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      Promotion of the Journal of Exercise Rehabilitation to the international level based on journal metrics

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          Abstract

          The aim of this study was to use journal metrics to confirm that the Journal of Exercise Rehabilitation has been promoted to the international level after changing its language to English-only in April 2013. Journal metrics, including the number of articles per year, countries of authors, countries of the editorial board members, impact factor, total citations, and the Hirsch index, were counted or calculated based on the journal homepage and the Web of Science Core Collection in December 2016. The number of citable articles was 52, 62, 59, and 74 in 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016, respectively. All authors were from Korea in 2013 and 2014, but the authors were from 11 countries in 2015 and from 16 countries in 2016. The editorial board members are currently from 11 countries. The impact factor without self-citations for 2015 was 0.912, corresponding to a Journal Citation Reports ranking of 32.9% out of 82 journals in the category of sport sciences. The total citations increased from 1 in 2013 to 130 in 2016. This journal was cited in 208 other source journals in the Web of Science. The citing authors were from 47 countries. The Hirsch index was 7, and review articles were the most frequently cited articles. The above results show a rapid development to the international level over 4 years. The introduction of digital technology to journals to improve their accessibility across multiple platforms is recommended.

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          Revision of the instructions to authors to require a structured abstract, digital object identifier of each reference, and author’s voice recording may increase journal access

          Sun Huh (2013)
          In February 2013, I received a message from a database that the Journal of Educational Evaluation for Health Professions (JEEHP) was reviewed for its inclusion in the database. The following are representative of the comments received: Citedness is below expectations; There is no international diversity among authors; Only one issue is published per year; Author instructions need to be described in greater detail. Among our responses to these comments, revised instructions to authors will take effect on May 1, 2013 so that the papers beginning in May 2013 conform to the revised instructions. JEEHP follows Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals: Writing and Editing for Biomedical Publication (http://www.icmje.org/) if otherwise not described in the instructions to authors; however, instead of simply following the Uniform Requirements, there are several stipulations that would be worth explicitly specifying in the instructions to authors. The three most important changes to the instructions to authors are moving from a non-structured to a structured abstract, requiring a digital object identifier (DOI) at the end of each reference, and requiring the authors’ explanation of their paper in an audio recording of the author speaking or video recording in their mother tongue or in English. A structured abstract has gradually become the rule rather than the exception in medical journals. Structuring an abstract with sections such as Purpose, Methods, Results, and Conclusion, not only provides more systematic information to readers, but assists authors in determining the most important content to include in the abstract. Since most researchers are too busy to read the full text of papers, they usually read only abstracts. A concise and lucid purpose and conclusion in the abstract will lead readers to move to the full text when they find it particularly relevant. Audio or video descriptions of the contents will also increase access to the content for those with disabilities, who share the author’s mother tongue, or who simply enjoy learning in a different modality. Making the audio or video streaming of the authors available on the homepage will promote the content of the papers to internet visitors. Although JEEHP is an international journal indexed in PubMed, PubMed Central, and CINAHL, the number of submissions has remained rather small. In 2012, I received 33 unsolicited manuscripts, and the acceptance rate was 36.4%. The published paper’s authors were from Korea, Nepal, Malaysia, United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Fiji, New Zealand, the United States, and the United Kingdom. The 2012 SCIE impact factor manually calculated from Web of Science was 1.222 when only citable papers such as reviews, research articles (original articles), and brief reports were considered. This value is expected to increase year by year. It has been possible by the help of worldwide good reviewers. JEEHP is an online only journal with volume (year) and article number but no issue number. It is not yet possible to publish this journal with multiple issues that can be easily seen in print journals, since the papers are published as soon as possible after acceptance. Beginning in 2013, social network services such as Facebook or Twitter links, QR codes, Pubreader, and an app for the iPad were added. A mobile web version of JEEHP will appear soon. This year, CrossMark, Fundref, and ORCID provided by CrossRef will be introduced to JEEHP. I will do my best to solicit more manuscripts from a variety of countries to provide invaluable information to medical health professionals worldwide. JEEHP has the merits of gold open access according to the Creative Commons Attribution License and no article processing charge on the author side, two significant incentives to researchers to select JEEHP as a journal for submission. Being indexed in a variety of international databases might be an even greater incentive. This year, JEEHP reached its tenth year of publication. The most recent revision of the instructions to authors is just one more step in a decade-long effort to reach the goal of becoming an outstanding journal focused on disseminating the latest knowledge on educational evaluation across the health professions and around the world.
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            How Journal Metrics Illustrate the Transformation of Archives of Plastic Surgery into an International Journal

