Conditions to consolidate a physical therapy scientific journal

Abstract

Introduction: The physical therapy research field is very prolific. Due to an ever increase in qualified research reports, new journals concerning the physical therapy field have been required to be created to absorb this demand. Objectives: To assess the underlying factors in the development of a new Brazilian scientific journal focused on physical therapy research, that is the Revista Pesquisa em Fisioterapia (RPF, or Physical Therapy Research Journal). Methods: This is a documental and exploratory investigation. The Publish or Perish  and the Alexa software were employed to gather relevant data. After a careful assessment of the Brazilian strictu sensu graduation programs in the Physical Education evaluation area (as segmented by CAPES), the highest ranking journals in the Webqualis Medicine II group were selected for comparison. Results: RPF’s visibility allows it to reach 10665 yearly single downloads of its articles and a conversion rate of 125,4%. From 2012 to 2016 it has published 137 articles, which makes for an average rate of 11,41 articles per published issue, of which 10,94% have been published fully in English, 57,66% were original articles, with 9,69 authors per article, of which 36,29% had PhD. Its h index is 3 (three). Two needed improvements were identified: publication simultaneously both in Portuguese and in English and the implementation of ORCID integration. Conclusion: RPF is a scientific journal which as of today features the necessary aspects for a fully organic development compatible to the traditional institutional that sponsors its publication, follows all international guidelines for transparency and quality of physical therapy research reports and, because of all that, may in the near future improve its indicators required to partake in international databases and indexes.