Abstract:
Founded in 2009, Chinese Herbal Medicines (CHM) has experienced an initial stagnant period and recent soaring growth as reflected in an array of publication statistics. The citation reports from 2015 to 2018 performed by Elsevier indicated that CHM possessed the sum of 213 citations for the 210 papers published in this duration with the average citations per item of 1.01, which doubled the number of 0.5 in 2017 within merely one year. Another important indicator for a journal impact is the sum of downloads for the recent published articles. As for CHM, the number of top ten most downloaded articles ranged from 409 to 1126 in 2018, while the highest lifetime downloads reached 2328 for one of the review articles entitled “Production of Active Compounds in Medicinal Plants: From Plant Tissue Culture to Biosynthesis”. This rapid development and growth in the quality of articles published and journal impact should vastly attribute to the joint efforts of authors, entire editorial staff and board members, which is greatly acknowledged and appreciated by the editors and host organizations.
This quarterly peer-reviewed journal is co-hosted by Tianjin Institute of Pharmaceutical Research and Institute of Medicinal Plant Development, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, which dedicated their great efforts and financial resources to have promoted the journal for a decade to the current stage. When CHM arrives at today’s status, we can’t fail to mention the two celebrated editors in chief, the founding editor professor Pei-gen Xiao and his successor Professor Chang-xiao Liu, both being members of Chinese Academy of Engineering, who have devoted their painstaking efforts and passion to foster the journal. From its founding, CHM was established to aim at providing an international communication platform for the up-to-date research achievements in the field of Chinese herbal medicines, traditional medicines, and natural products including research in bioactive principles, pharmacological actions, toxicity, pharmacokinetics, therapeutic efficacy of single herbs and/or their compound formulas. Article types published by CHM include research articles, reviews, short communications, etc. After arduous attempt, CHM is now indexed in an array of journal data bases such as China Academic Journals Integrated Online Database, Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), Index Copernicus (IC), Ulrich's Periodicals Directory (UPD), Global Health and ESCI, EMBASE, CAB Abstracts, ProQuestetc, CNKI, etc.
Contrast to the achievements, CHM is still having a lot to improve. The proportion of contributed papers from international authors is still at the low level as evidenced that in 2016, only nine papers out of 104 were submitted by non-Chinese authors, while this number reduced to eight out of 126 in 2017 and enhanced to 30 out of 152 in 2018, which showed the trend for improvement. In addition, the number of papers published each year in four issues remained to be about 60, which clearly showed that authors are unseal us to submit their quality manuscripts either due to unawareness to the journal or to nonexistent impact factor in the Web of Science. There is still a high ratio of published papers receiving no attention from readers without any citations either due to low research quality or out of date topics. Apparently, these aforementioned deficient aspects with the journal are the targeted focus for improvement by the team in the future.
Looking forward to the next ten years of CHM, we have the full confidence in CHM reaching to the new height after a steady development period. Quality of the submitted papers is essential and pivotal to the journal. Hence, soliciting and/or attracting high quality manuscripts from the established scientists worldwide in herbal field will be the top priority. Enhancing the exposure of the journal in the global herbal community is equally paramount, as well. The imbalance between papers contributed from domestic and ones from should be adjusted by alluring more international contributors. Special issues on the recent hot topics as systems biology, chemical biology, synthetic biology, network pharmacology, high-content screening of herbal medicines and natural products should be organized by inviting prominent guest editors to reflect the most recent research progress in the field. It is anticipated that the CHM will be rising to a new level that all editorial board members desire with their continuous improvement on the quality of the journal.
2019 marks the beginning of CHM's second decade. Although the specific answers about how to improve journal quality take time and thought to uncover, the best way to approach the second decade and all of the changes it will bring can be summed up in one word—“Confidence”. As Robert Stuberg say in “Increasing Confidence”: “With confidence, all things are within the realm of possibility. Without confidence, even the smallest challenges seem insurmountable. While the problems or challenges seem too big to be overcome, the person with confidence always finds a way to win regardless of the circumstances”.
Confidence is the guarantee of success. Cooperation is the strength of success. We believe that in the first year of the second decade, with the cooperation of the publishers, editors, authors and reviewers, CHM will certainly move to a new level.
In the 2019 New Year, CHM's publishers sincerely thank the experts of editorial board and thank authors, reviewers and readers for yours loving and supporting to CHM over the past decade.