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Editorial Biomedical research platforms and their infl uence on article submissions and journal rankings: An update. Giuseppe Lippi1, Emmanuel J Favaloro2, Ana-Maria Simundic3 1U.O. Diagnostica Ematochimica, Dipartimento di Patologia e Medicina di Laboratorio, Azienda Ospedaliero-Universitaria di Parma, Parma, Italy 2Department of Haematology, Institute of Clinical Pathology and Medical Research (ICPMR), Westmead Hospital, NSW, Australia 3University Department of Chemistry, Sestre Milosrdnice University Hospital Center, Zagreb, Croatia *Corresponding author: [email protected] Abstract After being indexed in 2006 in EMBASE/Excerpta Medica and Scopus, and later in Science Citation Index Expanded and Journal Citation Reports/ Science Edition citation databases, Biochemia Medica launched a new web page and online manuscript submission system in 2010, and celebrated its fi rst Impact Factor in the same year. Now, starting from the end of the 2011, the journal will also be indexed in PubMed/Medline, and this will contribute to increase the journal’s exposure and accessibility worldwide. This is an important breakthrough, which is expected to further increase the popularity of the journal, as well as the submission rate and citations. Although several tools are currently available as Web resources to retrieve scientifi c articles, whose functioning and basic criteria are thought to be rather similar, the functionality, coverage, notoriety and prominence may diff er widely. The recent indexing ofBiochemia Medica in PubMed/Medline has thereby given us the opportunity to provide a timely update on bio- medical research platforms, their relationship with article submissions and journal rankings. Key words: impact factor; indexing; Medline Received: January 9, 2012 Accepted: January 21, 2012 Background After initially being indexed in 2006 in EMBASE/ portunity to provide an update on biomedical re- Excerpta Medica and Scopus (1), and later in Sci- search platforms and their relationship with article ence Citation Index Expanded and Journal Citation submissions and journal rankings. Reports/Science Edition citation databases (2), Bio- chemia Medica launched a new web page and on- Biomedical research platforms line manuscript submission system in 2010 (3), and celebrated its fi rst Impact Factor in the same year Several tools are currently available as Web re- (4). Beginning November 23, 2011 Biochemia Medi- sources to retrieve scientifi c articles. Although the ca is now also indexed in PubMed/Medline, and basic concepts underlying the diff erent biomedi- this will contribute to increase the journal’s expo- cal research platforms are similar, the functionality, sure and accessibility worldwide. This is expected coverage, notoriety and prominence may diff er to further increase the journal’s Impact Factor val- widely (Table 1). Some of the most representative ue, which last year remarkably increased from will be briefl y discussed in the following section. 0.660 to 1.085, whilst those of most other labora- tory medicine journals has instead declined (5). PubMed/Medline The above factors represent major breakthroughs PubMed, conventionally known also as “Medline”, for Biochemia Medica, and have provided the op- contains so far more than 21 million citations for Biochemia Medica 2012;22(1):7–14 7 Lippi G. et al. Biomedical research platforms and their infl uence on article submissions and journal rankings TABLE 1. List of medical and scientifi c search engines. authors’ name (author’s last name plus initials List of medical and scientifi c search engines without punctuation) and and/or journals (journal name or abbreviation). The special Clinical Study PubMed/MEDLINE. Available at: -d http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubme Categories search fi lters are useful to limit retrieval ISI Web of Science. Available at: to citations of articles reporting studies carried out - https://www.isiknowledge.com with specifi c methodologies (e.g., applied clinical Scopus SciVerse. Available at: -s http://www.info.sciverse.com/scopu research). Citations are fi rst shown as 20 items per Google Scholar. Available at: page, the most recently entered citations being -/ http://scholar.google.it ranked fi rst. The output of the search is initially dis- Journal / Author Name Estimator (JANE). Available at: played in a summary format, but by clicking on the -/ http://www.biosemantics.org/jane title of the article the abstract can be visualized, Unbound MEDLINE. Available at: -m http://www.unboundmedicine.com/medline/eb when this is available. Moreover, although the Medscape. Available at: search result in most cases does not include the -m. http://www.medscape.co full text of the journal article (exceptions are free BioMed