Friday, March 29, 2024

Faruk Skenderi | Future of Medical Journals

by Editor

Faruk Skenderi is managing editor of Biomolecules and Biomedicine, formerly the Bosnian Journal of Basic Medical Science. A pathology specialist who did his PhD at University of Zagreb have has been editing the journal for more than 12 years. It began with an impact factor of 0.4 and, with his colleague Semir Vranić,  raised it to 3.7

This interview took place as part of the 30th anniversary celebrations of the Croatian Medical Journal

Watch the interview and enjoy the conversation 

In conversation with…Faruk Skenderi

What are the major challenges facing medical journals at present?

Its different for the big publishers and for the small publishers – association publishers- like our Journal.  There are more challenges for the small publishers that may not be in fortunate position of having financial means and financial support to increase their visibility.  For example, big publishers have a lot more dedicated support to increase the visibility of their authors. This puts small publishers in an unfavourable condition because authors will always want to have a greater impact. This is what gives us, as small publishers, problems in  attracting more quality authors to our journals, more quality authors and their papers. 

DMacA: It’s interesting to say that the authors look for visibility to get impact.  How do you balance impact and impact factor?

FS: I think nowadays, its not just impact factor that is the indicator of the quality of the study, there are other metrics that are important.  And the impact of social media has been significant in the last several years so, not only are citations a reflection of the quality of the study but, how much the study or the paper, is discussed and mentioned in news outlets or social media; Twitter and scientific networks such as Researchgate, Academia etc. So, what is the balance.  The balance between impact factor and impact is the number of the views of the article and also the number of citations.  There are also now new matrixes developed by the major publishing platforms such as Clarivate or Elsevier. They are inventing or developing new factors that will give a better insight into the importance of the study. We should wait for some time to see if these new metrics will be accepted by the academic community.

DMacA: Medicine and medical researchers are very conservative. Do you have difficulty persuading conservative authors and researchers that social media is important, and that these other metrics are important?

FS: Yes, as you said, and you’re right they are conservative about social media.  But the new generation of authors, the junior authors,  are much more adoptive for new technologies. Most of them have their own social media accounts and they will share their papers because our policy allows that, to do social media. However, what we are faced with, a challenge for our journals, is that a lot of papers come from China, and China is at the moment a separate ecosystem.  Social media in China is a completely different ecosystem than western social media so we have difficulty in raising the visibility of papers in China.

DMacA: One of the ways that smaller journals can compete is by being Innovative and taking different approaches to research. Are there any different approaches that you’ve tried that work, or that you think may be for the future?

FS: Yes, we discuss this with our editorial team each week. We have a meeting where we discuss the challenges and opportunities, and we are trying to be more flexible than major publishers; to be more responsive to authors compared to major publishers. But  we are also doing some things that the big publishers also do. We have a video summary so we allow our authors to increase their reputation by publishing in our Journal by publishing their video summaries on our blog.  We have a journal blog and, have a YouTube channel where they can explain their studies in plain words so it can be understood by the broader community, by a broad audience and not only the experts in their fields. We do not get papers that have a critical impact in the field -we are not that kind of journal. Those papers are reserved only for the best journals.  However, we sometimes get a good paper and we see the difference when we publish a good paper.  It really stands out and the journal also gains in reputation and such authors are much appreciated by our journals.  We publish their next papers- we offer publish them for free. We offer to increase their visibility through interview, through video summaries.  We also introduced this year a ‘most viewed’ and ‘most cited’ paper award so that in March we will count the views and the citations of the papers we published and we will give the Awards to the best papers.

DMacA: It seems that you work very hard to build a relationship with your authors. Is the relationship with authors an important component in the future development of medical journals?

FS: Yes, absolutely.  This is the difference that makes us small journals, maybe a better option for some authors. We do really care about authors but not only the authors. We do care about reviewers. This is another opportunity for the small journals to increase their reputation because, from our reviewers, we have a greater pool of potential authors. When we send a paper for review to the reviewer, we ask them if they are happy with how we treat them.  We ask them to submit their papers because, you know, it’s active approach. If we wait for authors it’s a passive approach and we wait for the good paper to come. But when we send a paper for review, we ‘choose’ our future authors.

DMacA: Tell me a little about the challenges that you face with the journal?

FS: There are five or six big publishers that are constantly buying other journals and they have a big marketing machinery that approach authors through emails, through newsletters, through social networks etc. So, many authors publish in in those journals because they are just in front of their eyes.  We cannot reach many of these authors. Maybe we are better than journals offered by the big publishers, however, it’s just that we cannot reach all those authors. Also, what we have noticed is that since we have a national determination in our title- the Bosnian Journal of Basic Medical Sciences- we think that western authors have a kind of prejudice towards those journals that have national determination.  I think the Croatian Medical Journal may face a similar challenge because, you know, as a scientific nation, we are not very developed. We are seen by the western authors as probably the developing world in the field of science.

DMacA: Thank you very much for that absolutely fascinating insight into the challenges and opportunities facing medical journals ins the future.  Thank you very much indeed.

Related Articles

Leave a Comment