Quality of medical journals with special reference to the Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal.

Medical journals will continue as a main vehicle of scientific information for years to come, particularly where access to more efficient instruments is relatively limited. The quality of medical journals depends on several factors involving 3 groups of people; namely: the authors, the reviewers and the editors. The Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal (EMHJ) formulated its essential requirements for the manuscripts submitted for possible publication. These are published in every issue of the Journal, and potential authors are strongly advised to adhere to them, to avoid first-hand rejection of their progress. The reviewers' role is a keystone in maintaining the quality of a medical journal. A reviewer is required to address several important aspects of the paper under review and to resend his opinion thereon with his recommendation concerning the acceptability of the paper or otherwise. The editorial management is a crucial part of the publishing process. The editors begin action with the receipt of the manuscript, direct the various steps of evaluation, correction and re-submission, until an editorial decision is taken to accept the paper as is, accept it after modification or rejection. Editors will then make necessary text and layout editing. Due consideration is given to the statistical, multilingual and ethical aspects as well as to the overall uniformity of the terminology, nomenclatures and style throughout the volume as a whole. In February 1999, the EMHJ was accepted by the National Library of Medicine, USA, to be indexed and included in Index Medicus and MEDLINE. Such selection usually depends on several critical criteria; namely: scope and coverage, quality of content, quality of editorial work, production quality, audience and types of content. Evidently, the EMHJ has satisfactorily met all the above criteria.