The Ghana Medical Journal remains the only high circulation peer-reviewed health journal in the country. The journal right from its birth has had an international audience and patronage and was cited in the old Index Medicus from 1962 until the mid 1970's. The irregular publication and the subsequent disappearance from the Index Medicus resulted in the journal's absence from literature searches as well as the shelves of many libraries, including those of foreign universities from about 1975.
In recent times the editorial committee in consultation with the Council of the Ghana Medical Association, publishers of the journal, has made considerable strides in improving the quality of the journal. These efforts have resulted in an increase in the international visibility of the journal. The journal's website has been activated and now hosts full texts of the print version. The website can be accessed by clicking on the “Journal” menu at the Ghana Medical Association website: http://www.ghanamedassn.org. The journal has also been included in the African Journals on Line at http://www.ajol.info. These two developments mean that using either Google (http://www.google.com) or Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com) will reveal articles published and available on the internet.
These changes have been possible through the support of The Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases, a joint UNICEF-UNDP-World Bank-WHO programme, in starting the Forum for African Medical Editors and the African Journals Partnership, sponsored by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, the National Library of Medicine, and the Fogarty International Centre, and implemented by the Council of Science Editors which has established partnerships between four African medical journals and five established journals in the developed world. These collaborations have resulted in greater visibility for the African medical journals and interest by other organizations and journals to contribute to improving on the quality and management of African medical journals.
As a result of these developments, the Ghana Medical Journal may soon regain its place on Medline and PubMed (online databases). There is also collaboration with ScholarOne Inc. to implement online submission and processing of manuscripts for the journal. It is anticipated that this will take effect in 2007.
These efforts will go a long way in mitigating some of the reasons why African health research findings are not published in local journals and also address some of the issues affecting the viability of some of the journals.
In order to further augment these gains, it is important that we get the views of the readership of the journal. Very soon some of our readers will participate in a questionnaire survey. This survey will provide information that will be input into our business plan. It is our hope that as many of you as are possible will respond to the survey in a timely manner to enable us complete the plans to make the journal more visible internationally.
Professor David Ofori-Adjei
Editor-in-Chief, Ghana Medical Journal c/o Noguchi Memorial Institute Medical Research, Legon