Inaugural editorial of the Portuguese Journal of Occupational Therapy

Abstract

Dreams guide our lives, and scientific evidence should guide our practice.

As occupational therapists who interact with academia or science, we naturally focus on traditional academic activities and/or find ourselves involved in scientific development projects. However, we do not spend much time reflecting on the most important common infrastructure for science, namely scientific publication, even though we constantly rely on reading research presented by our colleagues in scientific articles and depend on the same journals to handle our manuscripts presenting the results of our research.

Since 2013, after completing the first cycle of studies in occupational therapy at ESSLei and our students' first research projects, we have felt the difficulty of publishing in Portuguese and in Portugal with content specific to our scientific field. At that time, the first proposal to create the journal was made, but the process proved to be a challenge that we would one day overcome.

The biennial promotion of the Academic Days of Occupational Therapy by APTO since 2017, and the annual holding of the Internal Days of Occupational Therapy at ESSLei since 2015, have been two ways of sharing and disseminating science and knowledge among peers, stakeholders and the community.

We all agree that it is extremely important for the development of Occupational Therapy in Portugal to have a space where we can share the scientific evidence that supports our practice, and it is based on this sense of knowledge sharing that we have not given up and have managed to meet the challenge of creating the Portuguese Journal of Occupational Therapy.

In this first issue, proudly presented on World Occupational Therapy Day, we share a first batch of papers submitted at the latest Academic Conference on Occupational Therapy, held in Leiria in 2022. Two more batches will be published in the coming months. The content of the articles published in these first issues is the responsibility of their authors and the evaluation of the Higher Education Institutions that submitted them.

We hope that this will be the beginning and a place for sharing knowledge and practices, paving the way for an upward trajectory in disseminating the best practices in Occupational Therapy in Portugal and, who knows, perhaps in the rest of the world.