About the Journal

Reciis has been published since 2007 by the Institute of Communication and Scientific and Technological Information in Health (Instituto de Comunicação Informação Científica e Tecnológica em Saúde – Icict) of Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fundação Oswaldo Cruz – Fiocruz).

This is an interdisciplinary open-access peer-reviewed quarterly published journal with no fees charged, thus no article processing charges (APC). It publishes original texts of interest within the areas of communication, information, and heath in Portuguese, English, Spanish or French. The journal focuses on publishing texts at the interfaces between communication and healthcare and between information and healthcare, the principal themes of the journal.

Focus and Scope

The journal focuses on publishing texts at the interfaces between communication and healthcare and between information and healthcare, the principal themes of the journal.

By communication and healthcare, we understand, principally, the wide spectrum of research on public policies on communication in their relationship with healthcare, as well as healthcare policies in their connections with the right to communication and to information, communication practices in the field of healthcare, cultural and communicative mediation in the health-disease-care processes, communication as a component of social inequalities in healthcare, communicative phenomena in relation to sociability processes, identity and subjectivation, the overlaps between health and the media, given its multiple formats, forms and contexts, as well as health mediatization processes.

By information and healthcare, we mean a variety of themes, such as the improvement of methods for collecting and analyzing data on health situations, given their social and environmental determinants, monitoring and evaluation of health indicators and policies, studies on scientific publications, scientific information and communication and policies on science and technology in their interactions with healthcare, the production and management of scientific and technological information in healthcare, management of healthcare information and knowledge, and the role of information systems, repositories, archives and libraries in the process of producing, circulating and appropriating knowledge in the field of healthcare.

Lastly, the innovation, field of knowledge and activities that give the journal its title have been understood since 2018 exclusively with regard to innovations in information and communication technologies in the field of healthcare, professional training and the teaching of health sciences.

The journal's sections contain original articles, review articles, essays, interviews, editorials, notes on current situations, experience reports and reviews of books and audiovisual productions, on a variety of themes, with continuous submissions of a spontaneous nature or at the invitation of the editors.

Since 2019, Reciis has published thematic dossiers that, within a specific issue and based on a central theme, bring together knowledge on the central topic, thus promoting debate and reflection on research practices in the field.

Updated on August 25, 2022.

e-ISSN 1981-6278

Themes of interest

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• Analysis of educational materials, campaigns and strategies on communication and health
• Audiovisual and health
• Communication and scientific diffusion
• Communication, information, and health as human rights
• Communication, mediations, and sociocultural practices in health
• Ethics in communication, information and health
• Health and media
• Health education, communication, and information
• Health indicators, evaluation and monitoring of health policies
• Information and communication technologies in health
• Information systems, and surveys and health research
• Innovation in information, communication and health technologies
• Internet and social networks in health
• Journalism, publicity, and health
• Media processes and the health field
• Open access policies and practices
• Prospecting, metric studies on science and technology in health
• Research theories and methodologies in information and communication in health
• Scientific information and health
• Terminologies, languages and classification systems in health
• Education, communication and information in health

Section Policies

Reciis publishes the following sections:

Editorial

Editorials are texts that, in addition to introducing the edition, bring scientific content with the potential to receive citations and justify their indexation and publication. They are written by Reciis's editors or by editor's invitation. Indexed.

Notes on current situations

These texts are meant to analyse (or comment) current situations in order to contribute to the deepening of topics related to the fields of communication, information, and health. They are limited to around 15,000 characters with spaces. By editors’ invitation only.

Original articles

These are contributions intended to disseminate original research results with the following elements: object, objective, problem, theoretical-methodological basis, and clearly described results. Limited to 40 to 60,000 characters with spaces. Seção aberta a submissões em fluxo contínuo, indexed and peer-reviewed.

Dossiers
These are collections of four to six original articles within subjects selected by editors that is insert in an edition in order to advance a debate, an idea or a field in relation to the overall aims of the journal. Limited to 40 to 60,000 characters with spaces. Seção aberta a submissões em períodos definidos em chamadas públicas. Indexed and peer-reviewed.

Essays

These are analytical or propositional contributions with theoretical constructs leading to the questioning of existing models and allowing hypotheses for future research. Limited to 40 to 60,000 characters with spaces. Seção aberta a submissões em fluxo contínuo, indexed and peer-reviewed.

Review articles

These are contributions intended to disseminate kinds of literature review, such as systematic review, integrative review, narrative review and scope review. Limited to 40 to 60,000 characters with spaces. Seção aberta a submissões em fluxo contínuo, indexed and peer-reviewed.

Experience reports

These are contributions that describe situations in the practice of professionals or institutions. Limited to 30 to 50,000 characters with spaces. Seção aberta a submissões em fluxo contínuo, indexed and peer-reviewed.

Interviews

These are contributions derived from interviews with authorities, specialists, or researchers whose life history or professional achievements are relevant to the fields of communication, information, and health. By editors’ invitation only. Indexed. Indexed.

