The 3rd Plenary Session of the 2nd Editorial Committee
of Chinese Herbal Medicines Held in Nanjing, China

The 3rd plenary session of the 2nd Editorial Committee of Chinese Herbal Medicines (CHM) was held in Nanjing, China, on July 19, 2014. The participants included the associate editors-in-chief of CHM, Prof. Li-da Tang (China), Prof. De-an Guo (China), Prof. Guido F. Pauli (USA), Prof. Pulok Kumar Mukherjee (India), and Prof. Rudolf Bauer (Austria), and some members of CHM Editorial Board, such as Prof. Leslie Gunatilaka (India), Prof. Peter Hylands (UK), Prof. Alexander Shikov (Russia), Prof. Shi-shan Yu (China), Prof. Zheng-tao Wang (China), and Prof. Hong-xi Xu (China), and the editors of Editorial Office of CHM.

Prof. De-an Guo chaired the meeting and introduced the presenting professors to all. Prof. Li-da Tang gave the welcome speech to the domestic and foreign experts. Prof. De-an Guo made a presentation about the current situation of CHM and indicated that the aim of the meeting should be to renew the core leadership and the team of editorial board, to strength the connection within the editorial board members, to request and collect constructive idea and suggestion to move the journal to a new stage, and to enter the SCI Index as soon as possible in the near future.

The editorial board members attending the meeting, with the high sincere enthusiasm and concerted efforts, discussed the crux of the problem on the once failure of the journal in the application to SCI, made some feasibility suggestions, and looked forward to the bright future of CHM. The reasons failed on the last SCI application should be analyzed, and the key problem should be solved. Prof. Bauer pointed out the importance and relation of visibility and citation of a journal, and emphasized the importance of marketing to quickly expand the popularity and impact of CHM in the area. Citation is more critical than visibility and is the key to be adopted in SCI. The key to affect the citation is the quality of the paper published and the way to know the journal. As well, the members of Editorial Board of CHM have promised to support the journal on raising the number of international manuscripts. In summary, we need to make more effort to improve the quality of the journal. It has both opportunity and challenge for getting into SCI in the future.

At the end of the meeting, Prof. Tang and Prof. Guo awarded the certificate appointments and souvenirs to the associate editors-in-chief and members of editorial board. The pictures of all the present have been taken for the memory.