The Great Editor of a Scholarly Journal

Abstract

Fundamental differences of a scholarly journal from periodicals for general public are the semi-closed audience, pre-publication peer review and post-publication utilization by citation through indexing system. Authors and readers are professionals from the academic society and from related fields and they use the journal as a communication tool among scientists as well as a parameter or evaluation tool of his academic activity. The editor of a scholarly journal is often a leader of the academic society and plays as a moderator of peer review and as a facilitator of indexing of published articles. Associations of scholarly journal editors function as capacity builders for editors who are professionals on his own knowledge domain but they are never professionals on journal editing or publishing. Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors established in 1996 developed journal evaluation system and KoreaMed, an indexing system for medical articles of journal titles selected through the evaluation process. Representatives from member states of the Western Pacific Region of World Health Organization decided to develop a regional indexing system (WPRIM, Western Pacific Region Index Medicus) for journal articles from member states of this region. They also adopted KoreaMed as a search engine for multinational medical information index. Meetings of informal consultation and meetings for WPRIM took place in Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Beijing, Tokyo and Seoul in 2005-2007 and decided the selection criteria and processes of evaluating the journal and indexing articles. The Regional Journal Selection Committee (RJSC) provisionally approved the journals recommended by the Countries' respective National Journal Selection Committees and a total of 212 Journal titles are now for indexing by WPRIM, being 64 Chinese titles, 2 Japanese titles, 2 Mongolian titles, 13 titles from Philippines and 131 titles from the Republic of Korea . Copyright is one of hot issue for indexing and full text service at libraries. It would not be so easy to make journal articles freely accessible although it is important to increase number of open access journal titles. Bibliographic data and abstract information are key components of indexing on articles of scholarly journals. Currently there is no consensus on how to use abstract information when one would like to build a new indexing system with different audience, scope and purpose. I would like to emphasize the free use of abstract information in those instances which coincides with the public interest. It is also recommended however to support those who develop abstract information data for indexing. Practical process and conditions for this use would include a compulsory add of information of indexing data production to metadata and financial support to those who developed the key indexing data set.