Abstract

This paper takes as its starting point the concepts that make up the process of institutionalization of a field of knowledge in the following phases: 1. Differentiation of subjects, methods and techniques of knowledge or existing disciplines, 2. The subject previously considered as peripheral is now seem as part of a particular field of knowledge, 3. The new field becomes significant in the set of an area and starts the standardization of recruitment of human resources, selection of experts and financial resources, and 4. Consolidation of the new field, building its culture within the scientific community, with its social networks of communication, scientific associations and its own publications. Our central objective is to analyze the role of the Ciência e Saúde Coletiva Journal in the process of institutionalization of the Collective Health; we situate the Collective Health and its stages, make a brief report on the history of scientific publications by emphasizing the Brazilian studies on the public health field, and work the early stages of the Journal

Keywords
Institutionalization; Collective health; Public health; Scientific journals; Ciência e Saúde Coletiva

Introduction

Twenty years ago the first number of Ciência e Saúde Coletiva was released, the official magazine of the Brazilian Association of Collective Health – ABRASCO –, and thus one of the key points of the process of institutionalization of a field of knowledge was fulfilled, as Ben David and Collins¹1 Ben David J. The scientific role: the conditions of its establishment. Minerva 1965; 4(1):15-54. and Oberschall²2 Oberschall A, editor. The establishment of empirical sociology. New York: Harper and Row; 1972. teach us, synthesized by Bloom³3 Bloom SW. The word as a scapel: A history of medical sociology. New York: Oxford University Press; 2002., who trace the stages by which the sociology and the sociology of medicine had passed through. For these authors, the phases of this process are: 1. Differentiation of subjects, methods and techniques of knowledge or differentiation of existing disciplines, 2. The subject previously considered as peripheral is now seem as part of a particular field of knowledge and becomes significant culturally, 3. The new field becomes significant in the set of an area and starts the standardization of recruitment of human and financial resources and selection of experts, and 4. Consolidation of the new field, building its culture within the scientific community, with its social networks of communication, scientific associations and its own publications. The central objective of this work is to analyze the role of the Ciência e Saúde Coletiva Journal in the process of institutionalization of the Collective Health, we situate the Collective Health and its stages, make a brief report on the history of scientific publications by emphasizing the Brazilian studies on the public/collective health field, and work the early stages of the Journal.

The institutionalization of a field of knowledge

As mentioned in the Introduction, the fourth stage of the institutionalization of a field of knowledge is the consolidation, in which the association between its participating members has its visibility guaranteed by the systematic publication of their knowledge and practices.

To situate this fourth stage, we retake the periodization of the public health by showing that we cannot understand it today if we do not seek its antecedents in the formulations that were extended through the territories of hygiene, preventive and social medicine, and conventional public health⁴4 Nunes ED. Saúde coletiva: história de uma ideia e de um conceito. Saude. soc 1994; 3(2):5-21 .. In reality, these notions constitute a first moment that we call “preventive project”, during 1955-1970. The preventive practices, heirs of the “model of the natural history of a disease”, created by Leavell and Clark and the pedagogical practices associated to it, conveyed by the Pan American Health Organization, would suffer its deepest ruptures from the second half of the 1970s, but it was already announced in a unsystematic way earlier that decade. These ruptures were associated not only to the crises that occurred in the health services field but to the critical reflection that the health intellectuality formulated at that stage.

The main theoretical and epistemological foundations address not only the health as a social production, showing the boundaries of the models focused on biomedicine, but the inclusion of teaching of disciplines and subjects that reflect the health-society relations. In many ways this is a Latin American movement that receives strong participation of sectors of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) that conducts meetings and seminars in various South American countries, such as, for example, the one held in Cuenca, Ecuador, in 1972, to discuss the role of social sciences in health. Another point is the discussion of the planning in health not only in the production of knowledge, but in the training of personnel care assistant both quantitatively and “redesign[ing] a new professional profile”⁵5 Paiva CHA. A Organização Pan Americana da Saúde e a reforma de recursos humanos na saúde na América Latina. 2004. [acessado 2015 mar 15] Disponível em: http://observatoriohistoria.coc.fiocruz.br/local/File/opas.pdf
http://observatoriohistoria.coc.fiocruz.... .

