Information policies and scientific publication

The lack of an integrated information policy for scientific activity evaluation has led to a wide range of information products and services that are used for such purposes, although they were not originally designed for that. While it is true that these tools have limitations and deficiencies, and in several cases are technologically and methodologically obsolete, possibly the biggest problem is sustainability in the present times of economic crisis, especially if they do not take on new strategic tasks, such as assessment, which is a priority today. Various products are reviewed in this critical essay: scientific journal portals, with the recommendation to implement value added systems like SciELO instead of simple database management; current databases on offer, with questions about having national products without metrics; institutional repositories, with the observation that they have forgotten to serve authors, their real end users; and institutional ranking systems, suggesting that some have not learned from the successes of those based on composite indicators. Recommendations include institutional coordination of services; professionalism versus incompetence; and an end to the economic drain caused both by licensing underused databases and by maintaining outdated policies based on criteria that have been abandoned at the international level.