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To the editor: Our official publication "Journal of the Korean Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (J Korean Assoc Oral Maxillofac Surg)" has now been started as a fully English-written journal. As this is the starting point, we are now facing various challenges. Because of the tremendous efforts of the editorial board of our journal, the article submission process is continuously improving. The final goal of our publication is to improve the contents of the article so that we can achieve science citation index (SCI). I think there are three important things to consider to accomplish our goal; 1) change title of the journal, 2) improve submission process, 3) improve scientific level of the article.
1. The title of our journal should be changed to meet the needs of international readers
In 2010, among 23 Korean journals of medicine, dentistry and veterinary that were in the category of SCI, 10 journals (43%) had not "Korean" in their publication title. Among SCOPUS enlisted medical journals (including dentistry), only half of them (48%, n=31/64) has "Korean" in their title. Recently accepted Korean SCI journal has more tendencies to delete "Korean" from the journal title.
As seen in Table 1, various academic societies in dentistry have been push forward and already four articles are in "PubMed list", one article has got "SCIE". Considering the leading position of our society in the dental field, we need to do more to reach the higher scientific level. I think the title "Journal of the Korean Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons (J Korean Assoc Oral Maxillofac Surg)" is too long, even abbreviation is long, to the international standard. As shown, German and Indian society are now publishing PubMed-indexed official publication after deleting the nationality of the article. Identity of the article is also very important. However, to be more accessible for international readers, we need not to stick to "Korean" in our title.
2. Submission process needs to be improved with deletion of unnecessary steps
My experience in submission to our article was rather inconvenient compared to other international journal. Especially, when the revision is carried out, I had never asked for "recommended reviewer" in other journals. I think all the unnecessary steps during the submission and revision process should be deleted after careful inspection of the process. Related company for our submission system need to inspect the system of Elsevier, Wiley or Springer. They will be able to find a lot of differences. We do not concern very much to submission process itself when submitting an article in international journals that have system of aforementioned company. Frankly speaking, their system is easier than ours.
3. Let's improve scientific level of the articles
It is important to have scientific impact of the individual article. To fulfill this, we need to introduce review articles that can be important references. Introducing professional medical illustrator or designer would be helpful. I know that the editorial board is already elaborate with this issue. I wish all these efforts can make favorable results.
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