Archives of Plastic Surgery Indexed in PubMed, PubMed Central and Scopus, and on the Road to Becoming an SCI(E) Journal

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Abstract

The Korean Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons, with over 2,000 members, is the third largest society of its kind, following those of the United States and Brazil. Based on this foundation, advances in surgical techniques have promoted the international status of Korean plastic surgery, which has led Korean plastic surgeons to actively participate in international conferences and volunteer work worldwide. Archives of Plastic Surgery (APS) is the official journal of the Korean Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons. Our journal has been published since the year 1974, with 179 issues through the year 2011, written fully in Korean, which led to difficulties in accessibility of the journal to international readers [1]. In 2012, the journal converted to a fully English form, with the new English title Archives of Plastic Surgery. Along with this transition, the journal was converted to open access, allowing readers to view or download the full text of all journal content without a subscription. For convenient online search of APS articles, the journal is indexed in representative databases such as PubMed, PubMed Central (PMC), Scopus, and Google Scholar. The strong intellectual and institutional value of the journal can be inferred from the fact that the journal was indexed in PMC and Scopus only a few months after its conversion to English. For APS to continue to increase its respectability, the next step would be to be indexed as an Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI[E]) journal. It is uncommon for journals dedicated to plastic surgery to be indexed in SCI(E). There are only 10 such plastic surgery journals worldwide: seven in the United States and one each in the UK, Canada, and Sweden. Notably, there are none in the Asia-Pacific region so far. There are cultural differences in plastic surgical practice, and when a plastic surgeon of the Asia-Pacific region submits a journal on new surgical concepts or technical approaches conforming to regional, geographical and cultural practices to the present SCI(E) journals, a lack of understanding of these underlying factors may lead to rejection of an otherwise excellent article. If APS attains SCI(E) status, it could provide a particularly valuable forum for the publication of articles on patients of different ethnic backgrounds from throughout the Asia-Pacific region, and could earn the status of the leading plastic surgery journal in this region. To be indexed as an SCI(E) journal, the impact factor (IF) is of utmost importance. In general, journals dedicated to plastic surgery do not have high impact factors. Of the 10 SCI(E) journals in this field, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery has the highest IF of 3.382 (2011), five of the journals have their IF in the 1s, and the remaining four journals have an IF below 1. The Journal of the Korean Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons, the former body of APS, has a calculated IF of 0.072 for the year 2011 (Table 1). Taking in to account that this was a journal in the Korean language with no open access, the new IF of the APS to be calculated in the year 2014 may be safely be predicted to be higher. To perform as the leading journal of the Asia-Pacific region, publishing as a co-official journal with the societies of other Asian countries is being planned, and given the Republic of Korea's status as an IT powerhouse, development of iPad and Android applications for the journal is also underway. The APS is making multilateral efforts to earn SCI(E) status, to become an internationally renowned journal, and to lead the plastic surgery profession of the Asia-Pacific region.

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Is Open Access

Evolution to a Renowned International Journal

Jeong Tae Kim (2012)

