Geisa Bugs, Associate Editor of journal urbe, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil.
Luciene Pimentel, Associate Editor of journal urbe, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil.
Paulo Nascimento Neto, Editor-in-Chief of journal urbe, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil.
Rodrigo Firmino, Associate Editor of journal urbe, Curitiba, Paraná, Brazil.
Scholarly communication is at a critical turning point. The prospects for the expansion of open science under the diamond model, reflections on ongoing transformative agreements, changes in digital infrastructures for knowledge circulation, and the challenges of enhancing transparency, integrity, and the social impact of research have fueled debates across various scientific arenas.
In the Latin American context, these transformations take on particular contours, highlighting challenges related to the sustainability, professionalization, and internationalization of scientific journals, while the competition with major global players intensifies in a landscape marked by historical and structural asymmetries between the Global North and South.
It is within this context that the Special Week on urbe – Revista Brasileira de Gestão Urbana takes place on the SciELO Blog. Throughout these posts, we reflect on different dimensions of the production and circulation of knowledge in Urban Studies, using our editorial experience as a starting point to discuss issues that cut across contemporary scholarly publishing.
The journey began with a reaffirmation of the importance of an epistemological stance capable of stimulating analytical interpretations in dialogue with the diversity of Latin American urban reality. In a field historically influenced by theoretical frameworks formulated by the Global North, it becomes essential to recognize that the region’s cities are not merely objects of analysis, but also spaces for the situated proposition of urban theories.
A careful reading of the journal’s publications reinforces this understanding. Historically, its output highlights the thematic and epistemological plurality that characterizes urban studies in Latin America. This diversity does not constitute thematic dispersion but rather expresses the journal’s editorial stance of recognizing the complexity of Latin American cities and the intersection of different analytical traditions that contend over ways of interpreting contemporary urban processes.
At the same time, this week’s posts focused on strategic agendas within the publishing context, examining the institutional conditions that shape the production and circulation of scientific knowledge. Recent advances in artificial intelligence in scientific research and publishing reframe issues related to authorship, transparency, and intellectual accountability. Far from being a mere technological issue, artificial intelligence constitutes a socio-technical infrastructure capable of quietly reshaping the criteria for the legibility, validation, and authority of scientific knowledge.
Debates are also emerging regarding the sharing of research data. Data openness constitutes one of the pillars of open science, enhancing the transparency, replicability, and reuse of collected data. However, with a particular focus on the social sciences and urban studies, data reuse raises ethical challenges related to epistemological mediations, the contexts of information production, and the limitations inherent in comparing profoundly distinct urban realities.
Another key area concerns the ways in which scientific knowledge circulates in the public sphere. The growing presence of science communication in non-traditional media—notably through social media, podcasts, and audiovisual platforms—points to a broad movement toward opening science up to dialogue with society, in line with the principles of open science set forth in the UNESCO Recommendation on the subject (2021). In this context, scholarly communication goes beyond the (pertinent) concern with dissemination among peers and also takes on a public dimension, in which the translation and contextualization of knowledge become an integral part of editorial practice.
Taken together, these themes converge toward renewed agendas for expanding open science in Brazil as a structuring paradigm of scholarly communication. This agenda takes on particular significance when linked to the principles of IDEIA—Impact, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility.
In this process, SciELO occupies a unique position. With nearly three decades of contributions to the Brazilian and Latin American scientific system, SciELO has established a public infrastructure for scholarly communication capable of fostering high standards of editorial quality, expanding the international visibility of the region’s journals, and sustaining an open-access model that is not subject to the commercial logic of scientific publishing.
Besides serving as an indexing platform, its indexing criteria, editorial guidelines, and continuous evaluation mechanisms contribute decisively to the professionalization of scientific journals, promoting best editorial practices, the adoption of digital publishing technologies, and the strengthening of the internationalization of journals. More than just a collection of journals, SciELO embodies a movement that challenges the centralization of global scholarly communication and reaffirms the depth and legitimacy of Latin American scientific output.
We thus recognize that the development of scientific agendas capable of critically interpreting Latin American urban transformations depends not only on the quality of the research conducted, but also on the existence of robust, professionalized, and internationally visible scientific journals. In this sense, the promotion of open science with IDEIA should not be understood merely as a list of priorities.
This represents a vision for action aimed at building a more inclusive, transparent, and socially relevant publishing system. Recognizing intersectionality as a structuring factor in society (and in science, as socially produced artifacts) implies a commitment to expanding the diversity of voices in scientific production, promoting equity in access, and ensuring accessibility to the knowledge produced.
As we conclude this Special Week, we reaffirm our conviction that open science, aligned with the principles of IDEIA and supported by infrastructures such as SciELO, constitutes a decisive path toward strengthening Brazilian and Latin American scientific output.
In this context, scientific journals remain privileged spaces for the collective construction of knowledge, organizing epistemic communities and channeling research toward scientific agendas capable of guiding critical interpretations of excellence—ones that are socially relevant and intellectually committed to the contemporary challenges facing cities and the people who live in them.
NETO, P.N. et al. Open Science in Latin America and the Prospects for Urban Studies [online]. SciELO in Perspective: Humanities, 2026 [viewed ]. Available from: https://humanas.blog.scielo.org/en/2026/05/08/open-science-in-latin-america-and-the-prospects-for-urban-studies/
Scholarly communication is at a critical turning point. The prospects for the expansion of open science under the diamond model, reflections on ongoing transformative agreements, changes in digital infrastructures for knowledge circulation, and the challenges of enhancing transparency, integrity, and the social impact of research have fueled debates across various scientific arenas.
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