On the other hand, there is also the participation of American foundations, such as the Milbank Memorial Found and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation in overseas scholarships to professors who worked in the area of preventive and social medicine and subsequently in the financing of community health programs in some medical schools and graduate studies in social medicine.

In this movement, academic manifestations emerge from a new social thinking in health, from which we mention some: the pioneering work of Gandra, on the leprosy stigma⁶6 Gandra Júnior DS. A lepra: uma introdução ao estudo do fenômeno social da estigmatização [tese]. Belo Horizonte: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais; 1970.; Arouca on the criticism relate to preventive medicine⁷7 Arouca ASS. O dilema preventivista: contribuição para a compreensão e crítica da medicina preventiva [tese]. Campinas: Unicamp; 1975.; Donnangelo, on the medical practice in the city of São Paulo⁸8 Donnangelo MCF. Medicina e sociedade: o médico e seu mercado de trabalho. São Paulo: Pioneira; 1975. and the critique of community medicine⁹9 Donnangelo MCF, Pereira L. Saúde e sociedade. São Paulo: Duas Cidades; 1976.; Machado and collaborators, with the study of archaeological discourse of the Brazilian social medicine¹⁰10 Machado R, Loureiro A, Luz R, Muricy K. Danação da norma: a medicina social e constituição da psiquiatria no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Graal; 1978.; Luz on medical institutions¹¹11 Luz MT. As instituições médicas no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Graal; 1979.; Cordeiro researching the medicine consumption¹²12 Cordeiro H. A indústria da saúde no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Graal; 1980.; Cohn on the security as a political process¹³13 Cohn A. Previdência social e populismo [tese]. São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo; 1980.; Schraiber on the relations between medical education and capitalism¹⁴14 Schraiber LB. Educação médica e capitalismo. São Paulo: Hucitec; 1989.; Marsiglia on labor relations and social security¹⁵15 Marsiglia RMG. Assistência médica e relações de trabalho na empresa: O modelo de convênios com a Previdência Social [dissertação]. São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo; 1981.; García on medical education¹⁶16 García JC. La educación médica en América Latina. Washington: Organización Panamericana de la Salud; 1972.; Breilh on the social reproduction and social determination of health¹⁷17 Breilh J. Economia, medicina, política. Quito: Editora Universitária; 1979.; Laurell on the collective as an expression of the health-disease process¹⁸18 Laurell AC. El estudio social del proceso salud-enfermedad en América Latina. Cuad Méd Soc 1986; (17):3-18.; Fleury with studies on social security and health policies¹⁹19 Teixeira SMF. Assistência médica na previdência social: evolução e crise de uma política social [dissertação]. Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Universitário de Pesquisas do Rio de Janeiro; 1976..

One of the first works about the Brazilian production in the 1970s points out that alongside the “reactivation [of the] proposal for the field of Public Health […] and its relationship with the advance of the Brazilian social security crisis […]” the “movement of restoration of sanitary practices that also rests in the direction taken by the theoretical and historical research on health provides, at the same time, new objects of research in the field of Collective Health”²⁰20 Donnangelo MCF. A pesquisa na área da saúde coletiva no Brasil: a década de 70. In: Associação Brasileira de Pós-graduação em Saúde Coletiva (Abrasco). Ensino da Saúde Pública, Medicina Preventiva e Social no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Abrasco; 1983. p. 17-35. In this work, the author highlights the importance that research studies and publications had in relation to the epidemiology in population studies, the research studies on the Chagas Disease and its relations with the agrarian structure, the migration process, the work in urban areas, the land structure and the studies on health practices, such as, for example, the studies on welfare and drugs, as already mentioned.

Over the years the pioneers would continue their research studies by diversifying subjects and methodologies with intense participation in the scientific literature of the field.

In the same period, the economic vision of the health planning – the cost-benefit relation – in the CENDES/PAHO proposal gives way to a political perspective of planning and the Pan American Health Organization itself assumes in the document of 1975 the social medicine perspective, when enunciating, first, a critique:

“The purposes of the meetings of Viña del Mar y Tehuacán were achieved in their structural part with the incorporation of the different disciplines of preventive medicine in study plans, and we may consider their development as one of the most exceeding in the field of medical education in the period of 1950-1959”²¹21 Organización Panamericana de Salud (OPS). Enseñanza de la medicina preventiva y social - 20 años de experiencia latinoamericana. Washington: OPS; 1976. (Publ. Cient. 234)..

