Appraisal the Output of “Iranian J Publ Health” in 2013

Similar to previous years, Iranian J Publ Health, faced tremendous amounts of articles submitted from different countries in addition to its homeland country, Iran in 2013. After 42 yr successful publishing the Journal, the format of circulation changed to Monthly in 2012 which continued without even one day delay throughout 2013. A glance on data related to different aspects of Journal proceeding including submission, acceptance , rejection, etc. witnesses that the Journal has been increasingly welcomed by too many authors and readers all over the world. The total number of manuscripts received during 2013 was 1377 from 52 countries, while in 2012 we received manuscripts form 40 countries overall. Obviously, Iran, the homeland of the Journal, has acquired the first rank of the list, followed by China and Turkey similar to 2012 (Table I, Fig. 1). According to Table 1, different parameters including the rare of submission, rejection, acceptance etc. is obvious for different countries. According to Fig. 2, the overall rate of rejection in 2013 was 77.2% in comparison to 72.4% in 2012. The details for Iran and other countries in terms of rejection rate are obvious there. According to the policy of peer review in our Journal, a large extent of manuscripts are rejected through an in house evaluation process based on a category of criteria including over flow of manuscripts, out of scope cases, poor outcome, local studies, clinical contents etc. Unfortunately the dilemma of plagiarism existed in 2013 as previous years. The situation has been improved in Iran due to lots of workshops conducted for academic staff and students but still we faced problems in this regard especially form southeast countries. Amazingly articles sent from India showed more cases of plagiarism than other countries. This is amazing because normally Indian people speak English language very easily. Total number of papers published during 2013 was 219 of which 147 cases belonged to Iran followed by 16 cases from China (Table 1). The types of articles published during 2013 are shown in Table 2 and Fig. 3. Accordingly, Original Articles with 68% rate show the highest rate of publication. Figure 3 shows the comparative outcome in terms of the type of published papers in 2012 and 2013. Accordingly the rate of Original Articles, Letters to the Editor and Case Reports shows higher rate than 2012 but for Review Articles and short Communications we noticed a decreasing trend. Accordingly …