Avaliação de indivíduos pelo Qualis-CAPES: levantamento sobre a adoção na seleção de pós-graduandos

Objective: Qualis Periódicos ranks scholarly journals in which Brazilian graduate program faculty have published in a past period, aiming at the evaluation of graduate programs. Some programs have been adopting it to select graduate students regarding their current publications. In order to account for the incidence of this phenomenon, specifically for graduate programs in Information Science, the objective of this research was to measure the adoption of Qualis to evaluate individuals in the selection to enter the master's or doctorate in Information Science in Brazil. Methodology: We carried out an online survey, checking in calls for graduate studies whether each program on the ANCIB list evaluates candidates according to their publications in “Qualis journals” from the period 2013-2016, also considering whether it is a sole or partial criterion for assessing publications. Results: Around 21% of the programs adopt it, with little variation according to their CAPES rank. Conclusions: Adoption is sparse, but relevant. It is surprising that it is used by stricto sensu graduate programs in Information Science, as it means that the faculty that approved it ignored the CAPES recommendation, or approved it by distraction, or despite knowing that it was an error. This blocks interdisciplinarity, by valuing only publications in journals considered “from the subject area”, as well as it devalues not-in-Qualis leading journals from elite databases. It also goes against CAPES’ recommendation, which requires an “I’ve read and understood” tick on the Sucupira Platform to acknowledge that Qualis is only for the evaluation of past production from graduate programs.