Central. Available at: full text articles available in PubMed Central), the -m. http://www.biomedcentral.co abstract display of the citation usually provides a Bibli Med. Available at: link to the full text, typically from the publisher’s -r http://biblimed.f web site. The Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) is Pubfocus. Available at: -m. http://pubfocus.co the NLM controlled vocabulary thesaurus used for PubGet. Available at: indexing PubMed citations, which can also be -m http://pubget.co used to fi nd terms such as subheadings, publica- Scientifi c Electronic Library. Available at: tion types, supplementary Concepts and pharma- -p http://www.scielo.org/php/index.ph cological actions. The search result can also be or- Highwire. Available at: dered according to specifi c parameters such as -/ http://highwire.org date of publication, relevance, authors, source title and type of article. To comply with the increasing biomedical literature from Medline, life science diff usion of medical and scientifi c applications for journals as well as online books. PubMed is man- smartphones (6), the PubMed text version is also aged by the U.S. National Library of Medicine designed to work with a variety of handheld, Palm (NLM), which is the world’s largest medical library. Powered and Pocket PC handheld computers. In PubMed provides access to bibliographic informa- particular, PubMed Mobile has the same search tion that includes Medline citations (a database functionality and content as the typical Web ver- that contains citations from the late 1940s to the sion and all search terms and fi elds work identical- present, with additional older material), as well as ly. Interestingly, daily HTML feeds can also be easily articles on plate tectonics or astrophysics from cer- set up with specifi c MeSH or keywords. PubMed tain Medline journals (usually general science and has also an interesting “spin-off ”, i.e., Pubfocus, chemistry journals, for which the life sciences arti- which performs statistical analysis of the PubMed/ cles are indexed for Medline), citations made avail- Medline searches enriched with additional infor- able before the date that the journal was selected mation, gathered from journal rank database and for indexing as well as additional life science jour- forward referencing database. nals that submit full text to PubMed Central and receive a qualitative review by NLM. Basically, cita- ISI Web of Science tions may include links to full-text content also Thomson Reuters (formerly Institute for Scientifi c from PubMed Central and publisher web sites. Information - ISI) Web of Knowledge is a premier Once the key concepts for the search have been research platform for information in the sciences, identifi ed, these can be entered in the search box social sciences, arts, and humanities. The specifi c as a general medical query, one or more keywords, subsection “Web of Science” provides researchers, Biochemia Medica 2012;22(1):7–14 8 Lippi G. et al. Biomedical research platforms and their infl uence on article submissions and journal rankings administrators, faculty, and students with quick, other library resources, an author Identifi er to au- powerful access to the world’s leading citation da- tomatically match an author’s published research tabases, covering over 10,000 of the highest im- including the h-index, a citation tracker to simply pact journals worldwide, including Open Access fi nd citations in real-time and HTML feeds. The ba- journals and over 110,000 conference proceedings. sic search can be carried out directly from the Current and retrospective coverage in the scienc- homepage, whereas the advanced search uses es, social sciences, arts, and humanities are cov- Boolean operators for title, abstract, author key- ered since the 1900s. The most useful search fi elds word, index keywords and author fi elds. The re- include topic, titles, authors, researcher ID, publi- sults are displayed in a tabular format that can be cation name, and document type. The search out- easily sorted according to various parameters (e.g., put is fi rst shown as an abbreviated record format, date, relevance, authors, source title and number including at the top of the page the selected time- of citations) and contains additional information span and any selected data restrictions such as besides those available in other scientifi c search document types and languages. Additional inter- engines such as h-index and citations to the mate- esting tools include the “citing articles count” (i.e., rial retrieved. Likewise Pubed/Medline, an iPhone the total number of citations for all citation data- application of Scopus SciVerse is also available. bases and all years in the all databases search func- tion in Web of Science or BIOSIS Citation Index), Google Scholar