BMC Med Res Methodol. 2012 May 11;12:66. doi: 10.1186/1471-2288-12-66.
Local and regional scientific journals are important factors in bridging gaps in health knowledge translation in low-and middle-income countries. We assessed indexing, citations and publishing standards of journals from the Eastern Mediterranean region.
For journals from 22 countries in the collection of the Index Medicus for the Eastern Mediterranean Region (IMEMR), we analyzed indexing in bibliographical databases and citations during 2006-2009 to published items in 2006 in Web of Science (WoS) and SCOPUS. Adherence to editorial and publishing standards was assessed using a special checklist.
Out of 419 journals in IMEMR, 19 were indexed in MEDLINE, 23 in WoS and 46 in SCOPUS. Their impact factors ranged from 0.016 to 1.417. For a subset of 175 journals with available tables of contents from 2006, articles published in 2006 from 93 journals received 2068 citations in SCOPUS (23.5% self-citations) and articles in 86 journals received 1579 citations in WoS (24.3% self-citations) during 2006-2009. Citations to articles came mostly from outside of the Eastern Mediterranean region (76.8% in WoS and 75.4% in SCOPUS). Articles receiving highest number of citations presented topics specific for the region. Many journals did not follow editorial and publishing standards, such addressing requirements about the patient's privacy rights (68.0% out of 244 analyzed), policy on managing conflicts of interest (66.4%), and ethical conduct in clinical and animal research (66.4%).
Journals from the Eastern Mediterranean are visible in and have impact on global scientific community. Coordinated effort of all stakeholders in journal publishing, including researchers, journal editors and owners, policy makers and citation databases, is needed to further promote local journals as windows to the research in the developing world and the doors for valuable regional research to the global scientific community.
地方和区域科学期刊是弥合中低收入国家卫生知识转化差距的重要因素。我们评估了东地中海地区期刊的索引、引用和出版标准。
对于索引医学期刊（IMEMR）中收录的来自 22 个国家的期刊，我们分析了 2006 年至 2009 年在书目数据库中的索引和引用情况，以及 Web of Science（WoS）和 Scopus 中 2006 年出版的项目的引文情况。使用专门的检查表评估编辑和出版标准的遵守情况。
在 IMEMR 中的 419 种期刊中，有 19 种被 MEDLINE 索引，23 种被 WoS 索引，46 种被 Scopus 索引。它们的影响因素范围从 0.016 到 1.417。对于从 2006 年开始有可用目录的 175 种期刊的子集，来自 93 种期刊的 2006 年发表的文章在 Scopus 中获得了 2068 次引用（23.5%自引），而来自 86 种期刊的文章在 WoS 中获得了 1579 次引用（24.3%自引）2006-2009 年期间。引文主要来自东地中海地区以外（WoS 中的 76.8%和 Scopus 中的 75.4%）。收到最多引用的文章提出了针对该地区的具体主题。许多期刊没有遵循编辑和出版标准，例如解决患者隐私权要求（244 个分析中的 68.0%）、管理利益冲突政策（66.4%）以及临床和动物研究中的伦理行为（66.4%）。
来自东地中海地区的期刊在全球科学界具有可见性和影响力。期刊出版的所有利益相关者，包括研究人员、期刊编辑和所有者、政策制定者和引文数据库，都需要协调努力，进一步促进本地期刊作为发展中国家研究的窗口，以及为全球科学界提供有价值的区域研究的门户。
