Trends in the publication of scientific research in travel medicine from Latin America.

摘要

We read with interest the recent Letter by Rodriguez-Morales and Palacios describing trends in the publication of scientific research in travel medicine from Latin America. In their Letter, the authors point out that travel medicine has emerged as an important scientific discipline in many parts of the world, including very recently, in Latin America.Aside from travel medicine, Latin American scholars have many other reasons to be proud of their scientific and scholarly achievements. Firstly, there is known to be an extensive range of literature originating from the Spanish speaking countries of Latin America. One of the earliest journals in tropical medicine, for example, originated in Brazil. Similar to their Spanish language counterparts, many Portuguese journals are now Open Access (OA), with direct links in the major indexing databases. Perhaps one of the most important initiatives from this region is SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online), a World Health Organization (WHO)/Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) supported database of approximately 3.5 million citations across over 500 journals. The provision of OA initiatives is important, as OA itself occupies a major role for global scientific equity, given that the internet provides many scholars their only chance for accessing scientific literature that would otherwise be too expensive to purchase, particularly in developing countries.