The power of the scientific journal in the construction of the representation about scientific research

Abstract

Objective: Know the conception of scientific production represented through the policy of the Revista Contabilidade e Finanças (RC&F).

Method: A qualitative and quantitative approach was adopted. For the descriptive work, Bardin’s content analysis (2016) and the software UCINET 6 were applied. For the inferences, basic statistics (percentages) were calculated.

Results: The associate editors of RC&F are board members with considerable ideological strength in the journal. The attributes “quality”, “relevance” and “uniqueness” support RC&F’s conception of scientific production; this conception is influenced by the University of São Paulo and other Brazilian and international technical, educational and research institutions. Nevertheless, the subjectivity of the meaning of these attributes in the text of RC&F’s editorial policy, concerning material for publication, contributes to replications tied to the texts this journal publishes– which can turn into a critical factor for the innovation and development of the written culture in the area.

Contributions: The attributes that guide the conception of science disseminated by RC&F can cause communication noise because of the subjectivity they express. This fact can entail the reproduction of themes, methods and theories due to the search for a “relevant” scientific production model, although the editorial policy expresses the ideology of uniqueness and “ontological and epistemological plurality”. This investigation ratifies the journal’s power by granting scientific authority to experts who, according to Social Representation Theory, create parameters and value systems disseminated from the reified to the consensual universe.