In July 2015,
Jeffrey Beall, an American librarian, posted an article on his blog referring to the two largest
Latin American open access databases (
SciELO and Redalyc) as “
favelas”, which is a derogatory Portuguese term for a slum. Beall stated: "Many North American scholars have never even heard of these meta-publishers or the journals they aggregate. Their content is largely hidden, the neighborhood remote and unfamiliar." This perspective was dismissed by Dr Luis Reyes Galindo,
Cardiff University’s School of Social Sciences:"I suppose that by ‘
North America’, Beall really means the United States of America and Canada, which... leaves at least one third of North America outside this myopic geography… ...SciELO and RedALyC are repositories centred on Iberoamerican scholarly literature, in which Spanish and Portuguese are the dominant languages. What is being suggested, it seems, is that Spanish and Portuguese scholars writing in their mother tongues should be deeply worried because English speakers are unlikely to read their work. Furthermore, we should also be ashamed of the quality of our work because a region that does not speak our language is uninterested in reading texts outside of their linguistic scope. This is analogous to suggesting that
Gabriel García Márquez,
Octavio Paz,
Jorge Luis Borges and
Machado de Assis should have been deeply disturbed because most ‘North American’ readers would’ve been uninterested in reading their works in the authors’ original mother tongues.” Responding to the perceived
ethnocentrism of Beall's published opinion of SciELO and Redalyc, a Motion was passed by the Brazilian Forum of
Public Health Journals Editors and the Associação Brasileira de Saúde Coletiva (Abrasco, Brazilian Public Health Association), taking exception to Beall's characterization, drawing attention to the "ethnocentric prejudice", and correcting factual inaccuracies. The Motion draws attention to work by Vessuri, Guedon and Cetto emphasizing the value of SciELO and Redalyc to the development of science in Latin America and globally: “In fact, Latin America is using the OA publishing model to a far greater extent than any other region in the world… Also, because the sense of public mission remains strong among Latin American universities… these… initiatives demonstrate that the region contributes more and more to the global knowledge exchange while positioning research literature as a
public good.” In a critique to Beall's post, Dr. Antonio Sánchez Pereyra of the
National University of Mexico wrote, “SciELO and RedAlyC have received enough recognition far enough from Latin America that Beall’s opinion can be described as... at best, uninformed.” == Some indexed journals ==