Revista Habanera de Ciencias Médicas: a tittle of publication to everyone´s hand

EDITORIAL

 

Revista Habanera de Ciencias Médicas: a publication addressed to Everyone

 

Revista Habanera de Ciencias Médicas: una publicación al alcance de todos

 

Ray Valdés Balbín

Universidad de Ciencias Médicas de La Habana. La Habana, Cuba.

 

 

Sixteen years have elapsed since a group of professors and researchers from the University of Medical Sciences of Havana decided to create a scientific electronic journal, with the purpose of disseminating research findings achieved by that Center, especially in the Basic Sciences field.

The hard work and commitment of the journal editors, members of the Editorial Board and sponsors, all under the successful guidance of its Executive Editor, Professor Fidel Cathcart Roca, enabled the gradual insertion of Revista Habanera de Ciencias Médicas in the main national and international catalogues, directories, repositories and databases, and increased the visibility, positioning and prestige of the papers published in the journal.

This is demonstrated by its admission in the Scientific Electronic Library (SciELO) in 2008 and in Latindex Catalogue, in 2010. Four years later, this tittle of publication was selected to be part of SciELO Citation Index in the Web of Science platform. More recently, in 2017, the journal was also included in the prestigious Scopus database, after several months of application.

These results are based on a well-defined publishing strategy set by its editors and Editorial Board, aimed at improving the quality standards of manuscripts and their visibility, based on good practices of scientific publications and quality or excellence indexes established by the main databases in the world nowadays, which represents an accurate guide for the journals' management.

Actions undertaken to increase the quality of manuscripts to be published included improving instructions for authors, appointing advising editors for certain types of papers or topics and increasing the frequency to six annual editions. However, we consider the process of experts’ scientific review the most important in the entire editorial process, as it guarantees not only the novelty and scientific rigor of information published which accredit our authors, but also the satisfaction of our specialized readers' expectations both in Cuba and in other parts of the world.

In addition, we highly value actions aimed at improving the visibility and positioning of the journal: updating of the Open Journal System platform with a new more identifying logo; creating static pages with statistics about the journal, and creating independent profiles to disseminate the journal's work in social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, among others. Authors are also urged to publish their scientific works in academic social networks and other dissemination platforms, which helps promote significant research findings, so necessary within the medical community.

The journal currently has a well-defined visibility strategy, allowing us to plan and develop safe actions with a view to its future application for prestigious databases such as MEDLINE or the Web of Science. In this sense, we value a recommendation made by the Content Selection and Advisory Board (CSAB) of Scopus to increase publications in English, and decided to create a Special Issue of Selections, including the translation to English language of some papers published in the journal during 2017, which we hope you appreciate and value.

We want to thank the members of the journal Editorial Board for their unconditional support to each action undertaken, in particular Ms. Mercedes Aluart Rodríguez for the excellent translation and editing work of published papers, as well as Gabriela Chacón Medina, student of Medicine from our University, for her significant cooperation to this special issue of Selections.

Indeed, the deepest gratitude will always be for the authors, who trust our work and send their research findings to the journal board. This special English edition, Selections 2017, is dedicated to them.

 

 

Received: October 28, 2017.
Approved: December 2, 2017.

 

Ray Valdés Balbín. Universidad de Ciencias Médicas de La Habana. La Habana, Cuba.
E-mail: rvaldes@infomed.sld.cu



Añadir comentario