About the Journal

Focus and Scope

Published since 1987, the Petrobras Geosciences Bulletin is an open access journal, with the aim of promoting Knowledge Management applied to the exploration and sustainable use of oil.

BGP publishes unpublished works in the areas of basin analysis and assessment, modeling of basins and petroleum systems, organic geochemistry, sedimentology and stratigraphy, geophysical interpretation, structural/tectonic geology, petrophysics, reserve/resource estimation and data management and applied technologies to geosciences. It also covers geoscience topics applied to other energy sources and geological gas storage, both associated with carbon neutral goals.

Frequency

BGP began its trajectory of publications as a quarterly journal, with an average of 12 articles per edition, from number 01 (1987), to number 47 (1990). Between 1991 to 2014, the frequency was semi-annual. At 2015, BGP was suspended, returning in 2024. From that point, it adopted a continuous publishing of its articles, forming one issue for every 10 articles published.

Peer Review Process

The standard evaluation process adopted by BGP is double-blind. In this modality, authors and reviewers don't know each other's identities.

Articles are initially evaluated by an editor regarding their suitability for the journal's scope; adequacy to authors' instructions; absence of plagiarism; and quality of content and writing. Manuscripts appropriate to the scope of the journal and authors' instructions, without evidence of plagiarism (or other forms of academic misconduct) and with reasonable content and presentation are sent for review by two or more evaluators.

Evaluators are selected by the editors based on their notable knowledge of the manuscript's themes and/or methods, as well as good performance in evaluating previous manuscripts. Generally speaking, reviewers should help authors improve their manuscripts, and help editors make their decisions. However, the decision to publish a manuscript is solely up to the editors, who are even free to occasionally disregard an evaluation and/or call on an additional evaluator.
Manuscripts are considered the property of the authors, and reviewers work under confidentiality, so reviewers should not delegate evaluation or discuss the manuscript with third parties.

Open Access Policy

With the aim of promoting the global democratization of technical scientific knowledge, BGP offers free and immediate access to all its content. There are no fees and/or financial contributions for authors, users or institutions. Interested authors can submit articles and, if the work is accepted, publish it free of charge. All users and institutions can access, read, download, copy, distribute, print or search the full text of the articles published here.

History

Petrobras' remarkable results, obtained in its oil exploration activities, demanded the creation of a specific vehicle, capable of expressing, through the quality of technical work, the professional excellence of the Company's body of geologists and geophysicists.

Thus, in 1987, the Petrobras Geosciences Bulletin was created, with the aim of publishing original and unpublished studies concerning the Company's activities in Brazil and abroad, focusing on different topics related to petroleum Geosciences, reporting on technological development and scientific research.

BGP was published semi-annually, in the months of May and November, and was open to the geoscientific community, with articles that were appropriate to the magazine's objectives and that were approved by the Editorial Committee, composed of representatives from Petrobras and several academic institutions. In the period from 2017 to 2021, BGP had almost 1 million accesses, with academics from academic institutions in Brazil and abroad as its main users, being distributed to institutions in 48 countries.

BGP has already been indexed in important bibliographic databases such as American Petroleum Institute (API), Petroleum Abstract (Tulsa), Compendex, Chemical Abstract, GeoRef, Scopus (Elsevier), Energy Science, among others.

Ethical Guidelines

Guided by the guidelines of its Code of Ethical Conduct, Petrobras, publisher of BGP, affirms its commitment to integrity and ethics. Furthermore, it is based on the "Core Practices" documents from COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics); and Responsible research publication: international standards for editors (2011), written during the 2nd World Conference on Research Integrity, considering the clarity and observance of the standards established by these documents for the good management of scientific journals, quoting below to the most relevant ones:

Guarantee of confidentiality in the process of evaluating works regarding to the identity of authors and reviewers;

Assertiveness and compliance with procedures relating to peer review, preventing situations that could constitute a conflict of interest between the parties involved in the editorial process;

If there is an identification of a conflict of interest between the parties or misconduct by those involved in the editorial process, such as falsification, fabrication or distortion of data and research results, or plagiarism, for example, the adoption of the procedures provided for by COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) for resolving ethical problems is ensured;

Care for the intellectual property of authors;

In a similar way, the BGP editorial team values ​​that these same principles that guide the editorial policy are observed and followed by the authors and reviewers who collaborate with the journal. As a way of ensuring this, it takes as a reference the standards described in international documents on the conduct of evaluators and authors:

Authors: transparency and honesty in the structuring and presentation of the methodologies used in the work, as well as the results measured by the research; guarantee of the unpublished and original nature of the work; appropriate mention of co-authors and collaborators who participated in its preparation; anonymity of authorship until completion of the double-blind evaluation process.

Reviewers/evaluators: evaluation of the work based on the scientific merit of the proposal; acceptance of the evaluation request only upon verification of expertise to analyze the proposed topic; observance of the confidentiality required in the double-blind peer review process, not revealing information about the evaluation activity to other professionals; notification of conflicts of interest related to the evaluation; impartiality regarding political or religious aspects, for example, that may permeate the analysis of the proposed topic. All reviewers/evaluators are external to the journal staff.

Plagiarism Check Policy

The editorial practice in the case of scientific misconduct (plagiarism, self-plagiarism, falsification or fabrication of data, misuse of references or citations, duplicity, authorship dispute, among others) follows the procedures, checklist and guidelines of the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the SciELO Guide to Good Practices for Strengthening Ethics in Scientific Publishing and the “Principles of Transparency and Good Practices in Academic Publications”.

Plagiarism is the deliberate copying, in whole or in part, of another's intellectual work, without attributing due credit.

Self-plagiarism is the use, in whole or in part, of work of one's own authorship that has been previously published, without proper identification.

Financing Institution

Petróleo Brasileiro S.A.