A plataformização dos periódicos científicos na era da cultura digital: evidências a partir da SciELO Brasil

Abstract

With nearly four centuries of existence, scientific journals remained in print format until the 1970s, when advances in technology gave rise to the electronic format. Digital culture, characterized by the widespread dissemination and integration of digital technologies into contemporary society, created new forms of interaction and had a major impact on people’s daily lives, bringing about profound changes in service provision, entertainment, education, as well as in the ways knowledge is produced, disseminated, and consumed. In this context, the ubiquity of digital technologies in contemporary society stands out. The emergence of the commercial internet in the mid-1990s revolutionized the publishing market, and platforms were developed for journal management and publication. The incorporation of information and communication technologies, combined with the use of platforms, has become an important strategy for communicating research results, promoting publications and institutional scientific output, and increasing reach and visibility. The platformization process refers to the penetration and advancement of digital platform infrastructures across multiple dimensions of society and culture, reconfiguring cultural practices and imaginaries in relation to platforms. The research problem that guided this investigation was: what are the impacts of platformization on the dynamics of publication, visibility, and access to scientific journals? Based on the premise that the platformization of science has reconfigured the production, circulation, evaluation, and visibility of scientific knowledge, the study advances the hypothesis that the platformization of science affects scientific journals by restructuring dynamics related to management, indexing, and dissemination, thereby producing social and academic implications. The general objective of the research was to demonstrate how platformization has altered the processes of editorial management, indexing, and dissemination, affecting the visibility of and access to scientific articles, in addition to influencing the circulation and recognition of scientific journals. This is a qualitative-quantitative study of an exploratory and descriptive nature that also makes complementary use of documentary analysis. In this dissertation, the focus on the digital platforms used by scientific journals considered three categories of analysis: management, indexing, and dissemination. The empirical research was conducted through data collection (questionnaires and interviews) with the editorial teams of journals indexed in the SciELO Brazil Collection, as well as through the study of digital publishing platforms. In response to the guiding question, the results indicate that the platformization process has impacted scientific journals, which have reshaped their practices to align with the dynamics of digital platforms. In addition to adjustments in the editorial workflow, the impacts are identified in the redefinition of legitimacy criteria and in the reorganization of visibility circuits through the use of platform infrastructures.