Open Access and Ethical Publication
This issue of the JAFES is a celebration of our complete shift to open access. JAFES remains committed to improve the quality of submitted manuscripts, facilitate academic review by scientific peers, and ensure that all published scholarly works meet ethical and international journal standards, without the journal charging any article processing fees from authors. While we are still working to be included in all the major indexes at this time, we assure all authors that all published works shall be included in the indexing, all the better for the health research community to access.
The journey to indexing the JAFES is a long and arduous process that takes time, persistence and a considerable amount of patience. A journal is required to prove to indexing bodies that issues are produced consistently and regularly, there is adequate copy flow (i.e., number of articles published per period of time) and editorial operations can survive and be sustainable, before they can even consider it for indexing. We have submitted an application to PubMed this year and are awaiting their decision. Our application to Scopus has been rescheduled to 2016 subject to re-evaluation. A very positive step has been our inclusion into the WHO Western Pacific Region Index Medicus (WPRIM) announced at the 2013 APAME Convention in Tokyo. In a few months, all our content shall be indexed in the WPRIM and available to all. We hope to follow this soon with inclusion in PubMed and eventually in Scopus and other indexing services.
A critical turning point towards better journal visibility is our shift to an open access format, with all articles from our 26th volume (2011) to the present, free and readily downloadable to our readers from the worldwide web (http://asean-endocrinejournal.org). We are now listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) which aims to increase the visibility and ease of use of open access scientific and scholarly journals, thereby promoting their increased usage and impact. Listed in this directory are journals which have been proven to possess a quality control mechanism in publication of content.
Meanwhile on the continuing campaign for ethical publication, beginning 2013 the JAFES shall be using the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) “Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals” to replace the "Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Biomedical Journals." Of note in this new set of guidelines is the authors’ agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved, which effectively serves as the fourth criterion for authorship.
These new international guidelines ensure accountability and integrity of scholarly work, following not so few reports of manuscripts published in renowned scientific journals worldwide that have been retracted due to alleged misconduct (i.e., non-disclosure, altered results, tampered images). The full text of the 2013 ICMJE guidelines is featured in this issue as a reference for all our authors.
Even as the JAFES continues to pursue open access and ethical publication initiatives, we wish to ensure that content continues to represent all AFES countries in the Southeast Asian region. While the JAFES is currently holding office in Manila, we especially invite submissions from all member countries of the AFES. We encourage all of you to submit your articles to us. In turn, our endeavours to have the JAFES indexed will be facilitated when we get even more manuscripts to process and publish. In the long run, a widely indexed JAFES will be of best service to the health researchers and practitioners for our region.
Finally, I congratulate the AFES 2013 Congress and PERKENI for organizing and hosting this momentous event. We are grateful for their support to JAFES in improving our visibility among AFES members. The Congress Book of Abstracts bears the same cover as this current issue, like the AFES Congress of 2 years ago, and rightfully so, as we all together move towards more ethical publication and open access publication for our region.