On the other hand, it considers that:

“The ambitious goals for the transformation of health practices, in particular of medical attention, through the training of a skilled professional to perform these changes were not completed; in its place, the isolated incorporation of services of preventive medicine were produced consecutively within some programs of hospital medical attention”²¹21 Organización Panamericana de Salud (OPS). Enseñanza de la medicina preventiva y social - 20 años de experiencia latinoamericana. Washington: OPS; 1976. (Publ. Cient. 234)..

We highlight from this note the passage that situates the field of social medicine:

“Previously the concern was to prepare a doctor trained to fully ‘see’ the patient. For this end, the preventive medicine developed educational programs to form in the professional a ‘preventing’ mentality and called attention to the biopsy-chosocial aspects of diseases. Now it is about the social medicine studying institutions that provide health care and the medical action schemes that result from it”²¹21 Organización Panamericana de Salud (OPS). Enseñanza de la medicina preventiva y social - 20 años de experiencia latinoamericana. Washington: OPS; 1976. (Publ. Cient. 234)..

In short: “social medicine studies society, analyzes the current forms of interpretation of health problems and the medical practice”²¹21 Organización Panamericana de Salud (OPS). Enseñanza de la medicina preventiva y social - 20 años de experiencia latinoamericana. Washington: OPS; 1976. (Publ. Cient. 234)..

It is important to point out that an important fact in the process of creating spaces for innovative prospects is at the origin of the first graduate degrees in Social Medicine in Rio de Janeiro and in Mexico, at the beginning of the 1970s.

Generically, we call this period as “social medicine”, which extends up to the late seventies, but we highlight that, if broadly the chronology adopted is appropriate, we should remember that its boundaries are often difficult to mark. Furthermore, new players that coexist with the so-called “first generation”, and who were graduating, had graduated or already took part in the social sciences or in other health fields. Finding some contributions in terms of social sciences, we can highlight the research studies and theoretical and methodological elaborations of Cecilia Minayo²²22 Minayo MCS. O desafio do conhecimento. Pesquisa qualitativa em saúde. 9ª ed. revista e aprimorada. São Paulo: Hucitec; 2006., the research on folk medicine of Maria Andrea Loyola²³23 Loyola MA. Médicos e curandeiros. São Paulo: Difel; 1984., the analysis of the theoretical contributions of the classics of sociology in the Brazilian scientific production of social medicine of José Carlos Pereira²⁴24 Pereira JCM. A explicação sociológica na medicina social. São Paulo: Editora UNESP; 2006., and the study of communicable diseases in the field of epidemiology of Rita Barradas Barata²⁵25 Barata RCB. Epidemia de doença meningocóccica na cidade de São Paulo, 1970-1977 [dissertação]. São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo; 1985..

Having pointed this out, we note that in the final years of the 1970s there is the advent, in the expression of Amelia Cohn, of the “new customer” – the collective²⁶26 Cohn A. O social e sua incorporação no conhecimento e na prática médica. s.d. [mimeo].. As the sociologist writes, the collective was not unknown since the end of the 19th century, but it resurfaces in a singular way, i.e. “health practices take place on and in the collective while becoming collective practices”; with specificities for both its quantification and its explanation, it is dynamic, a product of social relations and, when submitted to its rules, individuals are actively submitted.

The path towards a perspective that is social, collective and public for health had been pursued throughout these years in an association with pedagogical practices (undergraduate, graduate, specialization courses), scientific production and a political-militant and associative movement, whose main expressions are the Brazilian Center for Health Studies (CEBES) created in 1976 and the Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Collective Health in 1979 (Abrasco). The Asociación Latinoamericana de Medicina Social (ALAMES) would be a later creation, in 1984. We highlight in the institutionalization process, in addition to the financing of the foreign foundations and the presence of the PAHO, the role of the Financiadora de Estudos e Pesquisa (FINEP) by instituting a program called Collective Health, especially in the period 1975-1979, through which 58 research projects were supported, and, during the period from 1968-75, 29 projects were supported. In 1982, together with the CNPq, a new program was proposed with the same name²⁷27 Teixeira SMF. As ciências sociais em saúde no Brasil. In: Nunes ED. As ciências sociais em saúde na América Latina: tendências e perspectivas. Brasília: OPAS; 1985, p. 87-109..