Reviews of books and audiovisual productions

These are contributions that present a critical analysis of books or audiovisual productions. Limited to 15,000 characters with spaces. Seção aberta a submissões em fluxo contínuo and indexed.

Updated in May 11th, 2023.

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Peer Review Process

The evaluation process involves the following steps:

1. Desk review: After submitting, the text undergoes an evaluation that involves verifying adequacy to the journal’s themes of interest, authorship policy, norms of standardization of manuscripts, ethical principles, criteria of originality, correct fulfillment of metadata, and basic parameters of scientific writing (language clarity, object and objective definition, problem formulation, theoretical foundation, and methodological approach). This process can take around two weeks and leads to three possible outcomes: (i) suitable for peer evaluation; (ii) rejected with a request for alterations and resubmission; and (iii) rejected. The rejection outcome with the possibility of resubmission in this stage implies the non-compliance with the proper use of references and citations format. Authors may resubmit the corrected text if they wish. The rejected outcome results from a manuscript address subjects beyond the scope of the journal and/or affect the journal’s criteria of originality.
   
   
2. Peer review: The texts will be evaluated through double-blind peer review. After desk review, the manuscripts are sent to two ad hoc reviewers who are experts on the subject. The evaluation of reviewers is a recommendation for the associate editor, who is responsible for the publication decision together with the scientific editor. There are four possible outcomes: (i) accepted for publication; (ii) publication conditioned to modifications; (iii) required revisions, subject to re-evaluation; (iv) rejected for publication. This process takes about 24 weeks. The evaluation process will be filed if authors do not respond to reformulation requests before the deadline established in communication via e-mail.

Once approved, the following steps are copy editing and standardization. At this moment, the author may be called for clarification regarding the writing. If the author does not respond to these requests within the stipulated deadline, the text will lose priority in the publication timeline or may be archived in order to not compromise the maximum time for processing each submission (around one year).

After proofreading, finally, the text is prepared for electronic publication.

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Pre-publication policy

Reciis does not accept full texts that have been previously published in other journals, conference proceedings, or book chapters. Manuscripts from theses, dissertations, and coursework papers should contain this information in the 'author's comments' field at the time of submission.

Reciis considers content containing more than 30% of information already published in any medium or format (except theses, dissertations, and coursework papers) as self-plagiarism that prevents publication in this journal, whether in the form of text, graphics, tables, etc. Original articles must submit unpublished results and discussion.

In the case of infringement, and if the text has been published, the text will be removed from the body of the journal and the author notified.

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Authorship policy

1. About credentials: Reciis mainly publishes texts from authors or co-authors who hold a PhD’s degree. Authors who hold different degrees will be accepted according to the evaluation of the editorial board regarding originality, pertinence, and social and scientific relevance of the study in the fields of communication, information, and health.
   
   
2. About the number of authors: a limit of five authors is recommended. A justification must be provided in the 'Comments to the editor' field for manuscripts with more than five authors.
   
   
3. About the number of publications per author: Texts of the same author may not be published by Reciis in less than one year.
   
   
4. Regarding authorship definition: According to the International Committee of Medical Journals Editors (ICMJE) criteria, authorship should reflect the substantive intellectual contribution to the development of the study, i. e., (1) study conception and design; (2) data acquisition, analysis, and interpretation; (3) manuscript writing and critical review of the intellectual content.
   
   Details of the contribution of each author must be informed in the act of submission and will be published together with the study.
   
   All authors must be responsible for approving the final version to be published and for all legal and scientific aspects related to the accuracy or completeness of the study.
   
   
5. On system registration: All authors must be registered in the journal’s system.

Updated in Feb. 11th, 2020.

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Ethical policies

Reciis supports the guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). 

Studies involving human subjects (interviews, questionnaires, focus groups, clinical studies, etc.) must be approved by an ethics committee.

In the act of submission, authors must send an approval by a research ethics committee. In Brazil, ethics committes should be recognized by the National Research Ethics Committee (Comissão Nacional de Ética em Pesquisa - Conep) according to the norms of the Resolution 466/2012 of the National Health Council (Conselho Nacional de Saúde – CNS).

The norms applicable to studies in Human and Social Sciences whose methodological procedures involve the use of data directly obtained with participants or through identifiable information can be found here http://conselho.saude.gov.br/resolucoes/2016/reso510.pdf

The resolution that regulates the specific norms for research of strategic interest to the Unified Health System (Sistema Único de Saúde – SUS) can be found here http://conselho.saude.gov.br/resolucoes/2018/Reso580.pdf   

The ethics committee approval must be submitted as an additional document in step 5 of the submission process. 

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Conflict of interest

All participants in the editorial process (authors, reviewers, and editors) should report conflicts of interest of a financial order or interpersonal relationship that may interfere in the conduct of the research and/or in the evaluation of the manuscript.

