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EDITORIAL

Succession, development, and sustainability: advances in Geriatrics, Gerontology and Aging journal

Sucessão, desenvolvimento e sustentabilidade: avanços da revista Geriatrics, Gerontology and Aging

Roberto Alves Lourenço

Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Patrick Alexander Wachholz patrick.wachholz@unesp.br

Universidade Estadual Paulista, Brazil

Geriatrics, Gerontology and Aging, vol. 17, e0230020, 2023
Sociedade Brasileira de Geriatria e Gerontologia, SBGG

Received: 23 May 2023

Accepted: 27 May 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.53886/gga.e0230020

Since 2007, editorial policies have been adopted to promote Geriatrics, Gerontology and Aging (GGA) among high-quality international journals, making it worthy to be the scientific publication of the Brazilian Society of Geriatrics and Gerontology. Its development horizon includes successful journals, also conceived within professional bodies, such as Geriatrics & Gerontology International, of the Japan Geriatrics Society, Age & Ageing, of the British Geriatrics Society, and the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, among others.

A constant concern to the editorial board has been maintaining the journal’s financial and editorial sustainability, without sacrificing quality. In addition to negotiating with our partners fair prices for the products delivered to us (submission management, translations, revisions, etc.), we have been looking for other partnerships, including the transition of the editorial management system. As part of this process, in 2023, we are about to complete the transfer of our activities to Open Journal Systems (OJS). We have also hired editorial assistants to be in charge of all the initial steps of receiving submitted manuscripts and checking whether they meet the journal’s requirements.

We have renewed our Editorial Board by inviting associate editors and expert reviewers affiliated with the best international centers with outstanding scientific contributions. We have also published articles coauthored by renowned international researchers, in partnership with Brazilian authors.

GGA’s Twitter profile currently has more than 500 followers. Even more significant, as part of the recognition of GGA’s quality, we have been indexed, among other databases, in the Online Regional Information System for Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal (LATINDEX), Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature (LILACS), Ibero-American Network for Innovation and Scientific Knowledge (REDIB), and Journals of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) of the Brazilian Ministry of Education. The recently updated editorial standards enable us to apply for indexing platforms with greater impact and will facilitate the search for additional funding sources. Reviewing, updating and adjusting the editorial policies and instructions for authors have required a great deal of time from executive editors to prepare the application for GGA to join the Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO), United States National Library of Medicine (PubMed) Central, Scopus, and Web of Science. We have also been qualified in the CAPES journal classification system=as category B1, the primary requirement for manuscript submission in most Brazilian master’s and doctoral programs.

Until May 31, 2023, we published 633 articles, with an average acceptance rate of 40% of submissions, compatible with the standards of high-level international journals. We have launched three special calls in the publishing market: in 2020/2021, manuscripts reporting Research in Long-Term Care for Older People; in 2022/2023, manuscripts describing investigations and issues related to geriatric dentistry and oral health; and, in 2023/2024, we will receive manuscripts addressing the proposal of the World Health Organization for the management of older people’s health (Integrated Care for Older People — ICOPE).

Finally, training of human resources in journal management has also been a constant concern. To this end, we have affiliated GGA with the Brazilian Association of Science Editors, allowing the training of executive editors. Also, as a stimulus for early-career researchers — potential GGA collaborators —, we held a workshop aimed at this group at the 2023 Brazilian Congress of Geriatrics and Gerontology (CBGG for short, in Portuguese), whose activities we plan to expand in the coming years to include mentoring and participation of young researchers as “junior editors.” During the opening ceremony of this CBGG, in front of a record audience that included approximately 3,500 participants, the position of GGA Editor-in-Chief was handed over. The new Editor-in-Chief’s commitments include enhancing the journal’s editorial sustainability and development in the 2023-2027 quadrennium.

In addition to preparing GGA for application to the aforementioned indexing platforms, the GGA’s editorial board aims to strengthen strategic ties with the community of researchers and professionals in Latin America, as a strategy for the internationalization and development of the journal.

*Inspiredby Geriatrics, Gerontology and Aging’s editor-in-chief handover speech at the opening ceremony of the 23rd Brazilian Congress of Geriatrics and Gerontology.