Strengthening of Spanish Journal of Legal Medicine (2008-2018)

In 2008 a group of forensic practitioners, led by Dr. Francisco Pera were appointed to the governing board of the National Association of Forensic Medical Practitioners (ANMF in Spanish) and, among many other pressing items at the time, resumed publication of the Spanish Journal of Legal Medicine (Revista Española de Medicina Legal, REML), which had been suspended for some years, entrusting its publication to the prestigious international biomedical publisher Elsevier.¹

As a consequence of this, in 2018 the current publishing team had been in charge of REML for a decade. For ten years they have shared hopes and dreams, work, effort, joys and a few disappointments and above all a decade aimed at the clear purpose of getting REML ranked as the leading Spanish-language scientific journal in forensic medicine. We now believe this objective has been consolidated. We have periodically shared these hopes and dreams, work, effort, joys and a few disappointments with our authors, readers and reviewers. Once again, we wish to share the details, acknowledgements, novelties and future projects awaiting us in REML. Although we are satisfied with what we have achieved up until now, we already knew a decade ago that there is nothing difficult about creating a journal, what is truly complicated is keeping it active over time.²

Fortunately, REML has never stopped growing since its initiation in 2008. Its growth and consolidation, and particularly its distribution has been highly favoured by its parallel publication in English of editorial articles, reviews and special editions since 2016.³

2017 witnessed a new milestone in distribution since the online version of the journal achieved 164,000 views. Figure 1 shows this sustained increase which has been spectacular this last year (53.8%). As in previous reports, the main country of origin of online visits continues to be Spain, followed by Mexico (21.71%), Colombia and Peru.

Figure 1.

Evolution of the annual visits received by the online version of the Spanish Journal of Legal Medicine between 2008 and 2017.

As always over the years, REML has been sensitive to both subjects of scientific interest and the novelties which have had great impact on Spanish medical and legal activity. At the end of 2014 a project highly acclaimed by the medical and forensic collective was initiated: the Forensic Medical Council, which REML joined in recognition with its first edition of the year 2015. ⁴ Furthermore, 2015 was a particularly intense year for legislative reforms. From the disappearance of minor offences and misdemeanours with the reform of the Penal Code, which was also contained in one edition,⁵ to Law 35/2015 which established a new system of damages caused to individuals in traffic accidents and to which a monograph was dedicated with the participation of many different professionals,⁶ with their enriching complementary views. At the beginning of 2018, a monograph was dedicated to sudden cardiac death, where, once again, emphasis was placed on the need for multidisciplinary approaches for an in-depth treatment of forensic subject matters,⁷ with participation from outstanding authors. In this monograph the epidemiology and final arrhythmic events leading to sudden cardiac death (SCD) were analysed,⁸ together with the post-mortem diagnosis of structural heard diseases associated with SCD,⁹ the use of post-mortem genetic analysis,¹⁰ the role of toxic substances¹¹ the integration of all information in multidisciplinary units for the study of family histories of heart diseases,¹² and that of SCD in special circumstances with major social impact.¹³

With regards to the new REML publication, the next monograph currently being prepared will be dedicated to forensic psychiatry.

Recommendations from the latest report received from the LTRSC (Literature Selection Technical Review Committee) on external assessment of the REML highlight that the journal critically synthesizes and has the ability to combine knowledge in the field of forensic sciences. It underlines REML's strength as lying in its excellent peer reviews. The report recommends that we also increase ethical aspects, in accordance with current needs and demands, revising aspects such as criteria for authorship and conflict of interests. It also urges us to continue maintaining the quality of the journal. Publication rules have in fact been renewed.

After the ground covered, one of our current goals is to maintain the highest level of journal content quality, knowing that one of the greatest challenges of scientific journals is to streamline innovation and quality. Beyond the “traditional” quality markers measuring the impact of scientific journals, such JCT and the SJR, which we continue maintaining as a major objective, we know that the quality of scientific journals can no longer be exclusively based on this type of marker. In fact it is well-known that that the inclination towards indexed journals in JCR endangers the survival of many Spanish journals or those aimed at Hispanic or Latin American audiences. Thus, one indirect indicator among others of the journal's quality is the number of peer reviews used in each of the accepted manuscripts. Here we should recall that without the disinterested work and efforts of the reviewer (Table 1) the REML project would not be possible. Therefore, just as the before-mentioned external assessments highlight, one of the strengths of REML is its extraordinary peer reviews. So much so that internal REML data report of its growing use in the case of accepted manuscripts, of over three peer reviews in 40% of cases in 2016, 59.38% in 2017 and up to 65.38% in those of 2018 (data available up to August of this year).

Table 1.

