GMS Hygiene and Infection Control

Since 2006, the German Society for Hospital Hygiene patronages the Journal “GMS (GermanMedical Science) Krankenhaushygiene Interdisziplinär”, an open access peer-reviewed PubMed listed e-journal. German Medical Science is a portal for online journals, meeting and research reports and offers all researchers in the field of medicine an open access to scientific articles and the possibility to publish their research results online. The journal “GMS Krankenhaushygiene Interdisziplinär” was founded to foster both, understanding and practice in the field of infection control. The Journal provides a forum for continuing exchange of information and opinions through contributions from scholars, professionals, policymakers, and others involved in infection control. Although the field of Infection Control is a dedicated medical speciality on its own rights, as other medical and surgical specialities as well, Infection Control is maybe unique in one aspect: Very few other medical disciplines have to be so much involved into the complete spectrum of medical treatment, diagnostics, and preventive aspects. There is not one single medical field, where an infection may not be present or may not be a known complication. Furthermore, healthcare associated infections are not restricted to one single hospital, one single region, country, or continent, but are a global challenge. The Journal specifically emphasises on amultidisciplinary approach aiming at collaboration with other medical societies at a higher level. Since 2008, the journal is PubMed-listed. It can be accessed at the web address http://www.egms.de/en/journals/dgkh/. In light of this discipline’s enormous scope, it is not surprising that Infection Control related research is published in almost all categories of medical literature. Papers with Infection Control related content are found as lead articles in general medical, internal medicine, general surgical, urological, vascular surgical, and many more journals. Aside of this a number of high-impact dedicated Infection Control journals do exist. This realises the question, why a journal such as “GMS Krankenhaushygiene Interdisziplinär” is needed. There are at least two reasons: Firstly, a number of authors from German speaking countries have frequently made the experience how difficult it is to publish epidemiologic data relevant for Infection Control aspects in Germany, Austria, or Switzerland in international journals, mostly dominated by US or British publishers. Indeed, some Infection Control aspects related to German or Austrian federal laws are of importance there, but US readers may correctly ask what the relevance of such articles is to them. Therefore, a “local” Infection Control Journal is needed to serve as platform to share important “local” information. An example of this is an article published in this issue of the journal which reports important data on infrastructure of German hospitals and institutions caring for elderly inand outpatients [1]. Secondly, as highlighted, the scope of Infection Control is so broad, that some important articles on very rare, rather unusual, or extremely selective aspects may not be publishable, simply because they do not fall into any category of existing journals. One example for this is an article which explores the practice of none-replacement of i.v. administration sets after each change of intermittently administrated antibiotic infusions [2]. The Journal was given the name “GMS Krankenhaushygiene Interdisziplinär”, which means translated interdis-