Greetings from the New Editor-in-Chief: I Would Like to Begin by Expressing My Heartfelt Thanks

I am honored to be appointed as the new Editor-in-Chief of the Korean Journal of Neurotrauma (KJNT). I am especially thankful to the former editor Prof. Sun-Chul Hwang for his dedication to the journal during the last five years. I am also pleased to inform you that Prof. Suk-Hyung Kang and Prof. Il Choi as deputy editors-in-chief, and Prof. Hyuk-Jin Oh as secretary of the publication, will assist me with manuscript management and journal production.

KJNT was first published in 2005 as the official journal of the Korean Neurotraumatology Society. The KJNT has been published in English since 2014 and is indexed in PubMed, PubMed Central, KoreaMed, Synapse, SCOPUS, MedRIC, MEDLIS, KCI, and Google Scholar. It can surely be said that a lot of effort and sacrifice were put in by the previous Editors-in-Chief, the members of the editorial committee, and the reviewers. I would like to express special thanks to them.

The Korean Neurosurgical Society is positioned as a leading neurosurgery society in Asia and the world. As a reflection of this, many journals related to neurosurgery in Korea have shown outstanding results in various fields. Recently, Neurospine, (renamed after the March issue, 2018) which is the official journal of ASIA SPINE, the Neurospinal Society of Japan, Taiwan Neurosurgical Spine Society, and the Korean Spinal Neurosurgery Society, was registered in the SCI(E). I think this is truly remarkable and deserves hearty congratulations, and I hope our journal will achieve the same.

As we already know, the main articles submitted to journals of the divisional societies of neurosurgery are on neurosurgery residents' training. However, the number of journals for residents' training has decreased and is expected to decrease further. Furthermore, the number of journals of the divisional societies of neurosurgery in our country is increasing rapidly.

This condition is the same for KJNT. To make matters worse, KJNT has already been registered in PubMed and PubMed Central, Scopus. Therefore, it should satisfy the standards required of domestic journals, and the published articles should be of the quality and quantity that meet international standards. For an editor who has just taken over, this fact is a huge challenge that cannot be ignored, and must be taken up.

As a small start, we would like to publish the April issue as a special issue on “Clinical Guidelines” and the first, October issue as special issue on “Trauma Data Bank.” For each issue, we will make preparations and seek to recruit authors for editorials, review articles, and clinical articles. Second, with the efforts of Prof. Sun-Chul Hwang, KJNT has already activated joint publication as the official journal of the Korean Spinal Cord Society since 2017. This joint publication of related academic societies will help to strengthen the quality and quantity of the published articles. Therefore, we plan to contact other divisional societies of neurosurgery and expand by the joint publication of the journal with these divisional societies of neurosurgery.

I think that it will take a considerable time for the results of these efforts to bear fruit. Although I am a newly appointed editor, our editorial team and I will strive to achieve these results. Please submit your research and opinions. We will always welcome them.