Academic Journals: A new insight - Smt. NHL Municipal Medical College

Editorial

Academic Journals: A new insight Pratik Patel*, Aparajita Shukla** Professor &Head*, Forensic Medicine, Associate Professor, Community Medicine**, Smt. NHL Municipal Medical College, Ahmedabad

In past, researchers used to go to the library to refer literature of their interest. Now-a-days, online availability of the searchable data has made looking through dozens of physical journals or consulting literature overviews in book format obsolete. These days more than 400 online Abstracting and Indexing (A&I) services provide these search capabilities for the various disciplines and research areas1. Numerous journals are published in the field of science. In the field of medicine there are different types of medical journals: multidisciplinary or field oriented general medical journals (NHL Journal of Medical Sciences, British Medical Journal, The Lancet etc.) or specialty journals (Academy journal of forensic medicine, British Heart Journal). Some journals are published by societies: for instance, Academy Journal of Forensic Medicine; some are published by organisations: for instance, Gujarat Medical journal; some are published by medical institutions: for instance, NHL Journal of Medical Sciences, and then there are some that are published by publishers. There are two types of publishers. One includes publisher having portfolio of journals ranging from just a few to hundreds of individual titles: for instance, Elsevier/Springer and the other is the individual journal, independent, not under the platform of any publishers. Journals published by a prestigious publisher imply experience, precision and quality. However, in some cases the publisher rarely could interfere in the scientific process of manuscripts; but it is not always true for independent publisher, even for publisher publishing a fleet of journals. Academic journals, archives or articles; abstracts or full text; are accessed by databases. Database is a search engine that searches for information on the internet. Google and Goggle scholar are the best examples of search engines. There are about 16 categories of search engines and about 228 databases. They are document retrieval systems with unclear

distinction among them. Databases are again of two types, one with Abstracting & Indexing (A & I) services and another without that. In A & I services, contents are indexed at the article level so it is searchable in the database by assigning descriptors or keywords. This service may also make the article searchable with other elements of the journal or article like authors, titles, volume number, issue number etc. Some databases provide A & I services at more granular level like indexing individual picture, image or chart etc. Some databases require that the author composes an abstract and some services do themselves with their retrieval system. As at present researchers tend to search online, it is imperative that a journal is included in the database that provides A & I service. Most of the authors rely upon articles through A & I services. Databases providing A & I services are PubMed, Medline, DOAJ, index Copernicus, Ebsco, Embase, Scopus etc and non A& I services are Scribd, Cabells Directories, SlideShare, GetCited, ResearchBib, NewJour, Google Docs etc. Amongst databases several are provided by vendors like Ebsco, Proquest, and Thomson Reuters etc. Databases are either open accessible or fee-based. Open access [free of any charge] usually leads to better readership. However, it does not necessarily invite more citations. To be recognized as an authoritative journal, it must be available widely. Indexing and abstracting services provide easy access of the articles that are relevant to the field. Once a journal starts getting published, it is time to contact indexing and abstracting services for inclusion provided it maintains regularity and has valid scientific content. Visibility leads to accessibility and wider readership. Inclusion and indexing of journals by main bibliographic databases is one of the best criteria in selecting appropriate journal by researchers and readers. The most important step in bringing research from small medical scientific sector to the mainstream science is the inclusion of the journal in international bibliographic databases.

5 NHL Journal of Medical Sciences/July 2013/Vol.2/Issue 2

This brings us to the question which indexation is the best and the most valid. This question is of particular relevance for two main reasons.

contents are freely accessible or not. Again it is important to know how long after publication an article is accessible free and to the full content.

First, importance of publications is being increasingly recognised by the academic institutions. Recently MCI has also recommended publication in indexed journals for teaching faculty in medical colleges. As a result, many more authors have started publishing than ever before.2 Selection of high quality journal becomes a difficult decision for the authors as there is no clarity on this issue. Should one aim at only the journals indexed in Index Medicus/Medline/PubMed? Is it appropriate to make submissions to journals having a high impact factor although they are not indexed with Index Medicus/Medline/PubMed?3

