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Bosn J Basic Med Sci 2011; 11 (4)
The Bosnian Journal of Basic Medical Sciences (BJBMS)
is an international English-language, peer reviewed
journal, publishing original articles from differ-
ent disciplines and predominantly basic medical sciences.
e fi rst issue was published in , followed by a four year
period without publication. e second issue was published
in February and since then the BJBMS has been pub-
lished regularly and in a timely fashion. As BJBMS is now ap-
proaching its th year anniversary of continuous publishing,
we believe that it is time to evaluate the achievements in this
period.
Trends in manuscript submissions to the BJBMS
e number of articles published in was very low. Lat-
er, the number of published articles steadily increased over
the years reaching its peak during the years of -
when the BJBMS was publishing and articles annu-
ally (Figure ). It is obvious that most articles published at
this point originated from the B&H affiliating institutions
and only small proportion of articles were from abroad.
Due to the lack of the submission tracking at that time it is
not possible to conclude whether the low number of pub-
lished international articles is a result of the low number of
submissions outside B&H. We believe that this is the most
likely case. During this time the editorial policy was to at-
tract as many scientists originating from B&H and working
in the developed countries to publish their work in BJBMS.
e most international articles published during this time-
frame were coming from the B&H originating scientists, who
were conducting their research in the mainstream settings.
Two events were especially relevant for the editorial work
in the journal. These were the inclusion of the BJBMS in
two major bibliographic databases: PubMed/Medline in
and the omson Scientifi c in . Another very im-
portant event in March occurred; making the journal
available in free full text on the Internet and subsequent
inclusion in the Open Access databases (Figure ). In ,
the inclusion of BJBMS in the Science Citation Index Ex-
panded ( omson Scientifi c) database, the free availability
of full text articles on the Internet and the fi rst Impact Fac-
tor, marked another period for the journal which required
Editorial
First decade of publishing Bosnian
Journal of Basic Medical Sciences
Bakir Mehić, Amina Valjevac, Faruk Skenderi
Bosnian Journal of Basic Medical Sciences, Cekalusa , Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
FIGURE 1. Total number of articles published in BJBMS during
2002-2011 from B&H and international a liating institutions. An
international manuscript was de ned as at least one international
a liation of the authors. Thick arrows indicate inclusion of the
BJBMS in scienti c databases and thin arrows indicate rst two
impact factors received from JCR.
FIGURE 2. Percentage of articles published in BJBMS during
2002-2011 according to the type of manuscript. Thick arrows indi-
cate inclusion of the BJBMS in scienti c databases and thin arrows
indicate rst two impact factors received from JCR.
Bosn J Basic Med Sci 2011; 11 (4)
BAKIR MEHIĆ ET AL.: FIRST DECADE OF PUBLISHIN G BOSNIAN JOURNAL OF BASIC MEDICAL SCIENCE S
the change in editorial policy and editorial activity. From this
time point, the Editorial offi ce faced two signifi cant changes:
constant increase in articles submissions and an increase in
international articles (data not shown). Those changes al-
lowed the Editorial Board to raise the acceptance threshold
and fi lter the high quality research articles followed by sub-
sequent increase in the rejection rates. e Editorial Board
simply had more good articles to choose from. From
onward, there was a constant decrease in the total number
of articles published annually as a result of Editorial Board’s
increased quality criteria for articles acceptance (Figure ).
Already in , upon the inclusion of BJBMS in the
Pubmed/Medline database, there was a change in the
type of articles published. In , the original research
articles accounted for and in for of all pub-
lished articles (Figure ). From February to August
, articles were published and indexed in PubMed.
Fate of submitted manuscripts – the role of editors
and reviewers
From January to October , the Editorial offi ce received
total of articles: were research articles and . case
reports (Table ). In total (.) articles were rejected,
. were published and almost are still in process (Fig-
ure ). erefore, excluding the articles still in process, we can
calculate the overall BJBMS rejection rate for to be .
which is quite high and close to the rejection rates in other
mainstream journals. According to the Editorial Policy Com-
mittee by World Association of Medical Editors (WAME)
[] with wishes to respect journal’s constituents and im-
prove the quality of BJBMS, Editorial decisions are defi nitive.
