Ibnosina Journal of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences steps into the second decade of life

The present issue of Ibnosina Journal of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences (IJMBS) is the 58th issue of the journal and is the first issue in its second decade of life. Over the first decade, IJMBS sustained an uninterrupted flow of issues on or after a couple of days from their expected day of release. The editors observed a strict adherence to the peer-review process as the accepted gold standard basis for quality and scholarly status, with the genuine open access being fully freely accessible to authors and readers. So far, we have kept our promise that we pledged in our issue in 2009.[[1]]

We are cognizant of the common challenges facing emerging journals. These journals are being squeezed between two different forces that threaten their mere existence. The vicious attack from predatory publishers, with huge numbers of journals and aggressive marketing strategies, makes the true open journals struggle to distinguish themselves from the flood of predatory, nonpeer ones that send invitations and reminders on a daily basis.[[2]] The situation is worsened by the low awareness of young and aspiring researchers of this plague.[[3]] Furthermore, the drivers of physicians to seek international recognition drain flow of submissions from the regions counted by emerging journals as their constituency.[[4]] Hence, we cannot blame young authors who may not choose to submit to genuine open-access journals out of fear of falling into the predatory trap. Also, we cannot blame new reviewers who may ignore requests to review from an emerging journal not known to them. The other major challenge comes from the clones of open-access journals created by international publishers building on their visibility, experience, and publishing resources. Nowadays, it is almost the rule rather than the exception that a manuscript submitted to an international journal gets referred to a sister open-access journal with the usual financial implications. Consequently, the mere sustaining of existence under these circumstances should be counted as a success.[[5]]

Two years ago, the journal was associated with an international publisher with vast experience in medical publishing (Medknow), and a new editorial board took over from the founding team.[[6]] The new website is more friendly to browsing readers and monitoring assessors as one can see the number of readers viewing and downloading of individual articles. In addition, all articles now have a unique DOI. We continue to attract interests of our readership by publishing relevant original articles and opinions.[[7]] Our recent editorials on predatory publishing and fake academia were the first to address the issue in Middle-East region.[[2]],[[8]] We also continue to capture the interest of our primary target readers by publishing ethnically relevant articles addressing clinical practice and research in developing regions.[[2]],[[8]] Some articles have reached or exceeded 1000 viewers. Several articles were cited in established journals 10–20 times, and a single article was cited over 75 times according to the Google Scholar. The increasing number of citations is illustrated in [[Figure 1]]. In total there was 885 citations since 2012. Its overall h-index is 13 and i10-index 21.[[9]]

Figure 1: Citation of IJMBS articles detected in Google Scholar search database

The most common question editors receive in public and private circles is: when will you be on PubMed index? Normally, journals take between 3 to 5 years before they get indexed by PubMed. The period may even be longer for emerging journals despite sustaining long and uninterrupted flow of production. When we applied to be indexed in 2015, although the final mark of the appraisal fell short of the required score for affirmative recommendation for IJMBS to be indexed, there were many positive comments on the niche of the journal that make us optimistic in future applications. We have implemented all the recommendations of the Medline listing assessors. All articles have mandatory sets of disclosures that cover author contributions, conflicts of interest, any source of funding, and explicit statement of compliance with ethical principles and specifically detailing the source of ethical approval and nature of consent or the lack thereof. These disclosures are checked before the articles are considered by editors and reviewers over and above the commitments to the other ICMJE recommendations.[[10]],[[11]] We await in hope the next round of PubMed/PMC indexation review.

Finally, the editorial board has agreed changing the frequency of publication from bimonthly to quarterly from January 2019 onward [[Table 1]]. This may mean greater proportion of original articles than review articles. As IJMBS steps into the second decade of its life, we reaffirm our commitments to the scholarly publishing principles and practices and to the genuine open-access movement[[12]] We greatly appreciate your support in all capacities: readers, authors, and reviewers.

Table 1: The new issue plan adopted from January 2019 onward

Author contribution

Equal.

Compliance with ethical principles

Not required.

Publikationsverlauf

Eingereicht: 18. Oktober 2018

Angenommen: 04. Januar 2019

Artikel online veröffentlicht:
07. Juli 2022

• References

• 1 Elkhammas E. New product of Ibnosina Medical Association. Ibnosina J Med Biomed Sci 2009;1:44-5.
• 2 Beshyah SA. Predatory publishing: A wake-up call for editors and authors in the Middle East and Africa. Ibnosina J Med Biomed Sci 2017;9:123-5.
• 3 Beshyah SA, Hajjaji IM, Elbarsha AW. Awareness of predatory journals among physicians from Africa and the Middle East: An exploratory survey. Ibnosina J Med Biomed Sci 2018:136-40.
• 4 Beshyah SA. Authors' selection of target journals and their attitude to emerging journals: A survey from two developing regions. Sultan Qaboos Univ Med J. [In press].
• 5 Beshyah SA, Elkhammas E. Manuscript peer review for emerging journals: Where we go from here? Ibnosina J Med Biomed Sci 2015;7:155-7.
• 6 Elkhammas E, Beshyah SA. Ibnosina Journal of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences: Thanks to the founding editorial board (2009-2016) and welcome to the new editorial board (2017-2020). Ibnosina J Med Biomed Sci 2017;9:96-8.
• 7 Elkhammas E, Beshyah SA. Ibnosina journal of medicine and biomedical sciences moves house but maintains same editorial philosophy and publishing strategy. Ibnosina J Med Biomed Sci 2017;9:1-2.
• 8 Beshyah SA. Fake academia and bogus conferences are on the rise in the Middle East: Time to act. Ibnosina J Med Biomed Sci 2017;9:147-9.
• 9 Ibnosina Journal of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences on Google Scholar. Available from: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Kb1U8cAAAAAJ&hl=en&authuser=19. [Last accessed on 2018 Jan 18].
• 10 Beshyah SA, Aburawi EH, Alshammakhi N, Elkhammas EA. Why should you publish in Ibnosina Journal of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences? Ibnosina J Med Biomed Sci 2017;9:99-100.
• 11 Beshyah SA, Elkhammas EA. The relevance of the international committee of medical journal editors recommendations to emerging medical journalism. Ibnosina J Med Biomed Sci 2019;11:1-2.
• 12 Beshyah SA, Elkhammas EA. The relevance of the international committee of medical journal editors recommendations to emerging journals. Ibnosina J Med Biomed Sci 2019;11:3-4.