Editorial

Between Platformization and Autonomy: New Old Paths for Academic Publishing

In 2025, Topoi. Revista de História celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary. More than an important milestone for the journal and for the Graduate Program in Social History at UFRJ, which was engaged in its creation and continues to sustain it, this was a moment for reassessing editorial practices, questioning the kinds of manuscripts we seek to publish and the means by which we may continue to do so, as well as reflecting on the limitations imposed by our current channels of dissemination. We have ultimately reached an impasse regarding the viability of a journal that is now among the most respected in the field, receives a highly positive flow of submissions, and is supported by a diverse and committed editorial team.

Throughout its existence, Topoi has continually sought to encourage publications of relevance to the field and to professionalize the editorial process. In recent years, efforts have been devoted to fostering the journal’s exogeneity, with a plural and internationalized editorial board, and to launching public calls for special issues. These changes have been accompanied by the excellence of our editorial process and by our commitment to offering readers the best possible version of the texts submitted to us.

The growing professionalization of Topoi is due, in part, to the partnership established with SciELO in 2015, when the journal joined what was then still a modest group of History journals in the collection. The requirements led to greater standardization of the journal and to a stronger commitment to regularity as part of the broader investment in indexing – a difficult and time-consuming process whose challenges have not diminished a decade later. We are grateful for this trajectory, which has contributed to the journal’s growth.

In recent years, however, these requirements have come into conflict with what we defend as appropriate for a History journal and have undermined our sustainability. In some cases, we adapted; in others, we partially yielded to the demands or resisted them, until we reached a point of no return: our commitment to offering a journal that is freely accessible, open, and free of charge to both authors and readers is non-negotiable; the care we invest in a human-centered editorial process is significant; the autonomy of our editorial board is inherent to the quality of our publications; and, finally, public funding, already so scarce, must be directed toward the best interests of the academic field – namely, the primacy of the quality of national scholarship.

Funded by a CAPES grade-7 graduate program, Topoi currently has access to only about one third of the budget it requires. This figure is by no means negligible, especially when considering the limited number of grade-7 programs in Brazil and the disparity in relation to the funding available to other programs. One can scarcely imagine the effort required for other programs to sustain high-level journals and provide professional preparation of manuscripts. This is certainly achieved at the cost of exhausting editorial teams, which, as we know, are composed of faculty members who must combine the work of running their journals with their teaching, research, and extension responsibilities.

But this amount is not sufficient. We closed 2025 with what is considered a low number of published articles (22) and with a volume of translations far below what SciELO currently advocates as ideal. Such requirements reflect the imposition of metrics and policies that are often borrowed from other fields and lose sight of the specificities of publications in the Humanities. In these disciplines, reflection is a process that takes time to shape an adequate theoretical and methodological framework, dedication to analyze sources, and skill to narrate results. The transparency of the investigative process in an academic article, with rigor in citations and data referencing, is a constitutive part of our historiographical practice and has been claimed, at the very least, since the late seventeenth century. It is also an imperative of open science. Our publications, however, unlike what occurs in fields such as the earth sciences – which generally guide editorial metric criteria – often gain traction years after their original publication and are not supported by corporate funding. Equating the importance of a publication with immediate clicks or its capacity to go viral, which the new SciELO requirements seem to encourage, disregards these characteristics.

The benefits of platformization do not, therefore, outweigh the constraints now imposed – constraints that threaten what Topoi is. The imposition of a logic that essentially abolishes the independence of the editorial board, reducing editors to the task of seeking reviewers to approve articles already disseminated as preprints and required to meet a minimum quota, does not promote the quality of publications. Increasing the required number of published articles likewise does not contribute to the pursuit of excellence in journals or reflect the realities of their funding; on the contrary, it undermines both. Similarly, prohibiting translations into Portuguese of articles fundamental to the field and undervaluing book reviews fails to recognize the difficulties of access to international publications. Finally, accepting SciELO as an intermediary in securing funding from CAPES endorses its decision-making power over journal policies, while also laying bare the distinction and symbolic capital between researchers who publish within the database and those who publish beyond it. In this regard, the regularization of the Editorial Program call by CNPq is essential.

Scientific dissemination in Brazil is admired throughout the world precisely because of its open and free character, despite all the problems of public funding that we face. To add a commercial and productivist logic to this scenario, or to contribute to the monopolization of scientific dissemination, seems to represent a step backward. Escaping commercialization may ultimately amount to no more than resistance to an inexorable process. Yet we maintain that another path is possible, and we will remain committed to it, seeking new indexers and, above all, preserving the quality of our publications and our commitment to our authors and readership. Science can only truly be open if it is not restricted to those who can afford to disseminate their results and if there are journals capable of carrying that voice forward.