Usually free resources are mostly searched and preferred by researchers or readers than fee-based. PubMed is free and the most popular resource. Criteria for inclusion of a journal into Medline (and hence into PubMed) seems arbitrary. There is no single criterion which is crucial and they seem to be using a number of them to determine the suitability of a journal. Thompson Reuters, Web of science, etc have multiple criteria for inclusion in their databases and are not free. Coverage of journals in Thomson Reuters’ citation indexes and MEDLINE could not validate the journals. One may find examples of poor quality journals covered by such databases. Therefore submission to indexed journals must be viewed as to increase the visibility of one’s research work, not to validate it.5

Second, recently many more indexation services have come up. These include DOAJ, Expanded Academic ASAP, Journal Seek, Hinari, Index Copernicus, Open J Gate, Primo Central, Pro Quest, GetCited, ResearchBib, NewJour, SCOLOAR, SIIC databases, Ulrich's International Periodical Directory, EBSCOS, IndMed, Summon by Serial Solutions, Caspur and Indian Citation Index. Are these indexations services equally genuine? If a journal is indexed with any of these databases, should it be considered "indexed"? 3 There are various criteria apart from Indexing which make a journal valuable for the researcher. Readership, regularity, reputation including plagiarism, type of articles/contents in journal, copyright restrictions, online submission, online journal, open access, citation, editorial board, publisher (i.e. society/organisation/institute), peer review policy, author fee (not-for-profit publication), design, rejection rate, price and previous experience were respectively main criteria utilized by authors to value the journals. As cited above, readership is an important aspect for the value of a journal. To increase the readership, articles should be widely accessible by researcher or reader. Indexing and abstracting database plays a major role in this regard. Indexing in more than one database increases the accessibility of the articles of a journal, thus inviting more readers and authors. Indexing in open access database will invite more readers or authors than feebased database.4 It is important to consider whether

Medline is an excellent source of published medical data recognised all over the world. PubMed and Medline are the products of National Library of Medicine (NLM), USA. PubMed is not indexing organisation but Medline is the indexing organisation. When journal is indexed in Medline or PMC, it is searchable in PubMed. PubMed exclusively contains biomedical science related data. About 600 journals are published in the field of medicine and life sciences in India with some serious science contents and majority of them are published by societies and medical institutions. PubMed covers about 5500 journals in biomedical field. Only 39(0.71%) journals published in India is covered by PubMed.6 Same way commercial databases like Elsevier, Scopus, etc contain hardly 128(1.71%) journals from India. As a result of non-inclusion of the journals in such databases, even good research is unknown and unavailable at global level even though such journals are published as per guidelines provided by The World Association of Medical Editors (WAME), the International committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).6 Representation of the journal from developing countries is less than 2%. Not all journals come up to the required standards and therefore deserve to be rejected. However, some journals, in spite of meeting


all the required criteria laid out for acceptance, get repeatedly rejected and interestingly no specific reasons for non-acceptance are spelled out. By virtue of its size and age, PubMed holds a dominant position in the field. So journals not considered suitable by PubMed are at an obvious disadvantage. There could be an argument that by such exclusion of a larger part of academic literature, PubMed is also putting science and scientists at a disadvantage.7 Some databases often use Bradford’s law for inclusion of journals. The law states that relatively small numbers of journals publish the bulk of significant scientific results. Bradford’s analysis for inclusion of journals seems to be impractical. With the available technology in this day and age, , it should be possible for databases to include everything. 8 Even journals indexed in Medline/PubMed have been found indexed in other databases for instance: Breast cancer-Basic and clinical research. With PubMed it is also indexed with DOAJ, index Copernicus and others. Other examples are journals: Cancer informatics, clinical medicine insight-case reports, Clinical medicine Insights-oncology, Translational Oncogenomics etc. These all are indexed with index Copernicus, DOAJ, etc along with PubMed. Use of multiple A & I databases is for increasing visibility and readership only. Academicians are increasingly using multiple databases to provide a more inclusive information search. Coverage of journals in number of indexing databases could not validate the journals and /or its content, it just attracts more readership. Ideal A & I database Scientific database should ideally have following characteristics. 8 a. Inclusion: It should cover all scientific research and must not exclude any piece of research. Ideally, it should also include non peer-reviewed (for example scientific reports, conference papers, webpage/blogs, etc) information, the so called “gray literature”.8 b. Specific Refined Search: It should also bring out the most relevant information to a user.8 c. Advanced Filters: It should have a variety of filters for specialty, authors, title, dates, keywords,

