The Brazilian Society of Pulmonology, founded in 1974, had various objectives, primarily to increase awareness of the specialty, to promote the exchange of new knowledge, and to publish the scientific production of pulmonologists working in Brazil. Therefore, we founded the Journal of Pulmonology, which would have to have, at its core, high quality technical and scientific content, with a view toward its later indexing as a scientific journal. It fell to me to be the first Director of the Journal. It is easy to imagine the various difficulties that had to be overcome for its publication to occur: the scarcity of economic resources, the obstacles to efficient communication, and the lack of computerization. Another problem to be overcome was related to the material to be published. To give the reader an idea of those difficulties, I paraphrase my editorial published in volume 2, issue 4 (1):

"The three issues already published have given personality to the Journal, which has taken shape as a journal of high technical quality. However, it appears that our fellow pulmonologists do not like to publish. The current issue is, again, predominantly representative of the state of São Paulo. We hope that the upcoming conference in the city of Salvador will get them excited about writing and publishing, gracing our journal with their manuscripts, and that the new Director has no difficulty in obtaining quality scientific material for publication and does not need to explain the apparent provincialism of the official organ of the Brazilian Society of Pulmonology."

The Brazilian Journal of Pulmonology has now gone far beyond its original goals. Having been indexed for SciELO and for MEDLINE/PubMed, the Journal is read and cited by those who are interested in the field of pulmonology. The various directors/editors who have followed me have succeeded, despite the hard work involved, in making it a vehicle that is widely and quite effectively distributed.

The Brazilian Journal of Pulmonology is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year. Congratulations! As the poet said: "Was it worth it? Everything is worth it if the soul is not too small."a

a) From "Mar Português" (Portuguese Sea) by the Portuguese author Fernando Pessoa.

REFERENCES

1. Santos, ML. [Editorial in Portuguese, no title]. J Pneumol. 1976;2(4):2