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| EDITORIAL |
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| Year : 2013 | Volume
: 4
| Issue : 2 | Page : 51-52 |
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Publishing in an indexed journal
Narasimman Swaminathan
Department of Physiotherapy, Father Muller Medical College, Mangalore, Karnataka, India
| Date of Web Publication | 16-Sep-2013 |
Correspondence Address:
Narasimman Swaminathan
Department of Physiotherapy, Father Muller Medical College, Mangalore - 575 002, Karnataka
India
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/0975-9727.118221
How to cite this article:
Swaminathan N. Publishing in an indexed journal. Muller J Med Sci Res 2013;4:51-2 |
"How many publications do you have?" "Is it indexed?" "What is the impact factor?"
These are all the common questions we hear among the academic community in these days.
Publishing scientific papers in journals is the most preferred way of disseminating the research findings, which is vital for advancement of any branch of science which includes biomedical research. When we look back into history, the first scientific periodical "Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society" was published by Henry Oldenberg, in 1965. Currently more than a million periodicals are assigned with International Standard Serial Number (ISSN). Merely getting an ISSN is not indexing! The Journal should be indexed in a bibliographic database.
| What Is a Database? | |  |
An organised collection of data is known as a database, which is created to manage huge quantity of information pertaining to a specific field. A journal which is indexed in any of the electronic database is considered to reach the professionals of concerned speciality easily. [1] Various bibliographic databases are indexing the health journals which include MEDLINE, PubMed, Scopus, Embase, IndMed, etc. These bibliographic databases allow end users to identify potential research findings in a simpler way. Every database follows a prescribed methods and process of indexing. Databases are aimed to disseminate the overwhelming increase in publications.
| PubMed | | |
PubMed is developed and maintained by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), at the US National Library of Medicine (NLM), located at the National Institutes of Health (NIHU), which comprises more than 22 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. [2]
| Medline | | |
MEDLINE is NLM's main database that contains over 19 million references in life sciences with a concentration on biomedicine. A characteristic feature of this premier database is that the records are indexed with Medical Subject Headings
(MeSH® ). PubMed is more up to date than Medline and has more citations. [3]
| Scopus | | |
It is a very large database of abstract and citation of peer reviewed literature covering most of the branches of health sciences. This database includes about 40 million records of 16,000 peer reviewed journals of 5,000 publishers. As on November 2012, 33% of the journals indexed in Scopus are pertaining to the field of health sciences. The major advantage of this database is that it has a strong international coverage with majority of records originating from Europe and the Asia Pacific region. [4]
| Embase | | |
It is another important database of biomedical sciences, which covers many journals which are not indexed with PubMed. Most of the journals indexed with Embase are from Europe and the languages of the bibliographies are other than English. Embase also covers most of the drug therapy journals. [5]
| Lilacs | | |
Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Literature coordinated by the Latin American and Caribbean Center on Health Sciences, which consist of 856 journals of 27 countries. [6]
| IndMED | | |
This database is established by the collaborative work of National Informatics Center and Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR). The purpose of IndMED is to index selected peer reviewed medical journals published from India. It supplements international indexing services like PubMed. It covers about 100 journals indexed from 1985 onwards. [7]
If the journal is indexed with any of the databases, it will increase visibility of the paper and better dissemination. Though the bibliographic indexes like PubMed, which provides better accessibility to the research findings, it has been observed that these databases represents a smaller portion of information available across the globe. There is a significant amount of journals published from developing countries like India, are not included in these indices due to strict criteria followed by these bibliographic index. These nonindexed medical journals are also equally important as they contain information which is of interest to the local community.
The importance of the nonindexed medical journals cannot be underrated as they provide valid data, which are specific to defined geographical area and cultural background. It is understood that the findings published in nonindexed journal may also influence the national health policy regulations. The time has come to strengthen the local database like IndMed in order to improve dissemination of research findings among the healthcare providers. [8]
The authors should be aware that publishing in the national journals which are indexed in any of the bibliographic indices are of worth. An effort has to be made by all the editors to make their journal indexed in the database, at least in the national bibliographic index. It is strongly believed that it will improve the quality of research and transparency by attracting the critique from scientific community.
| References | | |
| 1. | LaPorte RE, Marler E, Akazawa S, Sauer F, Gamboa C, Shenton C, et al. The death of biomedical journals. BMJ 1995;310:1387-90. 
[PUBMED] |
| 2. | Available from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ [Last accessed on 2013 May 24].
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| 3. | Available from: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/medline.html. [Last accessed on 2013 May 24].
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| 4. | Available from: http://www.info.sciverse.com/scopus. [Last accessed on 2013 May 24].
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| 5. | Available from: http://www.embase.com/. [Last accessed on 2013 May 22].
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| 6. | Available from: http://lilacs.bvsalud.org/en/. [Last accessed on 2013 May 22].
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| 7. | Available from: http://indmed.nic.in/. [Last accessed on 2013 May 24].
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| 8. | Druss BG, Marcus SC. Growth and decentralization of the medical literature: Implications for evidence-based medicine. J Med Libr Assoc 2005;93:499-501.
[PUBMED] |
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