Svjetlana Kalanj-Bognar | Future of Medical Journals

The journal was founded in 1992 in a small country, Croatia, during circumstances which were really difficult.  It was war time back then in Croatia.  But, the idea of founding a scientific journal, to enhance the visibility of local scientists in the so-called periphery of science, was very important.  I think that this impacted, not only Croatian scientists, but also on some other countries in the region. Its impact is the legacy of the first founders and editors of the Croatian Medical Journal,  Matko Marušić  and Ana Marušić, then Professors at the School of Medicine of the University of Zagreb. Their vision was not only to make science, local science, visible in the international space but also to educate authors and to uphold the integrity, the ethics of the publishing, and the societal responsibility of medical journals.

One of great successes of the previous editors is that the journal founded in 1992, was included in the Scopus database by 1998, in Medline by 1998, and in Current Contents from 1999.  And in Croatia, this was the first medical journal out of some 40 medical journals, included in Current Contents. And, as we know, for a medical journal or scientific journal, it is very important to be included those big databases, to be visible, and to be considered as an important and serious journal.

DMacA: After those first 30 years of the journal, and you now as editor-in-chief, what are the achievements and challenges that you see in your role?

SKB: Being an editor for three or four years gives you some insight into how the journal works in an everyday sense; encountering different problems, how to attract quality papers, how to find quality reviewers, how to enable enough finance for the journal.  These are the everyday problems that each editor encounters.  Beyond this, its a challenge more than a problem, to try to find a specific niche or some specific field that will make us a little bit different from the other medical journals.

The mission of the medical journals is not just to be compartmentalized as something only for specialists, for professionals. This is fine but, at a certain point, we have to transfer this knowledge to other people.  This is where, I believe, medical journals could find an important niche.

DMacA: How do you see the next 30 years of the Croatian Medical Journal?

SKB: This is really a tough question because, you know, our journal being a small Journal is also an academic journal.  So, when you ask this question you have to understand the business model of the Croatian Medical Journal.  The journal is owned by three Schools of Medicine in Croatia and we are dependant completely in the financial sense, on the government who fund the Schools of Medicine. We are not a huge business.  We are a completely non-profitable journal but, we have a fantastic publishing model, the Diamond Open Access model- meaning that we are completely non-profitable, that the entire contents available to everyone who wants to read papers published in CMJ.  And also, we do not have any article processing charges for authors-  so, a completely non-profitable Open Access publishing model. I sincerely hope that this model will continue because publishing, you know, depends on some money.  There is no free lunch, unfortunately. 

Myself, I would very much like to live in a society where the opportunity to access knowledge, knowledge available in any form, is completely free and that there is no charge for trying to educate yourself, to access information.  But this is maybe, a little bit of Utopia. But, I really would like us to maintain this kind of function, that we are completely non-profitable, and that we are completely Open Access. I think that we are one of the rare journals that have this policy. 

Related to content, we will try to remain in our category which is general medicine. This is also a very tough category if we are talking about bibliometric analysis because we are in a category with journals such as New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, BMJ etc-  journals with whom it is very hard to compete.  In next 30 years, maybe our policy should be to focus less on impact factors- in keeping with what I said before about the mission of the journal – to educate not only authors and reviewers, but also to present new material in medicine, advances in technology, in medical technology, to a general audience, and to be some kind of mediator and educator.  I believe CMJ could undertake this role, or develop this role more fully in the next 30 years.   We may also, perhaps, try to find topics which may be local but, also of global importance. I sense, and I think the data support this, that we are in the world which may seem very global and very connected by internet technologies but where, on the other hand, the differences between wealthy nations and others in availability to healthcare, to evidence-based information, are really huge.

DMacA: What has it been like for you personally as editor of the Croatian Medical Journal?

SKB: It is not always, you know……Working as the editor has many challenges.  Sometimes, you’re very happy, sometimes you are not so happy because things can be difficult. But it is all also a lot of fun.  It’s a lot of fun working as as editor. And there is also some kind of crazy passion for publishing amongst people doing this job in addition to doing some else like teaching or working as a scientist. And that why we selected as our motto this year “Passion for publishing and Publishing with Passion” I think this describes it nicely.  It may not be a very original motto, but I think this perfectly describes the efforts and the enthusiasm of everyone who is doing the job- as editors, the whole editorial team, the editors-in-chief, the students who are coming to help etc. So, this is fun. This is fun.

DMacA: Thank you very much for taking us through the 30-year history of CMJ, the current state of CMJ, and your vision for the future of CMJ. Thank you very much indeed.