Reviewers of the Spanish Journal of Legal Medicine 2016-2017.

Miguel Ángel Acosta Benito, Beatriz Aguilera Tapia, Antonio Alonso Alonso, Javier Alonso Santos, Eugenia Ameneiros-Lago, Amparo Arroyo Fernández, Rafael M. Bañón González, Eneko Barbería Marcalain, Carme Barrot Feixat, Alejandro Bel Blesa, Ana María Bermejo Barrera, Araceli Boraita Pérez, Juan Carlos Borondo Alcázar, Miguel Cecilio Botella, Ángel Carracedo Álvarez, María Casado González, Mariano Casado Blanco, Juan de Dios Casas Sánchez, María Castellano Arroyo, Antonio Collado Cruz, Manuel Crespillo Márquez, Santiago Crespo Alonso, María Teresa Criado del Río, Ángel Cuquerella Fuentes, Juan Gabriel De la Cruz, Santiago Delgado Bueno, Enrique Dorado Fernández, Olatz Echeverría Jáuregui, Rafael Fernández García-Andrade, Ana Ferrer Dufol, Sergi Font-Ritort, Raquel Fuertes López, Julio César Galán Cortés, Joan Ignasi Galtés Vicente, Pedro Manuel Garamendi González, Rosario García-Repetto, Joaquín Garijo González, Santiago Gascón Santos, Manel Gené Badia, Lucas Giner Jiménez, Eloy Girela López, Esperanza L. Gómez-Durán, Alejandro González Medina, Marta Grijalba Mazo, Julio Antonio Guija Villa, Fernando Heredia Martínez, Angel Hernández Gil, Anna Hospital Ribas, Xavier Jordana Comin, Elena Labajo-González, Inés Landín Roig, Mª Victoria Lareu Huidobro, Manuel López-Rivadulla, Elena Lorda Barraguer, Miguel Lorente Acosta, Aurelio Luna Maldonado, Montserrat Llordés Llordés, Concha Magaña Loarte, Rebeca Marinas-Sanz, Patricia Marrero Álvarez, Teresa Marrón Moya, Gabriel Martí Amengual, Fernando Martín Cazorla, María Antonia Martínez Hernández, Pilar Martínez Fernández, Begoña Martínez Jarreta, Mercedes Martínez-León, Carles Martin-Fumadó, Jordi Medallo Muñiz, Pilar Molina Aguilar, Benito Morentín Campillo, Leticia Muñoz García-Largo, Eduardo Murcia Sáiz, Álvaro Muro Álvarez, Carmen Negre Muñoz, Francisco Javier Ochoa Carrillo, Clara Ortega Benito, Ana Isabel Ortega-Pertuz, José Vicente Pachar Lucio, Mar Pastor Bravo, Bernardo Perea Pérez, Jesús Pérez-Pazos, José Luis Prieto Carrero, Lourdes Prieto Solla, Lluïsa Puig Bausili, Mireia Puig Campmany, Anna Puigdefàbregas Serra, Jordi Querolt Monterde, Noé Ramírez-Elizondo, Carlos Represas Vázquez, Isolina Riaño Galán, Antonio Rico García, Antoni Riera Mestre, Fernando Rodés Lloret, Manuel Ruiz Cervigón, Manuel Salguero Villadiego, Marta I. Saloña-Bordas, Manuel Sancho de Salas, Andrés Santiago-Sáez, Ana Santurtún Zarrabeitia, Fernando Serrulla Rech, Felipe Solsona Durán, Mercè Subirana Doménech, Josep M. Suelves Joanxich, Ana María Taranilla Castro, Rafael M. Teijeira Alvarez, Antoni Trilla García, Aurora Valenzuela Garach, Gloria Vallejo de Torres, Teresa Vázquez Osorio, Alejandro Weber, Alexandre Xifró Collsamata,

With regard to innovations and new trends, REML makes every effort to be effectively present in social media. We therefore know that the so-called future altmetrics, which are a way of measuring the impact of publications as documents through new semantic web media (blogs, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) may help to define some of our project's aspects. Although it is true that this type of alternative metrics are still in experimental stages and have yet to convince the scientific community that they are a valid contribution to evaluating science,¹⁴ REML is committed to being present in these forums whilst simultaneously increasing the visibility of the REML articles.

Finally, we wish to end this edition once more with appreciation of our readers, authors and reviewers. REML would not be possible without their disinterested contribution.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Pepi Pau, Merche Belmonte, José Mena, Beatriz Mas and José Alonso from Elsevier publishers, and all the other staff at Elsevier with whom the Editorial Committee of the SPANISH JOURNAL OF LEGAL MEDICINE have had the opportunity to work.