The Journal
Interface
Interface – Comunicação, Saúde, Educação is an interdisciplinary, non-commercial, open-access publication produced by São Paulo State University (UNESP – Department of Public Health, Botucatu Medical School). Its mission is to contribute to the advancement of knowledge through the publication of original articles and other materials in the areas of public health and health professional education and training, as outlined below in the section Focus and Scope.
We accept manuscripts written in Portuguese, Spanish and English using an online submission system.
A brief history
Conceived by an interdisciplinary health education and communication study group under the UNI Project, funded by the Kellogg Foundation, Interface was launched in 1997. The Kellogg Foundation had selected Botucatu Medical School (UNESP) to be one of the institutions to develop the project in Latin America, in partnership with Botucatu City Council and local community organizations. Interface therefore came about from a process of intense creation and experimentation with projects designed to promote integration between the university, local community and health services in undergraduate medical training and post-graduate education for other health professionals. From the outset, the journal introduced editorial innovations, like the Creation section, making room for other forms of language through the publication of “reflective texts with greater formal freedom, with emphasis on iconographic, poetic, literary language, etc.”
In 2005, the journal joined the SciELO library, resulting in a 500% increase in submissions over three years. Since then, a new editorial process has been developed, consisting of online submission and editorial evaluation (2008), pre-evaluation and pre-publication of approved articles (2011). In 2013, the print version of the journal was discontinued, and we began to use social media to broaden the reach of publications.
In line with the principles of Open Science, Interface adopted the CC-BY license (2018), continuous publication (2019), preprint submission (2020), author rights retention – copyright and publication of the names of editors and associate editors of approved articles (2021), and data availability statements providing information on where the data used and produced in the research can be accessed (2025).
Focus and Scope
The main fields and scope of Interface – Comunicação, Saúde, Educação are education and communication in health practices, health professional education and training (university and continuing education) and public health articulated with philosophy, the arts, social sciences and humanities, contributing to the advancement of knowledge in these areas. The journal prioritizes critical and innovative approaches and qualitative research.
Open Access
The journal supports and is part of the Open Science movement in accordance with the UNESCO recommendations, which define Open Science as “a set of principles and practices that aim to make scientific research from all fields accessible to everyone for the benefits of scientists and society as a whole.” Interface adopts the gold open access model.
To this end, Interface has adopted a series of practices, including having an open access policy in place since the creation of the journal, the development of a code of best practice for editors and the use of social media to disseminate published works. We also encourage the sharing of both qualitative and quantitative data, codes, methodologies and materials resulting from research for depositing in the Interface repository on SciELO Data.
All journal content is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY), which is adopted globally by leading open-access journals and publishers to maximize article dissemination. All manuscripts must be submitted along with an Open Science Compliance Form.
Compliance with Open Science
Interface adopts the gold open access model. Authors are required to submit manuscripts along with an “Open Science Compliance Form“.
Publication Ethics
Interface follows the ethical principles for scientific publishing set out in the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) code of conduct.
Indexing Sources
- Web of Science (Emerging Sources Citation Index, ESCI)
- Scopus
- DOAJ – Directory of Open Access Journal
- LILACS – Literatura Latino-americana e do Caribe em Ciências da Saúde
- SciELO
- SciELO Saúde Pública
- SciELO Citation Index (Clarivate Analytics)
- Google Acadêmico
- CSA Sociological Abstracts – ProQuest
- CSA Social Services Abstracts – ProQuest
- ERIHPLUS
Bibliographic Information
- Journal title: Interface – Comunicação, Saúde, Educação
- Short title: Interface (Botucatu)
- Publication produced by: Botucatu Medical School, Júlio de Mesquita Filho São Paulo State University
- Frequency: Annual
- Mode of publication: Continuous
- Year of creation: 1997
Bibliometrics
WTS Journal Indicators (Scopus): SNIP
Scimago Journal & Country Rank (Scopus) – Salud (Ciencias Sociales) / América Latina
Scimago Journal & Country Rank (Scopus) – Educación / América Latina
Scimago Journal & Country Rank (Scopus) – Comunicación / América Latina
Google Scholar – Índice h5 e Mediana H5
Websites and Social Media
Digital Preservation
Interface uses CLOCKSS on SciELO to archive and preserve digital collections in accordance with the standards set out in the SciELO Program Digital Preservation Policy.
Submission and Evaluation Indicators
Editorial Policy
Peer review process
Interface has a rigorous peer review policy. Review is undertaken in the following two stages:
Pre-evaluation: all manuscripts submitted to Interface undergo initial screening to assess whether they fall within the scope of the journal and adhere to editorial guidelines, and to identify any pending submission and documentation issues. This includes screening for plagiarism and self-plagiarism and completion of the Open Science Compliance Form. Submission is only confirmed when all guidelines are adhered to and all requested documents have been entered into the system. Initial screening is performed by the editors and associate editors and to proceed to peer review manuscripts must:
– meet the minimum requirements for a scientific article and fall within the scope of the journal.
– dialogue with the international literature on the topic.
– address and present relevant original topics and results and adopt an appropriate theoretical and methodological approach.
Peer review: after submission confirmation, the text undergoes double-blind peer review by at least two reviewers, who screen the manuscript for originality and topic relevance, scientific rigor and theoretical and methodological consistency. Reviewers are selected from members of the Editorial Board or ad hoc reviewers, who are researchers in the study area from different regions and educational and/or research institutions.