FIGURE 3. Percentage of published, rejected and in-process ar-
ticles submitted from January to October 2011 for the BJBMS vol-
ume 11.
FIGURE 4. The outcome of the articles submitted to the BJBMS
volume 11 according to the a liation(s) origin of the authors. In-
ternational origin of the manuscript was de ned as at least one
international a liation of the authors.
FIGURE 5. International collaboration in the articles published
in Bosnian Journal of Basic Medical Sciences. International col-
laboration accounts for the articles that have been produced by
researches from several countries. The gure shows the ratio of
the journal’s documents signed by the researches from more than
one country [3].
FIGURE 6. The median time for the articles processing as mea-
sured from the date the manuscript was submitted to the date
when the nal noti cation regarding the manuscript’s outcome
was sent to the corresponding author for accepted and rejected
articles. The data are presented as median and interquartile range.
The horizontal line within the box represents the median, while
the box represents lower and upper interquartile range and the
vertical lines indicates maximum and minimum values.
Bosn J Basic Med Sci 2011; 11 (4)
BAKIR MEHIĆ ET AL.: FIRST DECADE OF PUBLISHIN G BOSNIAN JOURNAL OF BASIC MEDICAL SCIENCE S
Another important change occurred from onward; sig-
nifi cantly more articles that were published originated from
international affi liating institutions (Figure ). is could not
be explained by the negative selection of the B&H articles, but
rather by the lower submission rates from B&H compared to
the previous period. In the submission rate of the B&H
articles was . . However, publication and rejection rates
were similar for B&H (. and . respectively) and out-
side B&H (. and .) originating submissions (Figure ).
These changes were probably associated with changes in
the Editorial board and office structure that occurred in
and again in whose main goal was to remain
free of all possible infl uences on articles processing, in con-
cord with Editorial freedom, by the definition of Interna-
tional Committee of Medical Journal Editors [] (Figure ).
From and onward, there was a constant increase in edi-
torial rejection rate reaching almost . of rejected papers
(Table ).
For a small journal coming from scientific periphery, the
review process itself is burdened with problems of mak-
ing a pool of reliable reviewers, subjectivity of assessment
and shortage of objective criteria. Therefore, the BJBMS
Editorial policy to serve as a strict gatekeeper was strength-
en by the fact that reliable reviewers, are out of most im-
portance who should not be additionally burdened with
the submissions that did not have good-enough data to
stand the strict review evaluation or were out of scope in
the first place. Our policy in cases of editorial rejection is
to send the authors comments on their article and some-
times, for those that were out of scope, the suggestion of
another journal to which they can submit their manuscript.
We also analysed the median turnaround time for the
Articles processed in 2011 Published N
(% of submitted)
Rejected N
(% of submitted)
Editorial rejection
N (% of rejected)
Rejection after revision
N (% of rejected)
In process
(N)
Total submitted (N=259) 51 177 159 (89.8%) 18 (10.2%) 31
Manuscript types
Original research 42 (21.4%) 154 (78.6%) 137 (89.0%) 17 (11%)
Non-research (incl. review, curr.
perspectives, correspondence) 1 (33.3 %) 2 (66.6%) 1 (50%) 1 (50%)
Case report 8 (27.6%) 21 (72.4%) 21 (100%) 0
Field of research
Clinical research 26 (21.5%) 121 (78.5%) 110 (90.9%) 11 (9.1%)
Basic research 25 (48.1%) 27 (51.9%) 21 (77.8%) 6 (22.2%)
Public heatlh 0 29 (100%) 28 (96.6%) 1 (3.4%)
Basic research 25 (48.1%) 27 (51.9%) 21 (77.8%) 6 (22.2%)
Public heatlh 0 29 (100%) 28 (96.6%) 1 (3.4%)
TABLE 1. The outcome of the articles submitted to the BJBMS volume 11 according to the manuscript types and eld of research.