From then on, the acceptance of the term collective health was generalized and the third period – the collective health – was established. The field is opened to the third generation of new collective health professionals.

In the same year of its inception, the CEBES (1976) launches its publication Saúde em Debate²⁵25 Barata RCB. Epidemia de doença meningocóccica na cidade de São Paulo, 1970-1977 [dissertação]. São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo; 1985., whose first issue is dedicated to the sanitarist Samuel Pessoa and to the discussion of social security. The realization of a journal that represented the ABRASCO community would occur in the late 1990s; its first number is from 1996. The final phase was fulfilled in the process of institutionalization of the field of public health: the creation of instruments for the dissemination of scientific literature.

Brief history of scientific publications

The story of the publications of journals dates back to the 17th century when two journals are edited and are considered as the oldest in the scientific field. The first, Journal de Sçavans came out in January 5, 1665 in Paris, published by Denis de Sallo and had as objectives:

to catalog and give useful information about books published in Europe and to summarize their works, to make known experiments in physics, chemistry and anatomy that may serve to explain natural phenomena, to describe useful or curious inventions or machines and to record meteorological data, to cite the principal decisions of civil and religious courts and censures of universities, to transmit to readers all currents events worthy of the curiosity of men²⁸28 Houghton B. Scientific periodicals: their historical development, characteristics and control. London: The Central Press; 1975..

With periods of interruption because of French authorities and the French Revolution, the journal was revived in 1816 and reached the present day. In the same year of its inception, with the difference of three months, a second journal in England emerged, founded by philosophers of the Royal Society, called the Philosophical Transactions, dedicated exclusively to the record of experiences in all scientific areas, not including other subjects. According to Stumpf²⁹29 Stumpf IC. Passado e futuro das revistas científicas. Ci. Inf. 1996; 25(3):383-386 [acessado 2015 mar 17]. Disponível em: http://www.brapci.inf.br/_repositorio/2010/03/pdf_bdca5a101e_0008771.pdf
http://www.brapci.inf.br/_repositorio/20... :

The Journal des Sçavants [spelling adopted from January 1866] and the Philosophical Transactions contributed as distinct models for the scientific literature: the first influenced the development of journals devoted to general science, without commitment to a specific area, and the second became a model of publication of scientific societies, which appeared in large numbers in Europe during the 18th century.

The author also mentions that:

In the 19th century, the production of scientific journals grew significantly, because of the increase in the number of researchers and research studies, and “the technical advances of printing and the manufacture of paper with wood pulp contributed to this expansion”²⁹29 Stumpf IC. Passado e futuro das revistas científicas. Ci. Inf. 1996; 25(3):383-386 [acessado 2015 mar 17]. Disponível em: http://www.brapci.inf.br/_repositorio/2010/03/pdf_bdca5a101e_0008771.pdf
http://www.brapci.inf.br/_repositorio/20... .

The author considers that:

In the 20th century, the growth remained pronounced, because of the fact that the journals also started being published by commercial publishers, by the Government and by universities. From the second half of the century, especially, the serial publications had an exponential growth, also intensifying their bibliographic control²⁹29 Stumpf IC. Passado e futuro das revistas científicas. Ci. Inf. 1996; 25(3):383-386 [acessado 2015 mar 17]. Disponível em: http://www.brapci.inf.br/_repositorio/2010/03/pdf_bdca5a101e_0008771.pdf
http://www.brapci.inf.br/_repositorio/20... .

In Brazil, the first scientific journals date from the second half of the 19th century and first decade of the 20th century: Gazeta Médica do Rio de Janeiro (1862), Gazeta Médica da Bahia (1866), Memórias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz (1909) and the Revista da Academia Brasileira de Ciências (1917). Adopting the periodization of the Brasiliana site³⁰30 Brasiliana – A divulgação científica no Brasil. [acessado 2015 mar 27]. Disponível em: http://www.museudavida.fiocruz.br/brasiliana/cgi/cgilua.exe/sys/start.htm?-tpl=home
http://www.museudavida.fiocruz.br/brasil... these publications are located between the second and third period of popularization of science, the first would be before the 1800s; the second would be 1801-1900, the third 1901-1945, the fourth 1946-1980 and the fifth from 1981 to the present. They point out that:

Most of the publications that circulated in the first half of the 19 century had the scientific pragmatism as main characteristic. Most addressed issues related to agriculture, industry and mineralogy, in addition to addressing the medical or pharmaceutical field³⁰30 Brasiliana – A divulgação científica no Brasil. [acessado 2015 mar 27]. Disponível em: http://www.museudavida.fiocruz.br/brasiliana/cgi/cgilua.exe/sys/start.htm?-tpl=home
http://www.museudavida.fiocruz.br/brasil... (s/p).

