Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Al-Busaidi, Ibrahim S

Titel

MEDLINE ® Indexing of the Sultan Qaboos University Medical Journal : A great leap forward for biomedical research and publishing in the Gulf region

Ist Teil von

• Sultan Qaboos University medical journal, 2017-02, Vol.17 (1), p.e123-124

Ort / Verlag

Oman: Sultan Qaboos University

Erscheinungsjahr

2017

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Sir, I would like to extend my congratulations to the Editorial team members, authors and reviewers of the SQUMJ for succeeding in securing indexing of the journal in MEDLINE® (National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland, USA), the largest and most prestigious biomedical bibliographic database worldwide.1,2 Published quarterly, SQUMJ is an internationally peer-reviewed journal which is also indexed in Scopus (Elsevier, Amsterdam, Netherlands), the Directory of Open Access Journals, the Al-Manhal database of Arab journals (Dubai, United Arab Emirates) and the World Health Organization (WHO) Index Medicus for the Eastern Mediterranean Region (IMEMR).3SQUMJ is a respected journal which attracts original high-quality submissions from Oman and other countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, as well as Europe, Australasia and North and South America.4 The achievement of acquiring indexing in MEDLINE® is indicative of the substantial improvements SQUMJ has made over the past decade. Furthermore, this accomplishment will help to increase the accessibility and visibility of research published in SQUMJ to a wider international scientific audience and is expected to result in a rise in the number of citations and submissions of original high-quality research.5 Hopefully, this will in turn put Oman and the GCC region on the world map of biomedical research and publishing. Around 636 IMEMR-indexed journals are published in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean region, originating from 22 countries and territories.6 There has been a gradual rise in the number of biomedical journals from this region and, as of December 2016, there were 52 peer-reviewed IMEMR-indexed biomedical journals published in the Gulf region.6 However, Middle Eastern and GCC-based journals are still confronted with several challenges, such as a lack of infrastructure and funding, limited access to new high-quality research due to low visibility and perceived poor peer-review standards.4,7,8 The National Library of Medicine grants MEDLINE® indexing following an application to the Literature Selection Technical Review Committee.9 This committee convenes three times per year and examines approximately 180 journals at each meeting; subsequently, after rigorous evaluation against pre-defined criteria, only 12–15% of considered journals are recommended for indexing.9 Unfortunately, few GCC-based journals meet the minimum requirements to be indexed in mainstream biomedical databases; including SQUMJ, only six of 5,634 MEDLINE®-indexed journals are from GCC countries.10 It has been argued that journals from this region tend to publish poor-quality papers due to substandard peer-review processes.7 Furthermore, due to a dominant culture of ‘publish or perish’ and its resulting implications, local researchers often submit their high-quality original research to international journals with higher impact factors.7,8 As such, journals from this region may find themselves competing with other recognised international journals for high-quality and original submissions.