            Sun Huh (2014)
            In 2012, the official journal of the Korean Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons began publishing exclusively in English and changed its name to Archives of Plastic Surgery (APS). Through the contributions of the Editorial Board, reviewers, authors, and journal staff, APS has quickly transformed into a truly international journal, with authors and studies originating from all over the world. Journal metrics-such as the number of articles, impact factor, citation frequency, citations per two years, Hirsch index, country of authors, and country of citing articles' authors-are often used to demonstrate quality and influence in academic publication. Although such metrics cannot fully describe the quality of research and ideas reported by the journal, the depth and breadth of the international academic community that has formed around its texts and practices, or the influence of the journal's content on clinical practice, they still provide important insights about the growth and development of a journal. Thus all these journal metrics were gathered and analyzed from Web of Science, SCImago Journal Ranking, Scopus, and KoreaMed Synapse. The proportion of the original articles that reported on research that had been funded was also calculated. The methods are the same as those used previously to analyze other journals based in Korea [1,2]. The results were interesting. The number of citable articles in Korean or English from the journal under its old title, Journal of the Korean Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons (JKSPRS), from Volume 18 (1991) to Volume 38 (2011) was 2,585. The number of articles from APS from Volume 39 (2012) to Volume 41 No. 4 (2014) was 352. From Web of Science, the number of citations of 21 years' worth of JKSPRS was 217 citations of 149 articles; strikingly, in less than 2 years' worth of APS publication, 280 citations of 135 APS articles occurred (up to September 2014). Therefore, the average number of citations per article for JKSPRS was 0.084, while that of APS was an order of magnitude higher, at 0.795. The citations per document (2 years) for APS from the 2013 SCImago Journal and Country Ranking, was 1.074. The SCImago Journal Rank indicator (SJR) was 0.424, which is a ranking of 178 out of 379 surgery journals (47.0%). The countries of authors published in APS from January 2012 to September 2014 are presented in Fig. 1. The countries of authors who cited APS from 2012 to September 2014 in Web of Science are shown in Fig. 2. The Hirsch index from Web of Science was 6 (Table 1), that from Scopus was 7 (Table 2), and that from DOI/CrossRef was 8 (Table 3). The number of funded research articles out of 199 original articles was 34 (17.1%). For many years, the quality of the papers published in JKSPRS was not properly reflected in the journal metrics, not only because many articles were written in Korean, but also because the journal had not been indexed in the appropriate platforms. On the other hand, although 305 out of 387 articles published in APS during the study period were written by Korean researchers, with the English-language journal's broader exposure, its authors have been affiliated with 33 countries (Fig. 1). Furthermore, the authors who cited APS were from 35 countries (Fig. 2), which shows that APS has excellent exposure to readers around the world. The difference in the Hirsch index calculated from each of three databases, Web of Science, Scopus, and DOI/CrossRef, originated from the number of journals and papers covered by the databases. Usually the Hirsch index from DOI/CrossRef is the highest, which corroborates the results found for APS [3]. The proportion of funded articles was rather low, which was not surprising, given that much of APS addresses clinical phenomena, not basic studies. Among the factors that have influenced the radical change in journal metrics, the change in the language might be the most important. In addition, in order to encourage citation by other researchers, the platform has been found to be more important than the open access policy [4]. Since PubMed is the most important database platform in medical research, being listed in PubMed is critical for exposure to an international readership. When the journal is chosen to be included in PubMed Central, it can be indexed in PubMed. PubMed Central only accepts medical journals in English with an acceptable quality of Journal Article Tag Suite XML [5,6,7]. If a journal is not included in PubMed Central, being indexed in PubMed requires being selected for MEDLINE, which has become increasingly exclusive. Thus it is particularly valuable that APS was chosen for PubMed Central on its own merits, including its language and quality. Almost all major medical journals in Korea, including APS, have adopted the following policies and processes: first, changing the language of the journal to English only [8]; second, publishing with open access according to Creative Commons licensing guidelines; third, producing full-text Journal Article Tag Suite (JATS) XML; fourth, depositing XML files to PubMed Central and ScienceCentral; fifth, asking PubMed Central to deposit XML in PubMed; and finally, actively recruiting authors from outside Korea. APS has been searchable from PubMed Central and PubMed since July 12, 2012. APS has already provided a digital object identifier, CrossMark, and FundRef for each article [9,10], so Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) is the next tool to be included [11], following international standards. Audio or video files should also be posted on the APS website to increase the visibility of the articles [12]. The development of APS up to its present level of quality and exposure has been made possible by changing the language of the journal to English, producing full-text JATS XML files, and depositing those files to PubMed Central. Therefore, the decision of the Board of Directors of the Korean Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons in 2011 to change the language of the official journal from Korean to English only beginning with the 2012 issues was a milestone in the journal's history.
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              How much is Journal of Educational Evaluation for Health Professions promoted based on journal metrics?

