SciELO (Scientific Electronic Library Online) is an international research communication program launched in 1998 and implemented through a decentralized network of national collections of peer reviewed journals from 15 countries – 12 from Latin America, Portugal, Spain and South Africa – that jointly publish over 1 thousand journals and about 50 thousand articles per year. A thematic collection on Public Health is also operated by the SciELO Program. All collections are accessible via the network portal – http://www.scielo.org.

SciELO aims at the progress of research through the improvement of peer reviewed journals from all disciplines published by scientific and professional associations, academic institutions and public or private research and development institutions. The specific objectives are to increase in a sustainable way the quality, visibility, usage, impact and credibility of the indexed journals and the research they communicate. A key characteristic of SciELO is multilingual publishing, so journals can publish articles in one or multiple languages including the simultaneous publishing of the same article in more than one language.

SciELO Program develops itself according to three principles. First, the conception that scientific knowledge is a public good and therefore should be available openly in the Web. Second, the network operation envisaging to strengthen collaboration and interchange of information and experience, creating scale and lessen the costs. Third, quality control as an essential policy and practice at the level of articles, journals and collections, adoption and compliance with bibliographic and interoperability standards.

SciELO operation and development are carried out following three main action lines. The first is professionalization, which means to produce journals according to the state of art. The second is internationalization, which means to strengthen the active participation of SciELO Journals and Program in the international flow of scientific information. The third is operational and financial sustainability, which means to develop conditions to assure journals to be published on time with a well-established financial model.

All collections follow the SciELO Publishing Model, which comprises three main functions. First, the indexing of journals with metadata of articles, including the bibliographic references of the indexed articles and of the articles they cite. Second, the full text of articles which are available in HTML, PDF and progressively in XML JATS compatible according the SciELO Publishing Schema. Third, the dissemination and interoperability of journals and articles with bibliographic indexes and systems.    

SciELO Brazil, led by SciELO / FAPESP Program, acts as the SciELO Network secretariat and coordinates the maintenance of the methodological and technological platform, while the operation of the network collections and journals are decentralized and led by national research agencies.