EDITORIAL

Five hundred twelve years of history together... and many more years to come

Flavia R Machado; Rui Moreno

Five hundred twelve years ago, a fleet of caravels left Lisbon, bound for the distant Indies in search of spices. Five hundred twelve years ago, a sailor spotted a mountain, Monte Pascoal. Over these past 512 years, we have been building a partnership. This partnership encompasses many different aspects, some wide, others restricted, but all relevant. In this issue of our journal, critical care medicine becomes a part of this partnership, a field in which the seed of unity and the spirit of working together for mutual growth have germinated.

The Revista Brasileira de Terapia Intensiva (RBTI) has been the official journal of the Associação Brasileira de Medicina Intensiva (AMIB) for the past 22 years. From this time forward, our publication will also be the official journal of the Sociedade Portuguesa de Cuidados Críticos (SPCI). This initiative will undoubtedly constitute a major step forward for the partnership of these two associations. This partnership was initiated long ago; its first practical expression might have been the Luso-Brazilian Congress that was held in Recife (the Brazilian arm) and Lisbon (the Portuguese arm) in 2008. This series of meetings is now in its fourth iteration, which was held this year in both Joao Pessoa (Brazil) and Lagos (Portugal), and has provided an atmosphere of mutual cooperation, transmission of knowledge and exchange of experiences, the natural consequence of which was to unify the top scientific expression of a medical society, its official journal.

Throughout the last few decades, the Brazilian and Portuguese governments have encouraged the development of science and technology, leading to substantial increases in the number of postgraduate students at the doctoral and masters levels in all scientific fields. As a result, Brazilian scientific production has considerably increased, with 19,184 scientific papers from Brazilian scientists being published in MEDLINE-indexed journals in 2006/2007. As was recently noted by Science, Brazilian international contributions rose from 10,521 articles in 2000 to 33,100 articles in 2009.⁽¹⁾ In a similar manner, the scientific production in Portugal, as measured by the number of articles indexed in the Web of Science database that were produced by the institutions that are affiliated with the Conselho de Reitores das Universidades Portuguesas and the Conselho Coordenados dos Institutos Superiores Politécnicos, has increased from 3,792 in 2000 to 7,983 in 2007.⁽²⁾ Portuguese scientific production increased by 159% between 2000 and 2010, placing Portugal second in terms of proportional growth per million inhabitants among the European Union countries.⁽³⁾ This increased scientific production has led to an important interchange between Brazilian and Portuguese researchers and their foreign peers and created the need to establish appropriate channels for disclosing the scientific production of these researchers.

RBTI stands as the major Latin American channel and the primary Portuguese-language journal for the dissemination of knowledge in critical care. The indisputable upcoming synergy between Portuguese and Brazilian critical care research will certainly be an important step in our journey of internationalization. An international RBTI will also aid in providing Portuguese-speaking healthcare professionals with high-quality scientific contributions. No Portuguese-­language critical care journal is currently indexed by MEDLINE. All Portuguese-speaking countries other than Portugal and Brazil can be considered to be low- or middle-­income nations in which a limited knowledge of English might be a barrier to the education of healthcare professionals, especially non-physicians. A stronger journal will provide an opportunity to develop Portuguese-speaking professionals around the world, thereby contributing to the reduction of the gap between rich and poor countries.

The unification of our Journal may be only the first step of a broader project. In addition to language and culture, the AMIB and SPCI have many goals in common, most notably the spread of the knowledge of intensive care in their respective countries. This cooperation may promote synergic actions in the future that could form the basis for a broader cooperation that includes other Portuguese-speaking countries. Altogether, Portuguese-speaking economies produce 1.979 billion euros (i.e., 4.6% of the world gross domestic product, GDP), and the Portuguese language is spoken by 253.7 million people, who range from Europe to America and from Africa to Asia and represent 3.6% of the global population. Let us have our RBTI, our international RBTI, as another instrument to transform those oceans that separate us into seas that unite us. This vision is our desire and our ambition.

On behalf of all of our editors and our entire editorial board, we would like to express our gratitude to the boards of both societies, which are represented herein by Dr. Jose Mario Telles, the president of AMIB, and Dr. Ricardo Matos, the president of SPCI, who unrestrictedly embraced this idea and enthusiastically made this partnership possible.

As the Editor-in-Chief of our journal, I, Flavia Machado, along with our new associate editor, Rui Moreno, would like to personally and heartily thank our Portuguese peers who are now joining us and welcome all of you to our journal. We certainly welcome your submissions!

Cheers to our future: may it be strong and long-lasting!

Flavia R Machado

Editor-in-Chief

Rui Moreno

Associate Editor

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