gms | German Medical Science

Unfortunately the second half of the year began with bad news for the ZMA. The media concern Thomas Reuters that publishes the Journal Citation Report (JCR) and determines on its basis the Impact Factor (IF) as the best-known bibliometric indicator, has rejected the inclusion of the ZMA into the JCR. This fact is, for all concerned, initially very disappointing since we would have liked to give a further thrust to the positive development of the recent years by an IF. This applies irrespective of the fact that substantial criticism was leveled recently at the Impact Factor, both with regard to the calculation procedure, and especially with regard to its use as a quality indicator [1], [http://am.ascb.org/dora/]. Due to material and career-related incentives, which are connected to a high Impact Factor, both on an individual and on an institutional level, the use of the IF developed a momentum of its own, which probably does more harm than good [2].

Nevertheless the IF is vital for an international visibility of the ZMA.

It is difficult for us to assess how the ZMA is perceived in the international environment. Therefore we have launched a project with the Central Library of Medicine (ZB Med) and our publisher, the interdisciplinary German Medical Science (GMS)-portal of the Association of Scientific Medical Societies (AWMF). The aim of the project is to evaluate different bibliometric indicators beyond the IF, in order to compare the current positioning of the ZMA with international journals in the field of Medical Education. This will also help us to prepare the next application for the admission in the JCR. Regardless of the criticism of the IF, we want to use our best endeavors to achieve this objective for the ZMA. Reaching the Impact factor is not an end in itself for us, but above all, we want to convince by the quality of our contents. Therefore the time until the next application for an IF in 2016 should be used for continuous striving towards enhancing the quality of the ZMA and raising our profile.

Concerning the reasons, which led to the present rejection two aspects are especially important. First, we want to increase the international visibility of our journal. For this purpose the English articles, which are available in the portal, must become more visible and more accessible. Furthermore we want to systematically extent the circle of editors on an international level. We believe that this will lead to a relevant number of international manuscripts and thereby to a broader and more differentiated content orientation. The ZMA’s profile with a clear emphasis in the German-speaking countries is to remain unchanged. Second, we want to further improve the quality of the published articles, since this is a central prerequisite for our journal to be recognized as relevant and for the articles to be respectively read and cited. A particular role is played by the peer review procedure, which we have significantly boosted with the support of the GMA-committee for educational research methodology. Since June we use a new form for the assessment, which should lead to a more substantiated and more specific review of the submitted manuscripts. The form is based on a position paper of the committee, which is highly recommended for everyone [3].

Furthermore we have offered a workshop for our experts during this year’s RIME-conference in Berlin together with the committee under the leadership of Katrin Schüttpelz-Brauns. It received excellent feedback. In the future we will offer this workshop on a regular basis hoping on active participation of both new and veteran experts. We see the Peer Review Procedure as an opportunity for all participants to learn from each other, although this sometimes involves a great deal of effort [4].

The current issue of the ZMA has its focus inter alia on Faculty Development. According to the qualitative results of a survey among members of the GMA, there is, particularly form the viewpoint of those people who are especially committed to teaching, a lack of recognition and framework conditions promoting teaching at the faculties [5].

Although continued education and advanced training offers for trainers have further improved since the survey, however there is still a lack mainly in appropriate career opportunities. Two articles deal with the issue of the sustainability of medical teaching qualification measures. Both show that several years after making use of appropriate offers the participants have noticed an increase in competencies [6], [7]. At the same time it becomes apparent how important it is to have an opportunity to transfer the knowledge into practice after those trainings [6]. Further research works can continue at this point, which cover alongside self-assessment of the participants also other indicators, and alongside individual also organisational aspects [8], [9].

Another subject of this issue is the evaluation of teaching. On the one hand, with regard to the learning process of the students in the Practical Year, which is measured using a MC-test [10] and, on the other hand, with regard to the question whether the anonymity of the students in the evaluation has an influence on the results [11]. Two articles in the field of dentistry are devoted to the comparison between different teaching methods: Ratzman et al. [12] compare the students’ acceptance of problem-oriented learning with a conventional structured seminar. The study by Rahman et al. [13] compares two different variants of the use of Audience-Response-Systems. The project report by Kissling and Langewitz [14] shows, using the example of the Basler Curriculum, how the longitudinal integration of teaching social and communicative skills can be put into practice.

All articles are from the German-speaking area – we are looking forward to seeing which effect the intended internationalisation of the ZMA will have on the origins of the authors in the future.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.