The importance of the medical journalism in the first half of the 19th century is marked by Ferreira³¹31 Ferreira LO. Os periódicos médicos e a invenção de uma agenda sanitária para o Brasil (1827-43). Hist. cienc. saude-Manguinhos 1999; 6(2):331-351. (1999) who mentions some that were highlighted: Propagador das Ciências Médicas (1827-28), Semanário de Saúde Pública (1831-33), Diário de Saúde (1835-36), Revista Médica Fluminense (1835-41) and Revista Médica Brasileira (1841-43).

According to Moreira and Massarani³²32 Moreira IC, Massarani L. Aspectos históricos da divulgação científica no Brasil. In: Massarani L, Moreira IC, Brito F, organizadores. Ciência e público: caminhos da divulgação científica no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Casa da Ciência – Centro Cultural de Ciência e Tecnologia da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. Forum de Ciência e Cultura; 2002. p. 43-64 [acessado 2015 abr 3]. Disponível em: http://www.museudavida.fiocruz.br/brasiliana/media/cienciaepublico.pdf.
http://www.museudavida.fiocruz.br/brasil... , from the National Library catalog:

Throughout the 19th century, approximately 7,000 journals were created in Brazil, of which approximately 300 were related some way to science, being understood as journals related to science those produced by scientific associations or institutions or those that had in their title the word “scientific” or “Science” (p. 46).

Authors, such as Almeida³³33 Almeida ECE. A evolução da produção científica nacional, os artigos de revisão e o papel do Portal de Periódicos da Capes [tese]. Porto Alegre: Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul; 2013., when pointing out the large amount of Brazilian journals, comment that:

Of this exaggerated number of journals, in 2012, only 167 are indexed in the ISI Database and 289 in the Scopus Database, which may give the true dimension of the internationalization of the good science produced by Brazilian researches and disseminated on good national journals.

The Brazilian journals of Public Health/Epidemiology

In 1996, Maria Cecília de Souza Minayo ended her management career as President of ABRASCO and started a new project – the publication of a journal that was the tool of its own field, which would happen at the end of that year.

We point out that the first publications of ABRASCO date back from 1982. The first Boletim of ABRASCO is from January-March, 1982 and would come to the present day, and the first issue of the series Ensino da Saúde Pública, Medicina Preventiva e Social no Brasil date from February, 1982. Three issues were published with that name and numbers 4 and 5 were called as Estudos de Saúde Coletiva, in 1986 and 1988, respectively. These five numbers have a special importance to the field of collective health, as they document its history, when the field was emerging. And through them, we can follow for over six years the activities of ABRASCO (meetings, seminars, forums) and works that became the reference for the field, for example, the one of Donnangelo²⁰20 Donnangelo MCF. A pesquisa na área da saúde coletiva no Brasil: a década de 70. In: Associação Brasileira de Pós-graduação em Saúde Coletiva (Abrasco). Ensino da Saúde Pública, Medicina Preventiva e Social no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Abrasco; 1983. p. 17-35 about the research studies conducted in the 1970s, of Paim³⁴34 Paim JS. Desenvolvimento teórico-conceitual do ensino em saúde coletiva. In: Abrasco. Ensino da saúde pública, medicina preventiva e social no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Abrasco; 1982. p. 4-19. on the teaching in collective health, of Cohn and Nunes³⁵35 Cohn A, Nunes ED. A pós-graduação em saúde coletiva: mestrado e doutorado. In: Abrasco. Estudos de Saúde Coletiva. 5ª ed. Rio de Janeiro: Abrasco; 1988. p. 15-26. on the first master's and doctorate degrees in collective health, among others.

These publications precede the realization of the great events in the area, and the first Congress of ABRASCO was held in 1986 in Rio de Janeiro. As already mentioned, they are important moments in the process of institutionalization that are often concomitant – congresses, meetings, scientific production, publications.

