List of improvements of the editorial processes and adaptations in the policies of the Journal
Application for German Journal of Sports Medicine in National Library of Medicine/PubMed
Improving quality in all areas: There are significant improvements that have been made for the journal in recent years (especially 2017-2021).
1. Online Journal with pure exclusive scientific, peer-reviewed content: from 2019 on, only scientific, peer reviewed content is included
i. Webpage of the online Journal:
1. German Journal of Sports Medicine
3. Scientific homepage is now completely in English. We provide an extended one-page abstract in German for every article, see, e.g., the Archive 2022
ii. Educational elements were moved to a separate German-language section dedicated to continued education only: www.zeitschrift-sportmedizin.de which has an independent editorial board, is also subject to quality considerations, but is run separately from the online scientific journal with its own webpage. It is not part of the application to National Library of Medicine/PubMed.
iii. The DOI designation DZSM remains, but the language of the entire journal is English.
2. Online Quality: Webpages have been redesigned
i. The navigation within the booklets and when searching for PDFs and HTML has been revised to make it easy to find your way around.
3. Accessibility of the articles is already increased
i. Each article is fully indexed in CrossRef. The CrossRef error is 2 % on average.
ii. 1.224.746 downloads of our original documents per month, of which 32% are from abroad including 22% from the USA, Russian Federation and Asia, (October 2021), strongly suggest that our journal is important for scientists and health professionals.
iii. Cites/Doc. Factor increased: Cite Score of Scopus Preview. The Cites/Docs (2 years) factor is comparative to the impact factor. We see an increase in Cites/Docs from 0.288 in 2018 to the current factor of 1.086 (2021). The SJR 2020 (3 years) is increasing as well: 0.295 (compared to 2020: 0,23; 2019: 0.16; 2018: 0.14; 2017: 0.13).
iv. Rise in the Rankings 2021: SJR - Scimago Journal & Country Rank 2022: Orthopedics and Sports Medicine #178 of 284, that is an increase of 37 positions (#203 of 288 in 2020) ; Physical Therapy, Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation #127 of 218 , that is an increase of 41 positions (#140 of 210 in 2020). The Journal raised in 2 of 3 categories. We are now in the upper range of Quartile 3 in "Orthopedics and Sports Medicine" and also in "Physical Therapy, Sports Therapy and Rehabilitation". There is clear potential to increase in the rankings. We are hoping to cross the median of Orthopedics and Sports Medicine next year.
4. Open access policy: Every scientific article is included in the online version on the day of publication. Fully indexed HTML documents and references are provided; all references can be downloaded in Medline, RIS or TXT format; all scientific articles in html and PDF in high quality.
5. Reliable and constant excellent quality. Reviews/Metanalyses, as requested, are primarily with international authors and reviewers.
i. International outreach: more international authors and international cooperations are listed, H-index increases (http://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=19838&tip=sid&clean=0)
ii. All articles and citations reflect the scientific discussion in the whole field of sports medicine and related sciences.
iii. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses exist with ratings, structure, methods, exclusion/inclusion criteria.
6. Scientific board: inclusion of international members. Formation of a honorary board. Newly appointed international researchers come from highly respected institutions and diverse background, such as Harvard University, Université Jean Monnet, Aomori University: See our Scientific Board. To further emphasize the quality of the Board, we have appointed 7 members of the Editorial Board as honorary members: See our Honorary Board.
Some quality features should be highlighted and noted separately:
1. Improvement of quality for External Peer Review process: Double-blind peer review process with a minimum of two independent reviewers, that is consistent with all other high standard international peer reviewed journals (Standards ICMJE: "Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals”)
i. Manuscripts will be reviewed for: Relevance to the goals of the journal, scientific credibility, editorial aspects such as completeness, style and comprehensibility, At least two or three independent reviewers, Acceptance of a contribution usually requires 2-3 revisions, the overall rejection rate was 22,22% in 2022.
ii. Peer review process and all other processes are fully documented in Editorial Manager®, a cloud-based standard system for manuscript submission and peer review tracking for scientific journals.
iii. Response and decision times are at a very high level, and the quality of the reviews is evaluated in the system. All reviewers who do not meet the high standards of the journal have been excluded from the review process.
iv. For each submission, all references are automatically checked by CrossRef, and the editorial team also checks all references and formals manually. For all submissions, the length of the body of the text as well as abstracts, keywords, quality, figures and tables are checked before the review process.
v. See here the publishing policies, especially
1. Guidelines for Authors (Update 2022); Guidelines for Clinical Reviews (Update 2022); Guidelines for Reviewing Process (Update 2022)
2. Editorial Policies of the Journal (Update 2022)
2. New XML-Standard format was created
i. This enables to use XML transmission as desired and specified by PubMed. Transmittal form set and ready in EM, connection to FTP server is up and was tested. A zip file is delivered, this contains all source files and the XML with all metadata fields.
3. Editorial structures and governance are now easy to find and well structured,
i. Editorial Policies of the Journal
1. There is adequate information on the ethics guidelines: Ethical Principles
a. Acknowledegements and Conflict of Interest: At the Editorial Board Meeting in 2021, it was decided that the following statements would be included: Conflict of Interest: Contributors, Funding, Competing Interests, Ethical Approval. This is also how recorded colleagues do it.
b. Journals recently accepted for inclusion in MEDLINE: https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medline/medline_new_titles.html, e.g. Advanced Science: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/advs.202004595
ii. Editorial Board
iv. Publisher and Production Quality