The development of high impact national and regional journals in medicine and the health sciences

The international academic journal publishing landscape is complex and in continuous flux. Many Russian editors and publishers wish to bring their journals into the global mainstream and to develop internationally competitive profiles for their work. Bibliometric citation systems are one means by which the quality of journals, of articles and researchers, can be assessed, referenced and compared. Scopus and the Web of Science are two major and respected quality assurance systems for global publishing, within which many academic journals seek formal listings. These listings help develop a wider international profi for any journal. They also provide valuable data through which journals can benchmark their performance against all other journals in any subject fi In turn, this information helps to stimulate competition and quality improvement across the entire academic journal ecosystem.

Scopus provides a transparent and continually evolving evaluation and feedback system for journals seeking a listing and those journals that have already been listed within Scopus. An application for a Scopus listing is a process through which a journal is evaluated by several quantitative and qualitative criteria against global benchmarks. A successful listing can sometimes require a series of strategic insights and developments by editors and publishers over several years.

In this article, Dr David Rew, a practising clinician and the Subject Chair for Medicine to the Scopus Content Selection Advisory Board since 2009, distils the experience of evaluation of more than 2000 Medical and Health Sciences journals to guide as to what features and strategies give academic journals a better chance of long term success in the competitive world of global academic publishing.

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