V simposio chileno de revistas en el área de la salud / 5th chilean symposium of biomedical journal editors

In August, 2001, the Editors of over 40 Chilean journals in biological, medical and health issues were gathered in Santiago, Chile, by the Chilean Association of Biomedical Journal Editors, together with guest librarians from Chile and Brazil, in a 2-day symposium. The main topics discussed were: the educational role of biomedical journals in Chile; how can Chilean journals become included in international databases; requisites for authorship in scientific articles; how to attract more and better manuscripts; advantages and limitations of the peer-review system; ethical problems and conflicts of interest in the editorial process; electronic tendencies in scientific publications. This was the fifth meeting on similar topics held in Chile, starting in 1972, and the interchange of experiences and opinions among editors, librarians and other experts was fruitful and stimulating

Visión de la investigación en Chile a través de algunos indicadores epistemométricos / Overview of research in Chile by several scientometric indicators

Scientific productivity in Chile was studied examining a data bank constructed with the publications indexed by the Institue for Scientific Information during 1987 and 1988. the bank excludes meeting abstracts and contains the full title of the publisched paper, the list of authors, addresses, field, and the nature of collaboration two or more institutions. The articles were classified in different fields and tabulated according to the institution from which they originated. Although remains to be the more productive subjective (26.5%) followed by medical sciences (23.9%) and chemistry (12.3%), articles in mathematics and physics continued theri increase as in previous years. Using the scientometric indicators published by Braun et al (see refs. 14-17), the impact of the research originated in Chile in biology, physics and mathematics was compared to that attained in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela. The role of the chilean National Research Fund and the output of the financed resarch projects were also analyzed. The succesful results obtained during the first years in which the National Research Fund has been involved in the support of the scientific activity in Chile, confirms the need to strenghten its budget, according to the foals stated in the National Plan for Science and Technology for Development