Indicators 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010
SJR 0,000 0,038 0,036 0,040 0,032 0,032 0,038
Total
Documents 53 60 69 69 70 72 79
Total Docs.
(3years) 0 53 113 182 198 208 211
Total
References 256 388 108 9 1.134 1.524 1.702
Total Cites
(3years) 0 4 15 22 34 45 79
Self Cites
(3years) 0000447
Citable Docs.
(3years) 0 53 113 182 197 205 204
Cites / Doc.
(4years) 0,00 0,08 0,13 0,12 0,17 0,21 0,36
Cites / Doc.
(3years) 0,00 0,08 0,13 0,12 0,17 0,22 0,39
Cites / Doc.
(2years) 0,00 0,08 0,13 0,11 0,15 0,24 0,47
References /
Doc. 4,83 6,47 1,57 0,13 16,20 21,17 21,54
Cited Docs. 0 4 13 19 28 37 52
Uncited Docs. 0 49 100 163 170 171 159
% International
Collaboration 0,00 0,00 0,00 0,00 18,57 9,72 11,39
TABLE 2. Scienti c Indicators of Bosnian Journal of Basic Medi-
cal Sciences for years 2004-2010, developed from the information
contained in the Scopus® database (Elsevier B.V.)
FIGURE 7. Evolution of total number of citations and journal’s
self-citations received by the journal’s published documents [3]
Bosn J Basic Med Sci 2011; 11 (4)
BAKIR MEHIĆ ET AL.: FIRST DECADE OF PUBLISHIN G BOSNIAN JOURNAL OF BASIC MEDICAL SCIENCE S
articles processing as measured from the date the man-
uscript was submitted to the date when the final noti-
fication regarding the manuscript’s final decision was
sent to the corresponding author. The median time for
editorial rejection was . (.-.) days and for the ac-
cepted and rejected after revision articles it was . (.-
.) and . (.-.) days respectively (Figure ).
Scientifi c impact and visibility of journal
The growth in number of scientific articles can be fol-
lowed with the indicator of measures of scientific influ-
ence on the average article in BJBMS. As shown on Table
, there is continuous increase in scientific impact of an
average article of the journal (from . for to .
for ). In the same period there is an increasing num-
ber of total cites with less than self cites (Figure ) ().
Today, visibility of content of the BJBMS through the web
site (www.bjbms.org) is very well []. We notified more
than . visits from the March to November
(Figure ). It goes without saying that the largest number of
visitors comes from Bosnia & Herzegovina (Figure ), .
of new visitors, and . of returning visitors (Figure ).
References
. World Association of Medical Editors. Editorial Policy Committee.
Retrieved November , , from www.wame.org/resources/
policiesimpact
. International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Editorial
freedom. Retrieved November , , from www.icmje.org/
ethical_editor.html
. SCImago. (). SJR — SCImago Journal & Country Rank. Re-
trieved November , , from http://www.scimagojr.com
. Mehić B. What can you expect from the Bosnian Journal of Basic
Medical Sciences (BJBMS) in ? Bos J Basic Med Sci ;
():.
. Google. Google Analytics reports. Retrieved November , ,
from http://www.google.com/analytics/
FIGURE 8. Visibility of the Bosnian Journal of Basic Medical Sciences. Starting March 2009, with its availability on the Internet, the visibility
of the Journal had increased several times. The visits to the web site of the Journal www.bjbms.org steadily increased over time, reaching
almost 2000 visits per month, mostly from the international academic community (5).
FIGURE 9. Geographic distribution of the visitors (A) and top ten countries by visits (B) of the Journal’s web site www.bjbms.org from
March 2009 to November 2011. There were more than 36.000 visits from all over the world (5).