It is up to

Authors: to inform the impact of the financing institution on the theoretical-methodological development, results, and discussion of the research that is represented in the manuscript.

Reviewers: to communicate the identification of an author as an acquaintance and some types of personal and/or professional relationship (acting in the same research group or laboratory, linking to the same institutional unit or department, or rivalry or academic competition). This awareness might lead the associate editor to forward the manuscript to another reviewer.

Editors: to communicate any type of conflict of interest of a personal or professional nature (positions or institutional representation) and consider potential ethical problems in the selection of the reviewers.

In cases of noncompliance with the communication of conflict of interest by any of the participants in the editorial process, and eventual discovery, authors will have their text retracted from publication, reviewers will be excluded from the Reciis reviewer pool, and editors will no longer be part of the journal’s editorial board.

 

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Open access policies

Readers rights: Reciis provides open access to all articles immediately after publication.

Reuse rights: Reciis adopts the Creative Commons License, CC BY-NC non-commercial attribution according to the Policy on Open Access to Knowledge by Oswaldo Cruz Foundation. 

Authors rights:  Authors retain the rights without restrictions over their study.

Authors rights to deposit/self-archiving:  Authors are encouraged to deposit their publications in institutional repositories with a link to their article published at Reciis.

Last updated on June 23, 2022

 

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Open data policy

Reciis encourages the deposit of research data into an open data repository. We ask authors to enter the access URL in the article information under Open Data. 

Learn more about Open data here: Open research data: broadening the concept of free access, authored by Luís Fernando Sayão and Luana Farias Sales.  

Example of an open data repository:

Figshare: http://figshare.com/ 

 

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Policies for indexation

Reciis adopts the criteria required by the Lilacs and SciELO methodologies. 

We have adopted up to three hierarchical levels in institutional affiliations.

We stimulate the use of channels of access to scientific production, such as institutional repository, Google Scholar, and ResearchGate, for information about authors.

We require the use of controlled vocabulary - such as the Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) and the Thesaurus for Information Science - for keywords.

 

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Guidelines for preparation of Dossiers

Dossier proposals should be sent to reciis@icict.fiocruz.br for evaluation by the scientific editors. They should contain the theme of the dossier, its connections with the disciplines of communications, information and healthcare, and identify the proposers. (See the section Notices for public calls for previous dossiers).

 Objective

• To create a specific issue of Reciis, a debate, an idea or a field related to the themes of interest  of the periodical. The texts submitted will be processed through normal channels, as explained in the section on the  Peer Review Process .

Structure

• The dossier must contain four to six original articles We recommend that at least one article be from authors affiliated with a foreign institution. The dossier must also contain an introduction written by the guest editors. The text must include scientific content with the potential to be cited and justify its indexation and publication.

 On guest editors:

One or more of the guest editors must have a doctoral degree. Reciis values institutional and geographic diversity of editors and encourages the participation of foreign editors.

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 Tasks of guest editors

• Propose the theme of the dossier to Reciis's scientific editors.
• Write the public call for submissions;
• Take part in disseminating the dossier (both while it is being prepared and after it is published), with the support of the Reciis editorial team;
• Invite authors to submit texts to the dossier. It is important to make clear to authors that the invitation to submit a text does not imply acceptance of the submitted manuscript. It will be peer-reviewed as per the Reciis editorial policy;
• Assess the merits of the text and relevance to the dossier. Scientific editors may suggest that texts submitted to the journal be included in the dossier;
• Read the texts before selecting peer reviewers for the evaluation process;
• Manage editorial flow within the Reciis publication system, with the support of the Reciis editorial team;
• Follow the messages exchanged with the team;
• Take care to follow the production schedule agreed upon with the journal's team;
• Ensure that peer reviews are performed for the manuscripts, if a text has not received two peer reviews by the deadline for final editorial decision-making according to the schedule established by the journal; 
• Write the presentation of the dossier to be published in the issue;
• Comply with and enforce Reciis editorial policies, defined on the site  (https://www.reciis.icict.fiocruz.br/index.php/reciis/about/editorialPolicies#focusAndScope);

 Tasks of the Reciis team

• In general: support the guest editors through the various stages of preparing the dossier
• In particular:
• Scientific editors: when creating the dossier idea, the call for submissions and questions of a scientific or ethical nature during the production and publication of science; in the final decision on publication;
• Editorial assistant: desk review of the manuscripts submitted, guidance for authors, editors and peer reviewers regarding use of the system (access, registration, submission of a new version);
• Social communication: in the design and production of publicity for the call for submissions, the release of the dossier and the articles published;
• Executive editor: for planning of the publication and management of the stages of text preparation (copydesk, author's proofs, diagramming and publication);
• Editorial coordinator: management of activities, guidance of team. 

Estimated production time: seven to nine months.

Open call: 60 to 80 days.

Final editorial decision: about 100 days (in peer review: 70 days).

Preparation of the publication: about 45 days.

 

Last updated on July 12, 2023