On October 5, 2022, Brain and Spine achieved indexing in PubMed Central (PMC). PMC is a resource of Medline, the National Library of Medicine (NLM) journal citation database, which houses more than 26 million references to biomedical and life science journals dating back to 1946. As part of Medline, PMC was launched in 2000 and serves as an archive for the database's full-text articles.
Indexing in PubMed Central is a major accomplishment—achieving inclusion in this database involves a rigorous evaluation process conducted by the NLM. This evaluation is based on the journal scope, as well as scientific, editorial, and technical quality. For example, submission to PMC initial review requires that the publisher must have at least a 2-year history of quality publishing in the life sciences. The journal must then be able to provide the NLM with immediate access to its content and submit a minimum of 25 peer-reviewed articles for specific NLM review. Once the journal's application has been submitted and screened, it undergoes a thorough scientific quality review under the guidelines of the National Institutes of Health Office of Extramural Research. This review is conducted by at least two consultants—one scientist and one librarian—who evaluate articles from the journal's past 2 years of content and grade these articles based on their scientific and editorial quality. The reviewers consider journal policy, article content, figure and table quality, language quality (English editing), formatting and organization, editorial board, authorship, and the publication schedule. Only after this rigorous multistep evaluation is a journal admitted to the PMC index.
What does PMC indexing bring to Brain and Spine authors and readers? PubMed Central is a widely recognized mark of quality, validating our journal's processes and commitment to publishing quality scientific manuscripts. In addition, the broad exposure of PubMed to the biomedical science community is tremendously beneficial for both authors and readers alike in disseminating their research findings.
From November 2022, all the new articles published in Brain and Spine will be automatically uploaded to the journal's website and to PMC database being available to all the scientific community. This can be already seen at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/. Please be aware that all articles already published will also be included in PMC. Without any doubt, this is excellent news for the impact that the articles so far published in Brain and Spine will generate in the scientific community. We are convinced that this will increase the visibility of the articles and increase the chance for others to cite them, with the obvious benefits for their authors. We hope you will all get used to finding Brain and Spine articles in PMC every time you will be conducting your literature search.
Congratulations are in order to the Brain and Spine editorial board members and our reviewers as well as the Elsevier process team. Most importantly, we are grateful to the authors who continue to submit their high-quality work to our journal, carrying the mark of quality into the future. This is a sign of commitment towards our organizations, EANS and Eurospine, where the intellectual and material investment through this collaboration is a milestone for future synergy. Many thanks again to everyone involved in this process. Elsevier and the Brain and Spine team are proud to be indexed in PubMed Central.