Background:
Local and regional scientific journals are important factors in bridging gaps in healthknowledge translation in low-and middle-income countries. We assessed indexing, citationsand publishing standards of journals from the Eastern Mediterranean region.
Methods:
For journals from 22 countries in the collection of the Index Medicus for the EasternMediterranean Region (IMEMR), we analyzed indexing in bibliographical databases andcitations during 2006-2009 to published items in 2006 in Web of Science (WoS) andSCOPUS. Adherence to editorial and publishing standards was assessed using a specialchecklist.
Results:
Out of 419 journals in IMEMR, 19 were indexed in MEDLINE, 23 in WoS and 46 inSCOPUS. Their impact factors ranged from 0.016 to 1.417. For a subset of 175 journals withavailable tables of contents from 2006, articles published in 2006 from 93 journals received2068 citations in SCOPUS (23.5% self-citations) and articles in 86 journals received 1579citations to in WoS (24.3% self-citations) during 2006-2009. Citations to articles camemostly from outside of the Eastern Mediterranean region (76.8% in WoS and 75.4% inSCOPUS). Articles receiving highest number of citations presented topics specific for theregion. Many journals did not follow editorial and publishing standards, such addressingrequirements about the patient’s privacy rights (68.0% out of 244 analyzed), policy onmanaging conflicts of interest (66.4%), and ethical conduct in clinical and animal research(66.4%).
Conclusion:
Journals from the Eastern Mediterranean are visible in and have impact on global scientificcommunity. Coordinated effort of all stakeholders in journal publishing, includingresearchers, journal editors and owners, policy makers and citation databases, is needed tofurther promote local journals as windows to the research in the developing world and thedoors for valuable regional research to the global scientific community.