Abstract

This article provides a historical review of the scientific magazine emphasizing the following three aspects: classification, evaluation and challenges concerning their impact and certification. Modern science historical context has provided conditions for the formal circulation of scientific research and the emergence, in 1665, of the scientific journal. Considering science as a social institution, researchers in the sixties developed sciencemetry as a discipline to study the quantitative aspect of scientific information. In the present, only magazines, indexed in well established data bases are selected to spread new forms of knowledge. This dynamic pushes Latin American publications to the periphery of the academic circle minimizing their international presence. The positive increment of scientific production is localized in Brazil, Chile and Mexico in engineering, technology, biology and health. The conclusion points to the necessity to maintain the publication of Latin-American scientific journals in order to build a strong intellectual information pool or otherwise disappear in the short term making regional scientific research invisible. The material published about the impact indicators and the hegemony of the English language has consolidated the leading position of Latindex and Scielo and therefore it is a sign of the improving indicators of Latin American science. Several actions can be taken to improve even further the referee system, among them bringing forward authors and reviewers, standardizing the reviewing parameters and continuous training of reviewers