Latindex (Regional Online Information system for Scholarly Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal) is a free online information system that covers, mostly Spanish‐speaking, scientific, technical and profesional journals published in the previously mentioned countries. Latindex was created by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in 1995. The first commitment to this project was made by Brazil, Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela in 1997. Later it evolved towards an Iberoamerican system when Argentina, Chile and Spain joined in 1998; Colombia, Portugal and Puerto Rico followed in 1999. And from 2002 to 2009 Ecuador, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Peru, Panama, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua have joined the Project. The aims of Latindex are to “disseminate, make visible and raise the quality of the academic journals published in the region, through a collaborative work”.
From the Latindex main page one can search the title of a journal or by words in the title. On the left side column, there is the option to search from three different databases: the Directory, the Catalogue or the E‐journals. The Directory has the inventory of 18,629 journals published in the countries of the region. Each record offers basic bibliographic data. It also includes journals published by international organizations where Latin American countries have participation, like the Organization of American States (OAS). The Catalogue is a subset of the journals included in the Directory. Only those journals that comply with international editorial quality criteria are included. These editorial criteria, for print and electronic journals, are available for consultation in the web page. Approximately 4,559 print and electronic journals have been rated and included in this catalogue to date. The E‐journals section includes the list of the 3,781 electronic journals included in the Directory, establishing a link to the URL of those journals, and the access to the full text of the articles.
Once a category is chosen, one can search, by Title, by Subject, by a specific Region or Country, by Publisher or in the Index. Latindex covers all the disciplines and the journals are classified into seven main subject areas: Arts and Humanities; Agricultural Sciences; Engineering; Natural and Exact Sciences; Medical Sciences and Multidisciplinary. To date, there are 13,184 journals that are published only in Spanish and 1,934 journals with articles both in English and Spanish. Some Latin‐American countries opted to publish their journals only in English, especially in the exact sciences, with the object of being accepted by international indexes.
The Latindex web site is clearly organized and is easy to browse. The databases are updated daily and the new titles included are listed in the Recent Additions section in the main page, under the name of their publishing country. It is a great online resource for accessing and disseminating Latin American journals and information. This site will be useful to librarians on the reference desk, to researchers and the international community in general interested in the scientific information produced in Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal. The only drawback is that the web site does not have an English interface which could discourage the non‐Spanish speaking public.
