VII Editorial | Editorial The language issue in Brazilian Ophthalmological Journals

Brazilian Journals by means of the number of citations in sources indexed at Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) after two years of publication (Impact Factor®) and the quality of reporting according the Consolidated Standards for Reporting Trials (CONSORT)(1,2). Their work is excellent in pointing out that well quality papers written in English are well more cited (and probably read more often) than their counterparts. It is important do understand that there are no universal databases; each analysis applies only for the sam-ple evaluated by its database provider. Therefore, one should understand the Universe that was considered as the background for citation reports. Web of Science is one of the services provided by Thomson Reuters®, an English company founded by a German immigrant in 1851(3). Thomson Reuters ® was created as a fusion of two companies form the same group (Thomson Corporation and Reuters Group) that took effect in 2009. Thomson Reuters ® has 17,621 Journals indexed on its database and the subset of SCIE indexes 8,630, being 59 ophthal-mological journals. Other companies offer scientific and knowledge databases to compete for this market. Scopus ® is a searcha-ble database of peer-reviewed literature, offered by Elsevier®, that includes more than 19,500 journals(4). SciELO® is a Brazilian initiative developed by FAPESP (Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo), in 1998(5). SciELO ® only indexes sources that provide open access and does not accepts any embargo, such as postponing the free access to the manuscripts after publication. SciELO ® database includes 1,021 sources, from Argentina