EDITORIAL

"Dear Wise Men ..."

"Queridos Reyes Magos…"

Rafael Martín-Granizo López

Director

... I am writing you as the Editor-in-Chief of Revista Española de Cirugía Oral y Maxilofacial to let you know how 2008 has gone and to tell you our wishes for the coming year.

I think that we behaved pretty well in 2008. As you know, managing a scientific journal as specialized as ours is not an easy task. Everyone who works on the journal makes an enormous effort, not just the Editorial Board (Editor and Assistant Editor), but also the national and international reviewers of the Editorial Committee, who generously dedicate much of their valuable time to ensure that the journal is published every two months with the highest level of quality. I would like to thank all of them. This year also brought some unhappy tidings, such as the departure from our publisher ERGON of Rosi Mosquera, who for almost 10 years has done the hard editorial work of the journal. We owe her our thanks for her constant effort.

The year 2008 was especially prolific in meetings, courses, and events related to scientific publications. We began the year with the first meeting of publishers of scientific journals of SciELO Spain, which was held in May at the National Library of Health Sciences of the Carlos III Institute of Madrid. At this meeting we had an interesting exchange of impressions with Abel Packer, the Brazilian director of BIREME, one of the most important scientific portals in the world. Packer commented on the good health of the SciELO browser in Spain, which has listed our journal since 2002, and its connections with PubMed. Thanks to this database, our journal occupies a first-line position in searches in Latin America. At this meeting we heard discussions of something that we have been thinking about for a long time: the publication of journals in electronic format.

This topic was considered in June at the I Workshop on Digital Publishing of Open Access (OA) Spanish Scientific Journals, which was held at the Polytechnical University of Madrid. The Open Journal System (OJS), a program for publishing journals in electronic format (known as e-journals), was discussed. It has been used for some time abroad, but only a few publishers in Spain have the program. This system allows access to publications without a hard copy and, most importantly, permits electronic publication management, saving time and resources for the editor. The benefits of this method are evident: more efficient and quicker peer review, transmission, and consultation by authors on the status of the article, bibliography finder, and other features. It is clear that this is the future and SECOM’s Board of Directors is now looking for funds to take this step.

Finally, in November the Lilly-MEDES Foundation brought us together in San Lorenzo del Escorial (Madrid) to analyze the contribution of medical publications in Spanish to continuing medical education (CME). It was very interesting to listen to Dr. Ian Starke speak about CME in the United Kingdom and he gave us many ideas about where we should be heading in Spain. The system of accreditation in our country is well consolidated by SEAFORMEC and the ministerial agency, although we should try to unify parallel systems in some autonomous communities. On the same day we received the sad news of the sudden death of Dr. Helios Pardell, who was an excellent person and untiring worker, director and promoter of the SEAFORMEC Accreditation System, which has taken so much effort to start up. I have fond memories of him. At this meeting we spoke of two very interesting things: possible CME accreditation through our journal and the boom in online CME accreditation courses in our country. SECOM is already moving in this direction.

So, as you can see, dear Wise Men, we have done many things this year, although we also have to recognize some errors that, while foreseeable, are not tolerable, like typographic errors, some fe de errata, delays in delivering issues, errors in shipments ... generally for causes beyond our control. For that reason, in name of all of us I would like to request, and I am fully prepared to put in my share of effort to achieve it, that in 2009 we see the fulfillment of a wish that we have pursued for many years, which is that our journal finally be accepted for indexing in MEDLINE (PubMed).

Without further ado, I take my leave by wishing all of our readers a happy 2009.