Manifesto of GT 09 - "Trabalho e Educação" by ANPEd - For an evaluation of journals based on the sovereign interests of the majority of the Brazilian population

AN EVALUATION OF PERIODICALS BASED ON THE SOVEREIGN INTERESTS OF THE MAJORITY OF THE BRAZILIAN POPULATION 

The editors of the scientific journals linked to WG 09 - "Work and Education" of the National Association of Graduate Studies and Research in Education (ANPEd) - gathered at the V Intercrítica - come to the public to expose a position contrary to the determination of evaluation of the academic production elaborated and deliberated by the Technical-Scientific Council of Higher Education of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Level Personnel (CTC-ES/CAPES) as a result of its 198th meeting, held in September 2020. This determination aims to institute a new model of evaluation of graduate programs focused once again on the classification of the journals that publish the scientific production of the faculty and students of these programs based on an evaluation system that adopts specific criteria defined by CTC-ES/CAPES itself, without the participation of the scientific editors of the journals evaluated. This new model further enhances the competitive and exclusionary character already in place in previous evaluation processes, with even more disastrous implications for the editorial work of several scientific journals in the field of education.

CTC-ES/CAPES determines that, for the 2017-2020 quadrennium, journals should be classified taking into consideration the H Index, in order to quantify productivity and the impact of teachers' production based on their most cited articles, without any reflection on the methodology adopted by the bibliographic bases that make the measurement. With this initiative, CTC-ES/CAPES despises any accumulation of dialogue established with post-graduate programs and with the National Association of Research and Post-Graduate Studies in Education (ANPEd), in which considerable democratic advances have been observed, materialized not only in the contribution of the programs in proposing evaluation criteria, but also in the effective participation of teachers/researchers indicated by them in the execution of the evaluation of journals. Another aspect of this CTC-ES/CAPES determination to be considered is that the effectiveness of Index H as a measure of the impact of scientific production is problematic not only for the humanities, but also for Health or Technological Sciences. This difficulty is not restricted to Brazil, since criticism of the H Index is recurrent, especially about its difficulty in meeting the specificities of the scientific areas, the realities of each country, and to account for differences between age, sex, language and nationality of the researcher, etc. It is precisely for this reason that this index does not have the consensus in the scientific community, not even in the United States, where it has been widely adopted for years.

We understand that this determination of CTC-ES/CAPES is a structuring part of a Graduate Policy based on the idea of competitiveness as a factor in the promotion of quality which, notoriously, leads to an exclusionary management of resources, with no guarantee of increased funding or progressive development of the academic and scientific quality of graduate programs. Its only functionality is to justify the selectivity of investment in a small number of the best ranked graduate programs. As far as scientific journals are concerned, the evaluation has never been focused on the real development of quality scientific diffusion, but on a financial management strategy from a commercial perspective of academic and scientific production. Therefore, journals are evaluated not to diagnose their editorial quality in order to develop it, but to establish classification measures of the academic production of postgraduate teachers. The academic production is one of the main criteria for CAPES to assess the concept of these programs. This dynamic does not have as a guiding requirement the demands of scientific and technological diffusion nor the formation of future generations of Brazilian researchers, but the promotion of competitiveness to justify selectivity, besides instituting the mercantile logic as a guide for the editorial work of scientific journals, so that not only scientific knowledge, but also its communication are conducted to the status of merchandise. As a result, more and more journals are being treated by CTC-ES/CAPES in disregard of the local demands from which they originate.

The fact that CTC-ES/CAPES's determination is based on the mercantile perspective of academic production to evaluate journals is nothing new. All proposals that have prevailed in CTC-ES/CAPES until now have always been guided by this perspective. The new element in the current determination is that it elects the H Index as the main criteria for evaluating journals. It is also not new that this government agency has actively won the consent of certain segments of the scientific community in the area, or because they have always benefited from this government action or because they have nurtured expectations of becoming so. Many times, these opportunistic postures that materialize in active consent are justified as relevant participation in the dispute of conflicting interests in the state apparatus, as if CTC-ES/CAPES were so plural, even more so now when it obeys the neo-fascist agenda. In spite of many resistance from some researchers and scientific associations in the field of education and humanities in general, it is necessary to go beyond the immediate critique of CTC-ES/CAPES and start a deeper critique of this mercantile character that the evaluation of journals has been assuming for years with the effective participation of representatives (editors and scientists). The time has come to evaluate what advances this belief in negotiation and active participation in the policy of evaluation of journals has brought concretely to the journals in the area, especially those that have been structured in a critical perspective.

Despite the possible gains in this readiness for negotiation and active participation in the governmental action of evaluation of both postgraduate programs and scientific journals, it is increasingly noticeable the increase in competitiveness among postgraduate programs, among journals and among researchers/authors. Therefore, the criticism is not restricted to the current change in the evaluation strategy of journals, but to the entire science and technology policy and to the principles of neoliberal public management that seeks at all costs to minimize public spending with everything that does not imply capital appreciation, without worrying about the social impact.

In the dialogue with Program Coordinators, Journal Editors and the academic community in general, we asked what will be the relationship we will establish with a policy of evaluation of journals oriented according to international economic interests that, ultimately, come to condition the academic production in Brazil? Our question as publishers is: will only index H be the criteria used primarily in the evaluation process of our journals? Will we passively accept the determinations of CTC-ES/CAPES, understanding as closed the negotiations or counter-proposals, or will we start a collective action of confrontation?

We understand that journals are instruments of dissemination of scientific and technological knowledge and that their quality depends not only on public investment, but also on a policy of scientific and technological development based on the principle of human development and not on the mercantilization of knowledge, in the treatment of scientific communication as merchandise. We understand that quality is directly determined by the amount of resources spent by the Brazilian Government for investment in Science and Technology which, in Brazil, is developed mostly by research groups linked to the Graduate Programs of public universities. A scientific and technological policy that takes into account the quality of the editorial work cannot be regulated by quantitative parameters of academic product consumption. These parameters even refer to the needs of other peoples and are distorted by the economic interests of the major Science and Technology producing powers around the world. We defend a sovereign Science and Technology policy, which demands it:

1. More money for education and for science and technology guided by the democratic management of resources according to public interests and not private and market interests;
2. A journal evaluation model that aims at diagnosing and overcoming the difficulties faced by scientific journals in order to ensure greater editorial quality, effective social impact and greater international visibility;
3. That the evaluation criteria be widely discussed with authors and publishers, considering the requirements of a scientific and technological policy directed to the formation of new researchers and the development of experienced researchers, guided by the principles of human development, sovereignty of the Brazilian people and democratic and popular participation in the management of resources for the development of the country's editorial work;
4. That the process of evaluation of scientific production be conducted by peers, considering the qualitative absorption of knowledge in the process of scientific production proper of the Brazilian reality, being carried out by authors, evaluators and editors of scientific journals that effectively build it;
5. That no evaluation be carried out without the broad and previous knowledge of the criteria previously established from a broad debate with the national academic community;
6. While we work to ensure a broad review of the evaluation, the agreements established for the evaluation between CTC-ES/CAPES and ANPED, through FORPRED and FEPAE, should be respected, i.e., that the evaluation of journals of the quadrennium (2017-2020), be conducted according to the document "Education - Qualis Periódicos (2017-2020)" and that democratic discussion be opened on any proposal for future change.

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