investigation is demonstrated through its catalogue presence that informs about the characteristics of the journal and data bases that leak low quality criteria. Finally, indexing systems allows identifying the impact of citations of articles, authors and the journal.

One of these systems of information is LATINDEX, which counts, in its catalogue, with more than 13.600 journals in all disciplines, of which 560 are of psychology. Of the same one way, the data base PSICODOC of the Official School of Psychologists of Spain it counts on 529 journals of which 257 are from Spain and the rest from Portugal and Latin America. On the other hand, are three data bases that to the equal one that the PSICODOC, makes evaluations of formal quality on their products. These are: the ECONLIT of economy and administrative sciences, MEDLINE of medicine and health sciences and, PSYCINFO of psychology, social sciences, health sciences and administrative sciences. PSYCINFO counts with near 2.000 journals in its data base, more than 50 countries and 25 languages and are today the data base more consulted in the world in ours discipline. This system of the American Psychological Association (APA) evaluates the journals (formal criteria, style, arbitration, endogamy, quality of the articles). Nevertheless, of all Latin America in Hispanic speech there are no more than 15 journals; only Argentina, Mexico, Chile and Colombia count with journals including in this important data base.

Colombia counts in PSYCINFO with two journals, both of Latin American character (the Latin American Journal of Psychology and the Journal Advances in Latin American Psychology), with more than 30 years of existence and those are published by the Foundation for the Advance of Psychology. Thus, for us this profit is source of satisfaction by whatever in only three years we have been able to be member of this select group of journals of Colombia and Latin America that it will extend in considerable form the impact of our journal in the international context.

This success, for our Faculty and University, involves us still more with a work of quality and international projection.

Wilson López López

Editor

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