RBO achieves international quality levels

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rboe.2017.05.007 fter a long effort, Revista Brasileira de Ortopedia (RBO) has eached a level that puts it among the world’s most important ublications. This information is based on the numbers provided by the echnical department of our publisher, Elsevier, which has preented us with several parameters to guide our selection of tudies. This is thanks to a great effort by our authors, who have een able to greatly improve the quality of their work, whether ubmitting or reviewing articles. The strictness of our editors has been paramount to estabish an international standard for our publications. It is possible to measure the relevance of a journal by the umber of articles submitted for publication and by the variety n the sources of those submissions. We have received submissions from Portugal, Spain, ngland, India, Turkey, and Latin America, and we continue to ave an increasing flow of Brazilian studies, which averages 0 articles per month. Another way is by measuring the level of citation of RBO tudies in indexed international magazines, a tool that is also rovided by Elsevier. We started this measurement in 2014; the citation index of ur studies has doubled each year, which shows the penetraion of our journal worldwide. This rapid evolution has a financial cost, from production o distribution; these expenses are supported by the Brazilan Society of Orthopedics and Traumatology (SBOT), which as gone to great lengths to keep RBO in this line of excelence. The production, publishing, translation, printing, and istribution of RBO has a high cost, which is equivalent to half he cost of the exam to obtain the degree of Orthopedics and raumatology Specialist, per year. The board has been studying measures to minimize these xpenses in several ways. One of them would be to increase he sponsorships, which were greatly reduced last year. There is also an important institutional cost involved. There are six annual issues, with 20 articles in each, and therefore we have to be very selective. RBO has reached a level of refusal of approximately 70%, which is equal to the level of the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, the journal of greatest impact in orthopedics and traumatology. The understanding of those whose articles were refused is important, as we want to continue to count on the prestige of the highest possible number of national and international authors on RBO’s path of growth. We are currently studying a digital format for RBO, which would increase the number of studies included and improve the agility of production and distribution, reducing the waiting time for the publication. It is important to remember that, currently, approved studies are published on Science Direct, which allows immediate access on the Internet to researchers regardless of their physical publication. We will continue to maintain the same levels of requirement, as we feel that this is appropriate for the level of Brazilian orthopedics. In these years heading the RBO Editorial Board, we have had the opportunity to experience an impressive advance in the quality of our scientific production, which is also notable in our congresses and in our participation in the congresses of international societies. We believe that RBO’s excellence is a marker of SBOT’s excellence.