peer reviewed/non peer reviewed, location etc for an ideal user experience.8 d. Link to Full text articles: It should provide link to full text articles. Print journals need to be encouraged to look for ways for electronically archiving their work.8 e. Advanced Citation Analysis: An ideal database should have sophisticated features to track and analyse citations.8 f. Free: Ideally, such a resource should be completely free “Open Accessible” for users along with free access to full text articles.8 However, the selection criteria and the journals indexed for all databases are unclear. All of these databases include non peer reviewed literature despite the widely held view to the contrary. Further, none of the databases are all inclusive.8 All that a medical researcher needs is a bibliographic database, with powerful storage and retrieval system that will archive the scientific content, identify it with appropriate tags, and is open accessible. PREDATORY publishers- dark side of publishing Recently there is increase in the research publications in all scientific fields for various reasons. The Chronicle of Higher Education published an article March 4, 2012 titled “Predatory’ Online Journals Lure Scholars Who Are Eager to Publish.”8 It describes the black side of open access publications. Many new publishers and journals have emerged during last decade to take advantage of scholars who want to publish their work in open access journals. Some of these “predatory” publishers have set up journals to earn money rather than advance scholarship. These publishers have exploited the model of “open access”, just to gain money while compromising the quality of the research work. Usually indexing databases provide the facilities of the retrieval system to the publisher. Only few criteria are there to evaluate the journal like impact factor, H index, ICV etc with their much criticised pro and cons. The term "predatory open access" was conceived by University of Colorado Denver librarian and researcher Jeffrey Beall. As he was invited by many


to submit articles or join the editorial board of previously unknown journals, he started researching open access publishers and created Beall's List of Predatory Publisher.9. To start with open-access publishing, such as the Journal of Medical Internet Research and BioMed Central, were promising. Over years they helped to inspire a new movement that has changed academic publishing for the better, lowered costs and expanded worldwide access to the latest research. Then predatory, dishonest, professional publishers, started to publish counterfeit journals to exploit the open-access model in which the author pays handsome fee. These predatory publishers lack transparency with the sole intention of making money. Their websites also closely resemble those of legitimate online publishers, and they publish articles of poor quality. This is more observed in India, where new predatory publishers or journals come out almost each week. This is because of the increasing demand India and its neighbouring countries need to get published to build strong “curricular Vitae’’ and promotion. This demand promote such journals at the expense of quality with unworthy scientific research.10

REFERENCES 1. A Short Guide To Abstracting & Indexing Services for Society Journals, Society Zone, Issue 9, Fall 2009; http://www.springer.com/societies+%26+publishing+partners/s ociety+%26+partner+zone?SGWID=0-173202-12-632299-0 2. Balhara YP. Publication: An essential step in research. Lung India 2011; 28:324-5 3. Balhara YP; Indexed Journal: What does it mean?; Lung India 2012; 29:193 4. Regazzi JJ and Aytac S; 2007; Author perceived quality characteristics of science, technology and medicine (STM) journals; Brighton Association of Learned and professional Society Publishers (ALPSP), 80 pp 5. Shokraneh F, Ilghami R, Masoomi R, Amanollahi A., How to select a journal to submit and publish your biomedical paper? Bioimpacts. 2012; 2(1):61-8. Doi: 10.5681/bi.2012.008. Epub 2012 Mar 23 6. K Satyanarayan, Anju Sharma, Biomedical journals in India: Some critical concerns, Indian J Med Res 132, august 2010, pp119-122 7. Maqbool H Jafary, Chief Editor, Pakistan journal of medical sciences visibility of medical Journals: Is indexation in Medline crucial? Proceeding of national conference on medical editing, pp 87-91 8. Kejariwal D, Mahawar KK. Is Your Journal Indexed in PubMed? Relevance of PubMed in Biomedical Scientific Literature Today. WebmedCentral MISCELLANEOUS 2012; 3(3): WMC003159 9. Butler, Declan (2013-03-27). "Investigating journals: The dark side of publishing" Nature 495 (7442): 433–435 10. J.Beall, Predatory publishers are corrupting open access, International weekly journal of science, vol489, issue 7415, article
