While 2021, the second year of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, has come to an end, we, on behalf of the Iranian Journal of Medical Sciences (IJMS) editorial team, would like to reach out and wish you a happy and healthy 2022.
Herein, a brief review of IJMS major activities over the past year is also shared.
2021 was a challenging year for the world medical society due to the continued battle with COVID-19, and IJMS tried to play its share in this battle. From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, IJMS has welcomed the submission of manuscripts on COVID-19 and has accelerated their evaluation process. In the past productive year, IJMS published 60 articles, among which 17 articles, including six review articles, two original articles, one brief report, five commentary/letters to the editor, and three editorials covering different aspects of COVID-19. Beyond COVID-19, some other topics of medical and clinical disciplines, as well as basic and advanced sciences, were also published.
Several outstanding achievements were also attained in 2021. In May 2021, Dr. Younes Ghasemi, the Editor-in-Chief of IJMS, Professor of Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, and Head of the Research Center of Pharmaceutical Sciences of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, joined the top one percent of the world’s most-cited scientists according to the Scientometrics Information Database of faculty members.
In August 2021, IJMS was accepted for inclusion in MEDLINE, which is considered as the most important database of the US National Library of Medicine. The articles published in IJMS since January 2021, are now covered by MEDLINE. According to the LSTRC Journal Review Summary Report, some modifications have been made in our policies, and also our journal Guide for Authors has been revised per reviewers’ recommendations, as follows.
1. To assure avoiding “conflict of interest”, articles submitted by the staff or editors of the IJMS will also be subjected to peer review, and the editor/staff author plays no role in the review or decision making process.
2.All the authors of submitted papers are now asked to state any existing conflict of interest by filling the uniform disclosure form available through the inserted link.
3. A FAQ page has been created and some of the important questions regarding the submission and reviewing process are answered there.
4. Stronger policies for animal care and use are now defined.
5. A clear statement of the authors’ contributions to the manuscript is required for the recently submitted articles.
6. A short biography and a description of the job and role is added for all of our editorial team and staff.
According to the latest Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals by ICMJE, our policies related to the posting and citing preprints will also be described clearly in our Guide for Authors soon. Moreover, a data-sharing policy will be announced soon, based on which our authors will need to share their supportive data with us.
We hope IJMS continues its role as a scientific platform through continued partnership with all of our authors and guidance from our reviewers and editorial board members in 2022, and we look forward to working with scientists and researchers from around the world in the coming year. We would invite researchers to submit meta-analysis studies and also welcome systematic and narrative reviews as before.
