Trends in Publication and in the Improvement of Quality in Spanish Scientific Magazines on Social Sciences

Scientific magazines are a key link in the process of communication and dissemination of scientific production in each academic, scientific and professional field. Scientific magazines validate and certify knowledge and they communicate to the whole of scientific society new advances and/or contributions in their specific fields, for knowledge, refutation or acceptance. They contribute decisively to the social, academic and professional legitimisation of a curricular field, in our case that of Social Sciences. Due to the strategic role which scientific magazines play in the process of certification and communication of new knowledge, they are subject to a rigorous process of evaluation. Spanish scientific magazines on Social Sciences are still in a state of stagnation in a traditional publishing environment and insufficient for the new needs and challenges of today, although in a process of growing awareness of the need to make changes in order to improve quality. From the viewpoint of publication they are still too traditional, very generic in their contents and lacking specialisation in scientific orientation, they have little presence in the most important international databases and their impact factor is low. On the whole they constitute an unattractive offer for articles of impact in their field. The trends seen among scientific magazines on Social sciences in the most immediate environment, with prospects of future fixing, correspond to the creation and transformation of traditional scientific magazines on paper into digital magazines, with open access, specialising in one specific area of scientific knowledge and with a predominantly scientific orientation in the nature of the articles, with a growing move towards internationalisation, both in the structure of their Scientific Committee and in authorship, and open to scientific interactivity through active participation in the social networks in Internet: Facebook, Twitter, blog, etc., with readers, authors, reviewers and editors.