Since 1974 when the Journal of the Korean Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons was first published, 179 issues have been published. Considering that the Korean Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons (KSPRS) was founded in 1966, it is certain that many forerunners in the Society made a great effort to publish the Journal in its embryonic stage. We have finally published six issues every year since 1989, having earlier initiated semi-annual publication in 1976, triannual publication in 1982, and quarterly publication in 1983. I want to express appreciation for the ongoing effort of many editors-in-chief who maintained a tradition of the Journal worthy of its name as a professional journal of Korean specialists in plastic and reconstructive surgery [1]. As many of you know, the last Korean language issue of the Journal of the Korean Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons was published with 31 articles in the November 2011, and the Journal has finally been transformed into an English version beginning in 2012. After vigorous discussion and debate, the Journal has been renamed Archives of Plastic Surgery (Arch Plast Surg, APS). Moreover, over the past year, we have had an ongoing effort to establish all the infrastructure and resources necessary to successfully undertake this transition to an English language journal: to run a new website, maintain an English online submission system, appoint more than 20 international reviewers, secure more than 80 internal reviewers, and invite 10 review article contributors. Our journal now meets you with its new cover design and contents. Though there had already been increasing submission of English language articles to the original Korean Journal, our new English language Journal evidences the willingness of our academic society's progressive attitude toward pursuing globalization and keeping up with medical tourism, a task national in scope. I am eager for this English journal to bring good news to many members who generously participate in overseas volunteer work and plastic treatment, and to the Korean plastic surgeons who give lectures or presentations abroad. Also I earnestly want Archives of Plastic Surgery to build connections among plastic surgeons of various countries, including Asian countries other than Korea, to share information, and to encourage academic interaction. Archives of Plastic Surgery is intended to bring in the participation of more readers through monthly publication despite present principle of six publications a year with three peer reviews. This will open the door for article submission not only to those in Asian countries but also to plastic surgeons worldwide. Academically, Archives of Plastic Surgery will deal with subjects of all areas of cosmetic and reconstructive surgery, including basic science and experimental trials. APS, with its emphasis on the immediacy of thesis publication, seeks to peer-review on its principle of two-week evaluation and seeks to minimize the time gap of delivery of knowledge between authors and readers by rapidly determining whether to accept or reject. We are planning to mainly focus on Original Articles in Archives of Plastic Surgery and Case Reports will provide beneficial information to readers together with the newly-established category of Image. Furthermore, we intend to build close ties among readers by providing readers with useful information through the newly-organized sections of Communications or Book Reviews and intend to provide additional guidance to readers with announcements of international meetings. Our regulations for thesis submission were revised in October, 2011, to provide detailed information for contributors, and we especially hope that APS can provide a place for active debates and communication among plastic surgeons worldwide by encouraging their article submissions. We want authors to become thoroughly familiar with these submission regulations to avoid any disadvantage or delay in publication [2]. As an Editor-in-Chief, I would especially like to emphasize the ethical dimension of paper submission and the matter of patient consent. Because readers worldwide can now read the articles of APS with the conversion to an international journal, contributors need to take special care about research ethics, including overlapping publication or plagiarism. Now with this new first step of APS into international publication, content in locally-published academic journal articles overlapping with foreign journal articles will become painfully obvious and should be eradicated. With APS's publication of an English version of its journal, we are declaring a definite turning point in enforcing these ethical standards more rigorously by using CrossCheck or other tools that can search for duplications in content between a submitted article and articles already published around the world. Moreover, given the distinctiveness of plastic surgery, in that photos and videos contributed in a paper require patient agreement, an author should refer to the patient consent form recommended by the publication committee of APS. This is a matter that we all should be specially prepared for from now on, as it aims to prevent the possibility of conflicts including portrait rights in advance. Now Archives of Plastic Surgery has begun its intense preparation for qualification as an SCI(E) journal and listing in all sorts of indices such as PubMed Central. Soon, through expansion to an e-journal, we will also jump into open access, making our work more accessible to many readers and reaching new readers for the first time. We are about to see the rapid sharing of new knowledge through these various mediums. Lastly, I want to offer words of thanks to the members of the editorial board, reviewers, related corporations, and the office workers of publication committee for advising and helping the Korean Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons to publish this English language journal.

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Author and article information

Contributors

: Role: Deputy Editor, Archives of Plastic Surgery

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Arch Plast Surg

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Arch Plast Surg

Journal ID (publisher-id): APS

Title: Archives of Plastic Surgery

Publisher: The Korean Society of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons

ISSN (Print): 2234-6163

ISSN (Electronic): 2234-6171

Publication date (Print): November 2012

Publication date (Electronic): 14 November 2012

Volume: 39

Issue: 6

Pages: 583-584

Affiliations

Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Hanyang University Guri Hospital, Guri, Korea.

Author notes

Correspondence: Jang Hyun Lee. Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, Hanyang University Guri Hospital, 153 Gyeongchun-ro, Guri 471-701, Korea. Tel: +82-31-560-2330, Fax: +82-31-560-2338, pslee1999@ 123456hanmail.net

Article

DOI: 10.5999/aps.2012.39.6.583

PMC ID: 3517999

PubMed ID: 23233881

SO-VID: c15c4fc1-cc5a-4694-8351-21729e81e2d5

License:

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

History

Date received : 22 October 2012

Date revision received : 23 October 2012

Date accepted : 24 October 2012

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