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CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 · Ibnosina Journal of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences 2023; 15(01): 003-004
DOI: 10.1055/s-0043-1764318
Editorial

From the Editors: A New Year's Ambition and Challenges

Elmahdi A. Elkhammas 
1   Department of Surgery, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, United States
,
Salem A. Beshyah 
2   Department of Medicine, Yas Clinic Khalifa City, Khalifa City, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
3   Department of Medicine, College of Medicine and Health Sciences, Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
4   Department of Medicine, Dubai Medical College, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
› Author Affiliations Funding and Sponsorship None.
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Another year has started, and it will present us with new hopes, ambitions, and challenges. One of our major challenges is funding. Donations from members of the editorial board and some generous friends fund the journal. We determine to eliminate the publication fees for authors from developing countries. We understand the income, exchange rate, and money transfer difficulties they face. At one point, we may resort to minimal fees to help with the publication's rising expenses and continue supporting authors from low-income countries. We are hoping for a wide base of supporters to step forward and donate minimal amounts regularly to keep the journal free for all.

Another challenge is the reviewers' commitment.[1] Reviewers are challenging for all journals but much more for emerging journals. Reviewers must understand that reviewing manuscripts is vital to keep the public's trust in medical research. Nowadays, setting up a new web site and calling it a medical journal is easy. So sometimes, it is difficult to know real analysis from fake writing.[2] A rigorous peer-review process will keep us in a responsible position. Reviewing is a two-way street. The reviewers also benefit from reading up-to-date medical literature and gaining the skills to critique scientific work. The reviewer will also benefit from exposure to innovations and discoveries in medical sciences.

It is imperative for authors and reviewers from the journal's region to dedicate some of their time to performing high-quality reviews and submit some of their work to their emerging new journals to improve quality and help the new journal with the indexing process.[3]

There are many points on the positive trend. The citations of our journal's published articles have improved significantly year after year. The journal is currently indexed in the emerging source citation index (ESCI).[4] ESCI is a recent index by Clarivate analytics established in 2015. It means that International Journal of Medical and Biomedical Studies (IJMBS) has passed several checkpoints. The journal follows publication ethics, has blind reviews, has scientific content, and follows the technical principles of the index. It is a big step, meaning the journal has passed the initial steps to obtain an impact factor. ESCI introduced a new metric, Journal Citation Indicator (JCI), in which the journal is starting with a JCI of 0.14.

The journal's Google Scholar H-index was 38 in 2012 and increased to 276 by 2020. The increase in the H-index and the indexation in ESCI indicates better exposure of our authors and raises the possibility of more citations.

Lastly, the journal is indexed in Exaly. Exaly is a nonprofit project to examine all scholarly literature and runs several indicators.[5] The journal currently has Exaly impact factor of 0.3 and increased yearly citations of the journal to over 100 by 2020.

The executive committee of the journal is determined to get the journal's issues indexed in PubMed and to continue working through it. It has been a long journey. Last year we switched the publisher to Thieme Publishers and made changes to the editorial board to warrant more commitment from the members.

So, it is evident that the journal is moving forward within this crowded field. It will continue supporting authors, training reviewers, and helping with research exposure from developing countries to advance medicine and medical sciences.

Author Contributions

Equal contribution.


Compliance with Ethical Principles

Not applicable.




Publication History

Article published online:
17 March 2023

© 2023. The Libyan Biotechnology Research Center. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonDerivative-NonCommercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit. Contents may not be used for commercial purposes, or adapted, remixed, transformed or built upon. (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

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