Editorial from Editorial Board Member [ Thoughts on Impact Factors and Editing of Medical Journals ]

Publishing original papers, reviews, editorials, letters-to-the-editor, and other types of scientific articles is a crucial stage of the research process impacting author and journal profiles and research institutions ranking. A high quality publication is a means of science communication and collaboration of scientists in their field of expertise [1]. Scholarly publications facilitate comprehensive discussion of scientific achievements and prospects of future research studies, including those with international collaboration. Importantly, articles published in biomedical journals can substantially change existing medical research and education practices and suggest better quality diagnostic, preventive and curative methods. Successful publications attracting attention of other researchers, stimulating new ideas, and becoming highly-cited boost authors' research profile, strengthen positions of institutions supporting scientific productivity, and increase chances to get funding for future research studies. Currently, in most countries, academic promotion of an individual, faculty recruitment, and distribution of financial sources for research are all subjected to the evaluation of a researcher/institution profile in worldrenown indexing systems and catalogues, such as PubMed, Scopus, Index Copernicus, Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). Over the past decades, indexes have proliferated to quantify impact of scientific productivity. Most notably, citation indexing and analysis proposed in 1950th by Eugene Garfield [2] have evolved into the expanded system of tracking citations and journal ranking through ISI [3]. Introduction of the Hirsch (h) index in 2005 [4] facilitated evaluation of an individual's research output and his/her scientific impact based on a number of highly-cited publications indexed on Scopus, ISI, or Google Scholar. The hindex is defined as h number of papers out of all publications of the author with at least h citations each. It was initially devised by J.E. Hirsch to distinguish physicists with a small number of high quality papers attracting more citations from those with a large number of papers without significant impact on the field. Simplicity of this index made it essential indicator of career advancement in other fields of science, as well as institution and journal ranking by Scopus and other leading abstracting/indexing databases. Meanwhile, several important limitations of the h-index became apparent, one being its inability to objectively measure scientific impact of young scientists and those with a small number of publications, particularly in the field of biomedicine [5]. It also became clear that comparisons between different levels of the h-index are appropriate only within certain fields of science (e.g., cardiovascular medicine, rheumatology, general medicine, etc.). Measurement of scientific impact practised over the past decades has become an objective link between standards of education and research output in academic institutions worldwide. Notably, citation analysis of scientific publications indexed on Scopus over a 5-year period has been incorporated into the system of annual ranking of academic institutions by prestigious The Times Higher Education QS World University Rankings [6]. Today, world universities competing for leading 600 places are those with the highest number of highly-cited papers (reflected in the so called citations per faculty score), which indirectly make these universities famous all over the world (this brings points for the so called academic peer-review) and attractive for international academic and research collaboration (international factors used for a university ranking include proportion of international faculty). In 2009, Universities of Harvard, Cambridge and Yale were among 3 top academic institutions with the highest scores.