Interface publishes the names of the editor and associate editor who undertook the peer review at the end of the article.
Open data
The journal encourages authors to provide citations, references and repository data availability statements. In line with the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, it is our understanding that the disclosure of the stages of production and analysis of observations and data contributes to science by encouraging new research based on dialogue with methodological tools, data, documents and research sources, also serving as a basis for the education and training of other professionals in the area, and, above all, increasing the transparency of published works. Data should be deposited in the Interface Dataverse on SciELO Data.
It is recommended that authors who are new to the system read the Research Data Preparation Guidelines and Research Data Deposit Guidelines produced by the SciELO team.
In line with SciELO guidelines and best practices for transparency, Interface performs basic curation (Level 1) (brief check of metadata and content, adding basic metadata or documentation) to ensure that the dataset is structured and documented as completely as possible. For further details, see the Research Data Curation Guide for Editorial Teams.
Authors who have deposited their research data in a repository must inform the URL and its respective link when submitting the manuscript.
Interface maintains its own research data repository at SciELOData https://data.scielo.org/dataverse/bricse.
Preprints
A preprint is a completed manuscript deposited on a reliable preprint server before or in parallel with submission to a journal. Preprinting makes articles and other scientific papers available before or in parallel with evaluation and validation by a journal, accelerating the communication of the results of the research. The preprint guarantees intellectual property rights and allows authors to receive comments that contribute to improving their work before submission to a journal.
The preprint can be retained in the preprint repository when the author does not wish to submit the work to a journal and after the original article has been published. Interface accepts submissions of preprints published in reliable online preprint repositories. Preprints are reviewed by a team of experts from these servers to verify compliance with basic criteria regarding text structure and document type. If approved, the preprint receives a DOI that will ensure immediate international dissemination. If published, the preprint may be retained on the original platform.
Author adherence to the dissemination of preprint versions of articles is optional.
Conflict of Interest Policy
Authors of manuscripts submitted to Interface are required to state whether conflicts of interest existed during the conduct of the research.
Conflicts of interest can be of a personal, commercial, political, academic, financial or other nature. When there are no conflicts of interest, authors must state the following: “There were no conflicts of interest during the conduct of this study.”
Manuscripts will not be rejected solely on the basis of a conflict of interest. In addition, authors must inform in the manuscript any financial support received for the work and describe the contributions made by each author to the research and preparation of the manuscript.
The reviewers must also declare any potential conflicts of interest when they agree to review the manuscript.
Associate or section editors who have potential conflicts of interest in relation to the manuscript they are reviewing must declare this conflict to the scientific editor, who will decide how to proceed. Conflicts of interest involving authors, reviewers and editors must be disclosed at the end of published texts.
Sponsors and Funding Agencies
National Council for Scientific and Technological Development – CNPQ – https://www.gov.br/cnpq/pt-br
Adoption of similarity checker software
Interface uses “IThenticate” to check the similarity of all submitted manuscripts immediately after submission and of manuscripts resubmitted during the evaluation process.
The similarity check is performed using qualitative scientific criteria rather than percentages. When similarities are identified, the article is rejected and the author is asked to revise the manuscript.
Adoption of software and use of artificial intelligence resources
Interface adopts the following policy in relation to the use of artificial intelligence resources: The use of tools and resources that assist authors in the preparation of their manuscripts is accepted, as long as attribution rules are followed, and ethics and scientific integrity are upheld.
Authors therefore have the right and freedom to use tools and resources that aid in the preparation, writing, review and translation of their articles, book chapters or books. Many of these tools and resources are provided by AI applications.
However, only humans can be considered authors, in accordance with the following rules and practices:
- Inform/mention the sources of materials used in research and manuscript or chapter writing. Any use or content generated by an AI application must be mentioned in the abstract and in the methods section or equivalent.
- Ensure that all cited material is properly attributed, including full citations, and that the cited sources support the claims made by the AI application, as it is not uncommon for AI to generate references to nonexistent works.
- Assume public responsibility for their work.
- Concealing the use and content of AI is an ethical lapse that violates principles of transparency and honesty in research.
The editors do not use AI that may disclose identities and content.
Interface recommends that reviewers do not use AI during the peer review process.
The reviewer should not submit the manuscript to AI services that may disclose identities and content.
Ethics Committee
Authors must attach an ethical approval statement from the ethics committee of the institution responsible for approving the research.
Authors’ Rights
The authors of articles published by Interface retain the copyright to their work, meaning that the publication of an article or other document does not imply the transfer of rights to the journal. Articles are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which allows articles to be shared and reused without restriction, provided that the original work is properly cited. Authors grant the journal the right of first publication.
Intellectual Property and Terms of Use
Authors of articles and other documents published in Interface retain the copyright to their manuscripts.
All Interface content, except where otherwise stated, is licensed under the Creative Commons license (CC-BY), which allows others to distribute, remix, adapt and build upon the original work for any purpose, even commercially, as long as credit is given to the author of the original work. This license maximizes the dissemination and use of licensed materials.
Charges
The following fees are only charged for manuscripts approved for the Articles, Reviews and Experience Reports sections. Publications in other sections are exempt from publication fees.
- Manuscripts containing up to 5,000 words: R$450.00
- Manuscripts containing more than 5,000 words: R$550.00
UNESP academic and technical-administrative staff and students are exempt from publication fees.