I protest against the method used to evaluate scientific production used in Brazil

By contributing new knowledge to a particular area of science, the publication of scientific articles is the primary objective of research projects and of the researcher.The systematic planning of a project, obedience to every step of the research protocol makes sure that the results found, whether relevant or not, are accepted by the scientific community.The result of this work will always be the publication of a scientific paper.Afterwards the author submits his contribution to a peer-reviewed scientific journal, either within his field or to a more prestigious journal, for publication.In several editorials, the Revista Brasileira de Hematologia e Hemoterapia (RBHH) has discussed the Qualis classification system of the Coordenação de Apoio aos Profissionais do Ensino Superior (CAPES) and its effects on the Brazilian academic community (1,2) .Unhappily this system punishes almost all Brazilian authors but, in particular, those that publish in journals dedicated to their specialty such as the RBHH.As the lay press reported the classification system puts Brazilian scientific journals at "risk of extinction" (3) .On the subject of Brazilian scientific journals, editors on several occasions have disagreed with the use of the impact factor of Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) Thomson Reuters JCR to evaluate Brazilian scientific production (4) .Moreover, data showing the geometric growth of the number of scientific publications in Brazil and relatively low number of citations of national studies were presented in the last editorial (5) .Recently, via the scientific publishers list of the World Association of Medical Editors on the web, journal editors from diverse areas have been condemning cases of plagiarism and duplicate publications (6) .Furthermore they criticize the cutting up of data resulting from a single research project with the goal of increasing the number of publications of one specific author or group of authors, a technique that received the facetious name of 'salami science'.Although distinct, articles and texts have recently appeared in the lay press on both these subjects (3,7) .The articles about CAPES were not complimentary to this government institution.In fact, discussions about the position of CAPES in respect to the evaluation of scientific production have been circulating in the scientific corridors for a few years now.Debates condemn its policies, but it seems that nothing really changes.One of the major concerns of bureaucrats, who have little or no knowledge of true scientific research, is the need to systematically measure the worth of scientists.How do we decide, for example, whether researchers deserve promotion, pay increases, more political clout or even that grant that they have applied for?To do this, government intuitions around the world are using the number of publications and the impact factor, an index developed to compare journals and not authors.Does this make a difference?This has created the 'Publish or Perish' culture which includes 'Salami Science'.Whether duplicate publications (which the RBHH does not accept) are ethically correct or not can be argued.Although this may waste the reader's time and, for example, distort the overall results of database searches, it seems that there may be ethical support for this practice when the author truly believes that his work will make a difference in the quality of patients' treatment.Certainly publications in different languages should not be frowned upon as most practitioners in non-English speaking countries do not speak English.This is definitely the case of Brazil where even the aforementioned government institution, CAPES, encourages all to publish in English with no importance whatsoever given to the native language.This it does by a points system where articles that are not published in ISI are assigned a very low number of points and only three articles are included in an author's scientific production evaluation.Even articles published in PubMed, for many researchers the preferred source database for research, receives half the points of an article published in the lowest ISI classification.Furthermore, splitting a long arduous paper into simpler parts can be helpful not only to the understanding of readers but also to increase the spread of knowledge.Unfortunately today we are living in a world where people are reading less and less due to culture changes related to the modern way of life.Many individuals, including physicians, are not used to reading complicated articles anymore and either get lost in the middle, lose patience or both and so,