              Sun Huh (2015)
              Since its launch in 2004, the Journal of Educational Evaluation for Health Professions (JEEHP) has been widely read and cited by worldwide educators in the health professions fields. In the year 2015, the 12th volume was published. As the second editor following first editor Chan-Il Park, a pathologist and top-notch editor, I have done my best to edit this journal superbly and to disseminate its content to the world. I aimed to trace the journal’s position in the worldwide journal network to determine, based on journal metrics, how much it has been promoted during the past 12 years. The brief history of journal’s management is also described. I hypothesize that JEEHP is comparable to international journals, at least within the scope of bibliometrics. The first JEEHP issue was published in December 2004. The launch of the new journal was suggested and promoted by the second President of the National Health Personnel Licensing Examination Board of Korea, Sang-Ho Baik, an anatomist and great medical educator in Korea. Dr. Baik asked Dr. Park to take the position of editor. Dr. Park, a leading editor, elegantly edited and published first volume containing single issue, which was published in Korean. In 2005, Dr. Park proposed that I take over his job as editor of JEEHP. I accepted his proposal and edited volume two, which also contained a single issue. Although it was possible to collect manuscripts, thanks to financial support for articles from the National Health Personnel Licensing Examination Board of Korea, it was difficult to publish more than one issue per year due to limited manuscript submissions. At the time, few educators in health professions conducted study of educational evaluation in Korea. I decided to change the publication language of the journal to English and to publish it exclusively online in 2006. To my knowledge, JEEHP is Korea’s first online-only scholarly journal without print copies equipped with eISSN in Korea. After changing the language of the journal to English, submissions decreased dramatically; however, because it is now an online-only journal, there is no need to collect manuscripts for regular publication. Any accepted manuscript can be published immediately after its acceptance. Despite decrease in submissions, potential existed for promotion of the journal to international standing by way of the PubMed Central (PMC, http://pubmedcentral.org) platform, “a free full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine.” JEEHP could be deposited into PMC by providing PMC XML. For this reason, I began to study PMC XML in 2006, and eventually produced a complete form of PMC XML. The journal was deposited to PMC starting on February 17, 2009, and was also searchable from PubMed. Subsequently, submissions from outside Korea increased, marking 2009 as the year of JEEHP’s new launch as an international journal. Since 2007, its CrossRef XML files have been deposited to CrossRef, assigning JEEHP with a digital object identifier (DOI). Since September 1, 2008, it has been indexed in KoreaMed (http://koreamed.org/) and KoMCI (http://komci.org/). On February 12, 2009, it was added to the Directory of Open Access Journals (http://doaj.org/). On January 2, 2013, it was listed in the CINAHL database (https://www.ebscohost.com/nursing/products/cinahl-databases/cinahl-complete) and with EBSCO (https://www.ebscohost.com/). In September 2013, it began to be deposited to ScienceCentral (http://e-sciencecentral.org/), a unique JATS-based full-text database that provides translation into 80 languages. In December 2015, it was found to be listed in the Emerging Sources Citation Index maintained by Thomson Reuters (http://wokinfo.com/products_tools/multidisciplinary/esci/). These domestic and international databases are windows to the world’s educators, allowing the journal to propagate more widely. With respect to journal metrics, the following were analyzed based on the journal’s biography and the Web of Science Core Collection database [cited 2015 Dec 25]: number of citable and non-citable articles; number of research articles supported by grants; editorial board members’ countries; authors’ countries; citing authors’ countries; source title of citing articles; impact factor (two year); total citation; and Hirsch index. Analysis methods were the same as those used in previous analysis of other journals [1-3]. Results were as follows: Number of citable articles up to December 25, 2015 was 141; that of non-citable articles was 33 (Fig. 1). Number of research studies or original articles supported by grants was 27 (29.0%) of 83 research articles (Fig. 2). In 2004, editorial board members were from one country, while in 2015 they were from 16 countries on six continents. Authors in 2004 were from one country only and from 22 countries in 2015. The origin countries of authors who most frequently publish articles in the journal were Korea (59), the United States (30), the United Kingdom (13), and India (9) (Fig. 3). Fifty five out of 174 articles were cited at least once by the Web of Science Core Collection database. Authors who cited JEEHP were from 27 countries; of these, the United States (22), Korea (18), the United Kingdom (10), and Canada (10) were top ranking (Fig. 4). Source titles citing JEEHP were from 45 journals. Of these 45, ten sources cited three or more times: Medical Teacher (7), Journal of the Korean Medical Association (7), BMC Medical Education (5), Academic Medicine (5), Nurse Education Today (3), Medical Education (3), and the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia (3) (Fig. 5). Impact factors manually calculated from 2012 to 2015 were 1.300, 0.667, 0.211, and 0.439, respectively. Total citations was one in 2008; it soared to 31 in 2015 (Fig. 6). Hirsch index was five. Publication types of highly cited articles (articles cited five or more times) were reviews (3), research articles (1), technical reports (1), and editorials (1) (Table 1). I was surprised by these results. Based on metrics, the journal’s growth to international standing is remarkable. I believe that the English-only language policy enacted in 2006 was successful from the perspective of journal metrics and networking. At first, the number of submissions and publications increased dramatically from 2014 although there was a decreased number of submissions at the early stage of language change. In 2015, I received 97 submissions; 31 manuscripts were published, and six are under revision or in press. Acceptance rate was thus 38.1% (in contrast, nine manuscripts were submitted in 2005, all of which were accepted). The increase to 16 editorial board member countries may have caused the increase in number of author countries to 22 in 2015. The so-called platinum open access policy, which imposes no author-side article processing charge, may also have contributed to variety in author countries. Citation in 27 countries and 45 source titles show the international usefulness of the journal’s content. This may also be influenced by JEEHP’s status as an open access journal indexed in PubMed, PubMed Central, and other international databases. The effect of indexing in PubMed on citation is a known phenomenon concerning domestic journals (those not published by global commercial publishing companies or based in North America or Western Europe)[4]. Impact factor can be calculated using data from 2012. Before that, citation frequency was negligible. The first value from 2012, manually calculated from the Web of Science Core Collection, was 1.300 and in 2015, it decreased to 0.439. This may be a result of the increase in articles in 2014, few of which were cited. The total citation value of 31 in 2015 inspired me, since scientific education is not a rapidly evolving field. I would be delighted if a significant number of archived articles could be used by educators. The Hirsch index results were somewhat different from the other analyses. Typically, review articles or original articles received the highest citation [1-3]. An editorial on journal policy is included among the highest-cited articles in JEEHP, along with a technical report on the clinical skills test of the Korean Medical Licensing Examination. What were the important events affecting JEEHP’s promotion to present such excellent metrics results? Introduction of digital standards such as Journal Article Tag Suite XML [5], CrossRef/DOI, CrossMark, FundRef [6], text and data mining [7], open researcher and contributor ID (ORCID) [8], and QR code [9] may have made major contributions to this change [10]. Because researchers and educators often read journal articles via the web nowadays, digital presentation of articles is an essential aspect of journal publishing, and I have typically been an early adopter of digital journal standards. Of course, the most important aspect is the journal content itself; therefore, I am grateful to the contributing and citing authors of my journal for their role in promotion of JEEHP. I also apologize most humbly to the many researchers whose submissions have not been accepted due to lack of reviewers, article amount limits, or insufficient understanding. I dare say that my hypothesis, that JEEHP is comparable to international journals, can be accepted.
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                Author and article information

                Journal
                J Exerc Rehabil
                J Exerc Rehabil
                Journal of Exercise Rehabilitation
                Korean Society of Exercise Rehabilitation
                2288-176X
                2288-1778
                December 2016
                31 December 2016
                : 12
                : 6
                : 510-514
                Affiliations
                Department of Parasitology and Institute of Medical Education, College of Medicine, Hallym University, Chuncheon, Korea
                Author notes
                [* ]Corresponding author: Sun Huh, http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8559-8640, Department of Parasitology and Institute of Medical Education, Hallym University College of Medicine, 1 Hallimdaehak-gil, Chuncheon 24252, Korea, Tel: +82-33-248-2652, Fax: +82-33-241-1672, E-mail: shuh@ 123456hallym.ac.kr
                Article
                jer-12-6-510
                10.12965/jer.1632876.438
                5227310
                931a2ee8-e819-494f-b3d1-ce2aed0ae0c1
                Copyright © 2016 Korean Society of Exercise Rehabilitation

                This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

                History
                : 11 December 2016
                : 19 December 2016
                Categories
                Special Article

                bibliometrics,journal impact factor,language,republic of korea,sports

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