Revista Colombia Médica, Vol. 41, No. 1, 2010, pp.
8
ELECTRONIC JOURNAL WITH OPEN
ACCESS: A TECHNOLOGICAL LEAP
JULIAN ALBERTO HERRERA, MD
Emeritus Professor and Head,
Department of Family Medicine,
Editor-in-Chief Colombia Médica
Code Number: rc10001
The Faculty of Health at Universidad
del Valle determined the conformation, functions, and competencies of
the Scientific and Editorial Committees of the Colombia Médica
journal (Resolution 099, July 07, 2009 HCF), permitting the naming of
the Committees for the Journal and the opening of the internal call to
name the Editor-in-Chief and the Associate Editors. Internal regulations
institutionally define the types of publications of greatest interest,
the frequency of each publication, and types of articles in regular and
supplementary numbers, internal operations aspects; define stimuli for
excellence in articles published with an award and editorial sanctions
for plagiarism of intellectual property and redundant publication.
In 1995, Colombia Médica adopted
the web publication, now in 2010, fifteen years later, we have adopted we
have adopted an agile and secure electronic management and publication system
with open access that will permit editors, peers, and authors to work together
from anywhere in the world, it will allow greater efficiency in real time
with significant reduction of administrative costs. This system is currently
used by 235 journals in the world, achieving more expeditious indexation
of their articles, which is attractive for local researchers and for the
international scientific community. For our Journal, this open electronic
system is a true technological leap.
The visibility of Colombia Médica
has been traditionally good, given that it is indexed in 23 international
data bases including the Institute for Scientific Information-ISI Thomson
web of knowledge, and because it is a free journal that is easily accessed
via the web. International Observatories have reported an increase in the
number of downloads of complete articles by three times in the last year,
which we feel is correlated to the four-fold increase of complete articles
published in English. These facts, along with growing publication requests
by authors from five continents are a stimulus for the Journal to publish
a greater number of complete articles in English.
The number of electronic downloads reported
by our counters and by international observatories quickly bring us closer
to the average for journals published by ELSEVIER, recognized for their
highest standards of scientific visibility and quality in the world. Due
to this
we are calling for an exchange of ideas and experiences at our home,
Universidad del Valle, during a national meeting of editors of health sciences
journals,
which undoubtedly permit our journals fulfill their goals.
The first two numbers for this year report
articles of interest for public health, like the critical analysis
of the effectiveness of health promotion in Latin America, health services
for
adolescents, and sexual health for adolescents. The articles also report
research
studies
in basic sciences, qualitative research, report of the Colombian
Muisca Mummy (S010-IX mummy), inflammatory response in children with severe
malnutrition,
population genetic studies, case reports, and brief communications.
We are
convinced that with the new open editorial system, the growing international
presence of our publications, and reports on themes of greater pertinence
in different areas of health we are set to compete in the difficult
and demanding world of scientific disclosure.
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