JME has impact beyond the Impact Factor!

In June 2023 the GMS Journal for Medical Education will receive an impact factor. To what extent will the impact factor change the face of the JME? Will it lead to better visibility of our articles? What developments do we as editors-in-chief of the JME expect? Let's take a look at Clarivate Analytics, the company that awards the impact factor, our partner, the Association of the Scientific Medical Societies (AWMF), our publisher German Medical Science (GMS), and the discussion of the last 10 years on impact factor and visibility of our journal. We will conclude with an outlook on where the journey might lead for the GMS Journal for Medical Education (JME) – the Open Access journal of the Society for Medical Education (GMA). On July 26, 2022, Clarivate Analytics issued a press release announcing that all journals from the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), will be included in the group of journals assigned a Journal Impact Factor (JIF) starting June 2023 ([https://ir.clarivate.com/news-events/pressreleases/news-details/2022/Clarivate-announces-changesto-the-2023-Journal-Citation-Reports-All-Web-of-Science-CoreCollection-journals-including-arts-and-humanities-will-haveJournal-Impact-Factors/default.aspx], retrieved on 31.01.2023). In total, a staggering 9,000 new journals including the JME will receive an official impact factor as a result of this unexpected decision about the ESCI and the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (AHCI). All of these journals have met the Web of Science’s strict 24 quality criteria. Overall, the proportion of quality-assured Open Access journals – to which the JME also belongs – has increased by around 8% in relation to all journals with an impact factor. So far so good. It is worth noting that Clarivate Analytics is a publicly traded company that was sold by Thomson Reuters in 2016 to Canadian and Asian investment firms for $3.55 billion ([https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarivate_Analytics #cite_note-5], retrieved on 31.01.2023). The share price was US$ 14.25 on the New York Stock Exchange on July 26, 2022, and has fallen to US$ 11.12 by Jan. 31, 2023. From our perspective as the JME editors-in-chief, the decision-making paths of Thomson Reuters and Clarivate Analytics have been consistently difficult to follow since we took office in 2011. It was not clear for a long time why exactly the Journal for Medical Education (ZMA), which we then renamed Journal for Medical Education (JME) in 2015, failed in trying to get an impact factor. It’s been a black box in the past and probably will continue to be. With the JME, we are part of the GermanMedical Science Portal (GMS), which is an interdisciplinary publication platform of the Association of the Scientific Medical Societies (AWMF). In the landscape of open access platforms, which often and sometimes primarily pursue commercial interests, GMS is an exception. It was founded with the German Institute of Medical Documentation and Information (DIMDI) and is operated in cooperation with the Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) and ZB MED – Information Center for Life Sciences. The project was also funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) ([https://www.egms.de/en/about.htm], retrieved on 31.01.2023).