Treinta años de Ecología Austral: ¿Cuál es el nicho de un 'journal' latino?/Thirty years of Ecología Austral: What is the niche of a Latin journal?

Science is one of the earliest globalized areas of human endeavor in history. The natural sciences, in particular, have been inseparable companions of the Western colonial adventure (Yuval Harari, among other popular authors, discusses this issue in depth). That colonial movement was crucial in the takeoff of what we now call globalization, and several centuries have already passed in which the struggles and debates about center and periphery, or nationalism and internationalism, made all orders of life in Latin America swing back and forth. Science did not escape these ups and downs. Today, the questions about where is the center of science and where should be the center of our science in the continent change answers. Three decades ago, most colleagues in our disciplines pointed without hesitation to the global north (Western Europe and North America). Today, we find that there is more doubt about this, and the numbers below leave us wondering.

If we take the most common Anglo, Hispanic, Chinese, and American surnames (Smith, Garcia, Zhang, and Quispe, respectively), we find that authors so surnamed had in the Scopus base a publication ratio as first authors of 100:20:45:0 in 1989-91. That ratio in 2017-2019 was 100:180:1500:2. A ratio much closer to the recent ratio of the global population with those surnames, which was 100:370:2900:50. Everyone will draw different accounts and conclusions about these numbers, which are surely subject to the influence of migrations and marriages, among other admixture factors. But it is clear that the composition of those of us who publish today is changing incredibly fast and is approaching the "stoichiometry" of humanity. However, the composition of the teams that review and edit articles shows a lag. This delay is much greater if we look at the "flag" of the associations and publishing companies in charge of publishing the journals. Ecología Austral reduces this delay for this part of the world.

In the period we have just analyzed, our journal maintained 30 years of uninterrupted activity and went from publishing 10 to 50 articles per year, on average. During that time we also struggled to appear in the "global picture" of scientific journals, Ecología Austral made a great effort to enter global indexing bases. Today our journal has its place in several of them and holds a -appreciated by many- Q2 impact index, according to SciMago. It was hard to get there, and that place was earned, above all, by the production of works of national and regional colleagues who were also cited by national and regional colleagues. A community that possibly intensified its internal interactions in these decades and that owes much to the generous work of a collective of reviewers and editors who find meaning in altruistic work for a journal with local roots. It is hard to believe that our journal sustains this niche with an annual budget that is equivalent to the cost of submitting for publication (not publishing, it should be noted) only two articles in Scientific Reports.

What niche will Ecología Austral find in this world that is changing its demographic, economic, political and cultural poles? To date, the editorial team does not have a single answer to this question, but we are all witnesses that this niche is being defined as we go along and that -besides barriers, difficulties and shortcomings- we have a great power.