Biomedical journal editing: elements of success

The current pace of developments in virtually every aspect of our life and scientific innovations pose ever increasing challenges in ensuring the highest possible quality of publications, satisfying the needs of both publishers and readers. Scholarly journals are essential tools for communication between experts and for advancement of research and practice in various fields of science (1). By communicating original research data, comprehensively covering emerging scientific concepts and directions and analyzing news reports, journals are being increasingly recognized as educational tools. Relevant examples are top general medical journals, such as The Lancet, The New England Journal of Medicine, and The British Medical Journal, reflecting developments in science and educating physicians and eventually changing clinical practice worldwide. Multiple functions assigned to scholarly journals raise the issues of trustworthiness and quality of the publications. The latter is of particular importance in view of recent trends in information flow, digitalization, and acceleration of the publishing process, which may increase the rate of errors and mistakes.