As we will see below, we already had journals that had the production in the field of public health but without the integral perspective of the collective health area, which from its origins is based, particularly, on the epidemiology, social sciences and health and social policies.

On the other hand, it is interesting to note that in Brazil, in the health area, as it also happens in other countries, the Journals appear linked to teaching and research institutions and also to professional associations and corporations. This can be found in the Revista de Saúde Pública, agency from the School of Public Health of the University of São Paulo (1967), in the Cadernos de Saúde Pública (1985), agency from the National School of Public Health, in the Saúde em Debate, created by CEBES, in the Cadernos de Saúde Coletiva of the Institute of Studies in Collective Health, of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, since 1987, first as a monographic publication and later as a serial publication, Revista Brasileira de Saúde Ocupacional, published since 1973 by Fundacentro; Revista Baiana de Saúde Pública, published by the State Health Department, since 1974.

In the 1990s, other journals appeared:, the Physis, which, without completely individualizing, is set as reference for the area of Humanities and Social Sciences in health, created in 1991, and published by the Institute of Social Medicine of the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro; in São Paulo, the Saúde e Sociedade, which since 1992 is published by the School of Public Health of the University of São Paulo (FSP) in partnership with the Public Health Association of São Paulo (APSP); the Revista Brasileira de Epidemiologia, created in 1998, and is specific from a field inside ABRASCO; the História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos, published by Casa de Oswaldo Cruz, of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation – Fiocruz, since 1994, the Interface – Comunicação, Saúde, Educação, since 1997, published by UNESP (Botucatu campus).

Ciência e Saúde coletiva – reviewing the first issue

The first issue of the Journal starts with an editorial with its proposal:

to be an instrument for the dissemination and critical reflection of the history and memory of the field, of the analysis of the “state of the art” of the disciplines that are part of it, of the trends and perspectives of thought of the theories and practices of Collective Health”³⁶36 Editorial. Cien Saude Colet 1996; 1(1):1-1..

The articles constitute this perspective with a debate on the health policy in Brazil; history and foundations of science and collective health, within the national science and technology development; historical aspects of collective health and graduate courses; overview of the current state of knowledge and epidemiological practice in Brazil; the situation and the outlook of the planning and management in health within the academic context; the trajectory of the public health to healthy policies and new contributions to the health field; analysis of dengue epidemics occurred from 1981 and discussions on the eradication of the Aedes Aegypty, communication strategies in combating the dengue vector. The issue also has three reviews: about the “old and new health ailments in Brazil”, about the communicative theory and the social thinking and about the “dilemmas and challenges of the social sciences and collective health”. With only these statements we can see the scope of the proposal of the Journal when addressing a broad spectrum of disciplines, including the debate on health policies and problems such as dengue, which unfortunately remains an unresolved issue after twenty years.

Some studies conducted on the Journal showed that, although it was open to the most diverse fields from the collective health, it presents an outstanding production in social sciences and planning. For example, in 2005, such subjects represented 36.8% and 28.3%, respectively, of the Journal. By comparison, in the same period, Cadernos de Saúde Pública had 49.1% of its production in epidemiology, the Revista de Saúde Pública 57.5% and the Ciência e Saúde Coletiva 20.8%. In the same research, we could note that in 2006 the number of articles in epidemiology increased in all these publications and, notably, in Ciência e Saúde Coletiva, going to 32.7%³⁷37 Loyola MAR. A Saga das Ciências Sociais na área da Saúde Coletiva: elementos para reflexão. Physis 2008; 18(2):251-275..

Another research conducted by Minayo³⁸38 Minayo MCS. A produção de conhecimentos na interface entre as ciências sociais e humanas e a saúde coletiva. Saude e soc 2012; 21(1):9-14. in seven journals of the Revista de Saúde Pública, Cadernos de Saúde Pública, Ciência & Saúde Coletiva, Saúde e Sociedade, Physis, Interface and História, Ciência e Saúde, from January 2011 to August 2012 (20 months), collected interesting data about the intersection between Social and Health Sciences. These journals published 1757 articles during the period, of which 545 (31.0%) were the interface of the social and health sciences. The author adds that, in addition to the contributions of the pioneering authors of the area, the publications relied on the contribution of important scholars of the second and third generation.

