Stepping stones for the future—2022 major developments, journal metrics, and appreciation for reviewers

Abstract

The Year of the Tiger was projected to bring forth resilience and strength in the face of challenges [1]. This certainly rings true for the Korean Journal of Women Health Nursing (KJWHN), as we sought to follow the prior year's success in being indexed in Scopus. I wish to describe some noteworthy accomplishments of the journal in 2022 and share some messages for potential authors. Major developments in 2022On October 29, 2022, KJWHN received notice of its release to PubMed Central (PMC) live site three months after the interchange of the PMC Full-Participation Agreement on July 30, 2022 [2]. Therefore, it also became searchable in PubMed. While our September issue editorial projected that KJWHN would likely be the first non-English journal among Korean health-related journals to achieve PMC status, since its publication, the Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology (Taehan Yongsang Uihakhoe Chi) was cataloged as PubMed journal in the National Library of Medicine 14 days earlier than KJWHN. Meanwhile, KJWHN is the first non-English, non-MEDLINE nursing journal to be indexed in PMC and PubMed.On December 5, 2022, we received official notice of being indexed in Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), marking a significant milestone for KJWHN. We are delighted that published papers from 2020 (issue 1, volume 26) will be retroactively included in both PMC and Web of Science Core Collection databases in Korean and/or English. Out of more than 20 nursing journals in Korea, KJWHN is the second journal published in both Korean and English to achieve triple crown status in three databases, including PubMed, Web of Science Core Collection, and Scopus. The first one is the Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing (eISSN: 2093-758X ).Since being indexed in Scopus we have seen an increase in submissions: from 48 unsolicited manuscripts in 2021 to 63 in 2022. Now with triple crown status, I hope potential authors may consider KJWHN, especially those from a wider range of countries. High-quality studies that fit our aims and scope will be welcomed from authors over the world.We have continued to publish English manuscripts at a steady rate, which will be meaningful for international readers to access our published content. Our collaborative work with Statistics Korea also continued in 2022, resulting in a statistics paper [3].

Authenticity and rizz – What do they have to do with journal editors and researchers?

“…Table 1 presents data on manuscripts submitted to KJWHN as of December 10, 2023. The increase in unsolicited manuscripts, from 63 in 2022 [ 8 ] to 80 in 2023, suggests a boost from being indexed in PMC and the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) in 2022. A notable increase in international submissions was also seen.…”

“…A notable increase in international submissions was also seen. However, compared to seven unsuitable manuscripts in 2022 [ 8 ], a substantial increase of 30 manuscripts was also observable this year. These editorial or ‘desk’ rejections were largely due to incongruency with our aims and scope or concerns with high percentages in screening for plagiarism.…”

“…Related to these increases in numbers, however, the editorial board has experienced challenges with limitations in resources and time, and subsequent fatigue in editors and reviewers. This is likely to have affected the time from submission to acceptance, which was roughly 56 days in 2022 [ 8 ] but lagged slightly to 85 days in 2023.…”

“…In this line, a continuous challenge is to communicate more effectively with potential authors to recognize the journal’s aims and scope as well as our emphasis on international standards for scholarly work, e.g., advocating the use of reporting guidelines, clinical trial registration for human intervention studies, data sharing statements, etc. [ 8 ]. Another real challenge is to widen the pool of reviewers to facilitate the review process.…”