Knowledge references: analysis of Brazilian health journal instructions to authors

Health researchers refer to the difficulty in publishing which is a barrier to conducting qualitative studies. We sought to identify which Brazilian publications indexed in SciELO in the area of health sciences include instructions to authors that allow the publication of original studies based on qualitative methods. Of the 88 current titles analyzed, more than half (52) impose conditions that are incompatible with the qualitative research, most of them medical publications. Some publications (19) do not provide information on the type of study, but do not present typical requirements of quantitative research, such as statistical tests and reproducibility. Magazines demonstrating the acceptance of qualitative research (17) allow longer texts, study designs that include interviews, and some even specifically state acceptance of studies with qualitative approaches. In general, these publications belong to the collective health or nursing areas and have higher scores in CAPES. The lack of clear instructions for qualitative manuscripts and the need for quantification are barriers to the publishing of qualitative studies, which does not favor the expansion of the clinical look to the human phenomena related to health. The scientific and accuracy criteria should be reviewed.