In a synthesis of these 20 years, when opening the 2015 Edition the editorialists point out that “112 editions were published with 2993 articles (until the end of 2014), in an average of 28 texts per issue. They were accessed – between 2002 and September 2014 – by 9,408,979 Portuguese speakers, 550,337 English speakers, 189,420, Spanish speakers and 443,264 speakers of other languages. This represents one of the highest rates of access to Brazilian literature in any area”³⁹39 Minayo MCS, Gomes R. Ciência & Saúde Coletiva faz 20 anos, comemora êxitos e tem novas metas. Cien Saude Colet 2015; 20(1):5-5..

Final remarks

The main objective was to place the journal Ciência e Saúde Coletiva as a fundamental part of the process of institutionalization of the field of public health. With 36 years of existence, considering that the formalization of the area occurred in 1979, the creation of a tool for the dissemination of scientific production took over a decade to come true. We had previous publications, but as a series, without interruption, it started only from 1996.

We highlight that some fields of knowledge when “founded” immediately create their tools in order to give space for research studies to be published and disseminated. A classic example is the journal L'anné sociologique created by Emile Durkheim, in 1896, considered as “the most celebrated aspect of the institutional and deliberative foundation of Durkheim's sociology” and “it was always more than the flagship of a review journal of the Durkheimian school, devoted to a compendium and synthesis of the academic papers of the previous year, in so far as it was pertinent to the Durkheim's sociological perspective”. In this sense, as noted by Baher “It [the journal] also operated as a research institute bringing together some of the most talented figures of the sociology ever recruited”⁴⁰40 Baehr P. Founders, classics, canons: Modern disputes over the origins and appraisal of sociology's heritage. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers; 2002..

Also in appreciation of Baher⁴⁰40 Baehr P. Founders, classics, canons: Modern disputes over the origins and appraisal of sociology's heritage. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers; 2002., the sociology founded by Durkheim is crossed by three conditions: conceptual, cultural-political and organizational. We will not develop these conditions, but they help us think in the plan of knowledge structuring, certainly not only in the case of sociology but also present in other scientific fields. In reality, we point out that the role of the journal is always paramount in the organizational plan.

Unlike the French case, the medical sociology in the United States only created its own agency in 1966 – the Journal of Health and Social Behavior (JHSB) – as the official agency of the American Sociological Association (ASA), replacing the Journal of Health and Human Behavior, existing since 1960, but which was private property. Thus, in the process of institutionalization of the American medical sociology, the journal appears at a time when the field already had a large framework of achievements both in the scientific production and in the associative formalization, as since 1955 it had a Committee on Medical Sociology, which was the embryo of the Medical Sociology Section of the ASA, the second section created within that Association.

The cases mentioned exemplify that there are several social, political, cultural, economic and financial conditions (and moments) that engender the possibilities of creating an agency of diffusion of a given field of knowledge. It makes what scholars characterize as institutional history, a concept that we have adopted in this work.

The institutional stories are different from intellectuals stories insofar as they carry “ideas and practices that have been promoted, developed and transmitted through social networks, companies, University research centers, schools, departments, etc.”⁴¹41 Collyer F. Mapping the sociology of health and medicine: America, Britain and Australia compared. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan; 2012.. For sociologists who use this approach,

Although cognitive and intellectual trajectories of disciplines are interwoven and only completely separated for analytical purposes, a focus on the institutional development is an analysis of the processes through which important ideas become inserted in social and structured practices in more resilient and permanent arrangements⁴¹41 Collyer F. Mapping the sociology of health and medicine: America, Britain and Australia compared. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan; 2012..

We highlight that the approach, as we saw in relation to the collective health, allows contact with the players and the trajectories of publications. Although we have superficially seen issues related to the institutionalization in a trajectory of conceptual transformations – prevention, promotion, collective, social – and of formation of professional associations, our central approach surrounded journals. In this sense, it is interesting to note that the Ciência e Saúde Coletiva is born inside of an Association (Abrasco), but becomes the tool of production of the academy and the courses of graduate degrees in public health. This does not mean to put the production from health institutions and services (public and private) in the second place, as long as they are within the parameters required by the scientific publications.

Two decades are a short historical time, but it allow us to evaluate, in the field of publications, a successful experience that brings in its path a fundamental period in the field of public/collective health and is the bearer of a rich material that is open for many possibilities for research.

References

Publication Dates

History