The Journal of the Chinese Medical Association publishes 154 medical journals, including the English edition of the Chinese Medical Journal, which was founded in 1887.
With 154 kinds of journals distributed in different editorial departments, how to build a unified and collaborative publishing network platform, how to improve publishing efficiency, how to disseminate high-quality content? After years of exploration, the Journal of the Chinese Medical Association has the answer: to build an intensive platform for journals and accelerate the transformation of digital publishing.
New explorations bring new atmosphere. In recent years, the development of this veteran magazine has reached a new level, not only the number of edited and published magazines has increased, but also the quality of the journal has been continuously improved, and it has won the China Publishing Government Award for many times, and its magazines have been included in many internationally renowned databases.
Integrate resources and give full play to the advantages of medical journal clusters
After working in the Journal of the Chinese Medical Association for more than 20 years, President Wei Junmin deeply felt the urgency of building a platform.
There are 154 periodicals under the magazine, 34 of which are directly edited and published by the head office, and 120 are commissioned for publication, and the editorial part is distributed in 18 provinces. In the past, the editorial systems of various journals were relatively independent and lacked communication with each other. The efficiency of publishing, distribution and dissemination has been affected by the decentralization of editorial forces. Wei Junmin said.
It is necessary to build an intensive platform to "twist the journals into a rope" and give full play to the advantages of medical journal clusters.
The establishment of an intensive platform is also necessary to adapt to the development trend of journals. Wei Junmin introduced that in order to enhance the market share and influence of periodicals, in recent years, the development trend of collectivization of large international publishing institutions has been obvious. The competition is no longer to rely on a single journal to win the world, but to win through the advantages of clustering. In order to support the clustering strategy, intensive platforms for high-quality publishing, dissemination and services are becoming increasingly important.
Digitalization is one of the important ways to integrate resources into the platform. As early as 2013, the series of journals of the Chinese Medical Association began to explore intensive and digital publishing. Since 2019, thanks to the support of the China Science and Technology Journals Excellence Action Plan, the construction of the platform of the Journal of the Chinese Medical Association has been accelerated.
Wei Junmin introduced that with the construction of the platform as the starting point, the Journal of the Chinese Medical Association has established a unified submission and review system, intelligent cloud typesetting, publishing and dissemination, production and operation, reshaping the existing editing and publishing process, not only strengthening the connection between various editorial departments, improving the publishing efficiency, but also unifying the quality and review of the content of the series of magazines.
Taking advantage of the opportunity of building an intensive platform, the Journal of the Chinese Medical Association has also developed a "priority release platform for excellent scientific research results", which has opened a green channel for the publication of high-quality results. "With the green channel, we can give priority to online publication of high-quality manuscripts after we have made an appointment, so as to shorten the gap in publication time with foreign journals, and promote the return of some first-class scientific research results to local journals for publication with efficient services. Hao Xiuyuan, director of the editorial department of the English version of the Chinese Medical Journal, said.
The digitization of publication also enriches the presentation of papers. "Some clinical operation results are limited by pictures and texts, and with the digital platform, the editorial department can shoot the clinical operation process into a video. While reading the article, readers can also watch the operation process by scanning the QR code and other means. Lv Xiangzheng, editorial director of the Chinese Medical Journal, said.
Shift from a content producer to a service provider
With the deepening of the intensive platform construction, the journal of the Chinese Medical Association has gradually transformed from a content producer to a service provider. Where did this change come from?
Wei Junmin said that before the intensive platform, the magazine had one journal after another, and these periodicals were like isolated "pools". Building a platform is like building a "reservoir".
Open the "Chinese Medical Journals Network", you can intuitively understand the number of journals, papers and charts included in the platform, and the main part of the page is a database built based on the content of the series of journals of the Chinese Medical Association.
"Logging in to the full-text database of Chinese medical journals, users can not only search for papers and guides with keywords, but also watch video lectures by senior experts. "The database is well received by professional institutions, with more than 1,800 institutions registered, and is the 'fist product' of the magazine's digital publishing transformation." ”
The China Clinical Case Achievement Database mainly serves grassroots physicians. As a large-scale clinical case release platform, since its launch in 2020, the database has provided clinicians with diagnosis and treatment aids, and has become an important platform to improve the diagnosis and treatment level of grassroots clinicians, help clinician training and clinical medicine development.
