Impacts of the Journal Evaluation Program of the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors (KAMJE) on the Quality of the Member Journals

Abstract

BackgroundIn 1997 the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors (KAMJE) instituted a program to evaluate member journals. Journals that passed the initial evaluation were indexed in the KoreaMed. Here, we report changes in measures of quality of the KAMJE member journals during the last 20 years.MethodsQuality measures used in the study comprised 3 assessment categories; self-assessment by journal editors, assessment of the journals by KAMJE reviewers, and by Korean health science librarians. Each used detailed criteria to score the journals on a scale of 0 to 5 or 6 in multiple dimensions. We compared scores at baseline evaluation and those after 7 years for 129 journals and compared improvements in journals indexed vs. not-indexed by the Web of Science (Science Citation Index Expanded; SCIE).ResultsAmong 251 KAMJE member journals at the end of 2015, 227 passed evaluation criteria and 129 (56%) had both baseline and 7-year follow-up assessment data. The journals showed improvement overall (increase in median [interquartile range; IQR] score from baseline, 0.47 [0.64]; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.44–0.61; P < 0.001) and within each category (median [IQR] increase by editor's assessment, 0.17 [0.83]; 95% CI, 0.04–0.26; P = 0.007; by reviewer's, 0.45 [1.00]; 95% CI, 0.29–0.57; P < 0.001; by librarian's, 1.75 [1.08]; 95% CI, 1.77–2.18, P < 0.001). Before the foundation of KAMJE in 1996, there were only 5 Korean medical journals indexed in the MEDLINE and none in SCIE, but 24 journals in the MEDLINE and 34 journals in SCIE were indexed by 2016.ConclusionThe KAMJE journal evaluation program successfully contributes improving the quality of the member journals.

Half-Centennial History of Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society : Midway from Domestic Journal to International Journal with Good Influence in Global Neurosurgery

“…It cannot be denied that the enlistment in SCI was affected by the strengthening of the status of Korean medicine in general, but it is to be emphasized that it was possible because of such as improving the editorial system and meeting international standards of medical journals. This development was greatly aided by the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors (KAMJE), which helped in reorganizing the system in order to be enlisted in international data bases, such as PubMed, SCOUS and SCI, as in other Korean medical journals 7) .…”

Comprehensive Approach to Open Access Publishing: Platforms and Tools

“…The KAMJE runs KoreaMed Synapse (https://www.synapse.koreamed.org), which is a digital archive of 113 Korean open-access journals. In partnership with XMLink, the KAMJE has managed to advance the reference linking, article tagging with DOI, and XML conversion, all of which resulted in a 5-fold increase of PMC-archived Korean journals in the past decade 4546…”

Helming the Winds of Change While Standing on the Shoulders of Giants…

“…After some digging around, I found two articles [1,2] which I found quite useful and would like to share the same to all our readers, especially the regular contributors and patrons, so that we may all as a society introspect and perhaps anticipate some of the curves and bumps expected. These articles in no way whatsoever are meant to blame an individual or a team or a process but to constructively critique what we have and streamline the problems for a better future.…”