In the Chinese Medical Journal Network, there are many various information platforms based on the content of the magazine and its extended products.
From simply providing content collection, editing and other services, to building a knowledge network, providing readers and professional institutions with value-added services such as information collection and business consulting, the role and focus of the Journal of the Chinese Medical Association have gradually changed, and it is the intensive information platform that supports the transformation. "Providing users with a richer range of products and services also helps to increase the magazine's impact. Wei Junmin said.
In order to further tap the knowledge service potential of the journal, in 2021, relying on the expert resources of the Chinese Medical Association, the Journal of the Chinese Medical Association was approved to establish the Key Laboratory of Knowledge Mining and Service of Medical Journals. "It is hoped that with the help of expert resources and artificial intelligence and other technologies, we will explore the knowledge service model and explore the sustainable development of scientific and technological journals in the field of medicine and health in mainland China." Wei Junmin said.
Create an international presence
Chinese Medical Academic Platform
The change of the journal of the Chinese Medical Association is a microcosm of the transformation of scientific and technological journal publishing in mainland China from traditional publishing to intensive and digital publishing.
In Wei Junmin's view, in recent years, the intensification and digitization of scientific and technological journals in mainland China have achieved remarkable results. However, scientific and technological journals have not yet formed a complete digital publishing ecological chain, especially the lack of an integrated academic publishing service platform for scientific and technological journals.
According to the statistics of the Blue Book on the Development of Scientific and Technological Periodicals in China (2023) (hereinafter referred to as the Blue Book), by the end of 2022, the total number of scientific and technological journals in China was 5,163, belonging to 3,218 sponsors. 77.13% of the organizers only hosted one scientific journal.
Wei Junmin believes that by building an integrated digital publishing service platform and intensifying the scattered periodical publishing work, we can build a complete digital publishing ecological chain and accelerate the construction of world-class scientific and technological journals.
In order to quickly integrate into the international mainstream academic exchange circle, most of the English scientific and technological journals in mainland China choose the "borrowing ship to go to sea" model. In order to explore the shift from "borrowing ships to go to sea" to "building ships to go to sea", in 2020, the Journal of the Chinese Medical Association cooperated with Wiley, an internationally renowned data publisher, to build an English journal dissemination platform MedNexus for foreign readers.
In July 2022, the platform was officially launched. At present, the platform has 24 journals and more than 40,000 papers. Through docking with the International Organization for Publishing Standardization and important academic index databases, the platform has been visited by users from more than 200 countries and regions, and the number of visits has exceeded 600,000, increasing the weight of Chinese scientific and technological journals in global science communication.
High-quality content is the life of a journal. Compared with the rapid growth of scientific research output in the mainland, the development of scientific and technological journals in the mainland lags behind. According to the statistics of the Blue Book, the total number of SCI papers published by Chinese authors in 2022 is more than 19 times that of the number of papers published in Chinese SCI journals. This means that a large number of Chinese authors need to rely on overseas scientific and technological journals for the publication of their achievements, and the carrying capacity of mainland scientific and technological journals for first-class achievements is far from enough.
According to Wei Junmin's analysis, under the guidance of the evaluation system, more and more Chinese authors are willing to publish high-quality manuscripts in Chinese journals. In the future, to further enhance the influence of local journals, it is necessary to promote the implementation of relevant policies. In addition, we should face up to the gap between China's scientific and technological journals and the international level, and support scientific and technological journals with certain strength to continue to make efforts in internationalization, digitization and marketization by optimizing the allocation of journal resources.
Source: "People's Daily" (2024-01-29 11th Edition), original title: "The Journal of the Chinese Medical Association Builds an Intensive Platform and Promotes Digital Transformation - Science and Technology Journals, Seeking a New Leap (Science and Technology Self-reliance and Self-improvement, Cultivating World-class Science and Technology Journals)" People's Daily Reporter: Yu Sinan Image source: Picture Worm Creative The cover picture and accompanying pictures of this article are from the copyright gallery and are not authorized to be reprinted