As usual, the REVISTA ESPAÑOLA DE MEDICINA LEGAL (REML) editorial team wishes to share with its readers, authors and reviewers the changes that have been introduced in 2016, as well as information about the activities carried out in the last two-year period 2014–2015. The two main developments are the change in editor-in-chief and English translations of REML articles.

In 2008, a group of forensic physicians, led by Dr. Francisco Pera, joined the board of directors of the Asociación Nacional de Médicos Forenses [National Association of Forensic Physicians] (ANMF). Among many other issues, the board resumed publication of the REML, which had been suspended for several years, and put the prestigious scientific publishing house Elsevier in charge of editing.1 The statutes of our association tied the position of ANMF chair to the position of REML editor-in-chief, which had fallen to Dr. Francisco Pera over these past 8 years (2008–2015). Therefore, we would like to recognize his work for ANMF and REML. Dr. Pera succeeded in consolidating the scientific content and cementing REML's position as a Spanish-language journal of reference in the biomedical-legal sciences, while also achieving financial sustainability during very difficult times. In line with those purposes, he succeeded in leading the organization to become an invaluable partner of the School of Forensic Medicine of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. We would also like to highlight his awareness of topics of high interest and topicality, reflected in the push for monographs about gender violence,2 suicide,3 professional medical responsibility,4 and, more recently, the new system of evaluating personal injury caused by traffic accidents.5 Public institutions such as the Ministerio de Justicia [Ministry of Justice]5,6 or the Delegación del Gobierno para la Violencia de Género [Government Delegation for Gender Violence]2 have collaborated on these monographs.

On another front, one of the recommendations from the Literature Selection and Technical Review Committee of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) upon the request to include REML in Medline was to remove the connection between the position of ANMF chair and that of editor-in-chief. After the statutory reform adopted by the ANMF assembly, and having served the maximum amount of time on the board, Dr. Francisco Pera has handed over to Dr. Enrique Fernández as the new president-elect. Both agreed in their nomination of Dr. Amadeo Pujol, former associate editor of REML, as editor-in-chief, thus complying with NLM requirements. The proposal was upheld unanimously by the ANMF board of directors and assembly, held in Barcelona in November 2015. Let these words serve as a token of our most sincere thanks and appreciation of Dr. Francisco Pera, as well as our welcome to Dr. Enrique Fernandez and Dr. Amadeo Pujol, both of whom have extensive experience and are well known in the forensic sciences.

The other big news for 2016 is the systematic translation into English, at no cost to the authors, of all REML editorials, reviews, and original articles, provided via extension of the contract between ANMF and Elsevier. We are aware of the difficulties facing the international diffusion of a scientific journal published mainly in Spanish in today's world, and so we are confident that translation into English will boost REML's influence, which could become the Spanish language journal with the most widespread readership in the biomedical-legal sciences. Thus, in 2016 we will again apply for inclusion in Medline, which may require us to again consider some changes to the journal, always with the goal of improving and following the publisher's recommendations. Therefore, the editorial committee is studying, among other issues, reforming the regulations for authors, in line with what is already standard practice at other prestigious journals. We are also convinced that English translation will facilitate citation of the papers published in REML and will allow us to request, with this security, a new evaluation by Thomson Reuters for inclusion in the Science Citation Index. This will provide REML with the “impact factor,” one of the main indicators used internationally to assess the scientific impact of a journal. Its value for REML in 2014, using the same criteria used by Thomson Reuters, was 0.522, a figure which makes us very optimistic about the re-evaluation and the future of the journal.

Since the launch in 2008 of the new REML project, it has grown unceasingly. The year 2015 was a milestone because, for the first time, the online version of the journal exceeded 100,000 visits (109,550). Fig. 1 shows this sustained increase that was dramatic in 2014–2015, with nearly a half a million page views and an average of 2.94 pages per visit. As in previous reports,7 the main country of origin is Spain, followed by Mexico (with nearly 20%), Colombia, and Peru. During this period, REML published 83 articles: 12 editorials, 11 original articles, 4 short original articles, 30 reviews, 11 medical-forensic cases, 6 “forensic medicine in images” features, 4 practical forensic medicine articles, 2 letters to the editor, and 3 specials. Without a doubt, the 2015 monograph on the new traffic injury assessment system has influenced the number of editorials and reviews substantially. There were only 3 articles from Latin America in 2014–2015 (from Argentina, Colombia, and Venezuela), and this is an area for improvement.

Figure 1.

Evolution of the annual visits received by the online version of Revista Española de Medicina Legal between 2008 and 2015.

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As we have already mentioned, and has been going on the past several years, REML has been open both to issues of scientific interest as well as to developments with great impact on Spanish medical-legal activities. At the end of 2014, the Consejo Médico Forense [Forensic Medicine Council] began operation, a project that the medical-forensic community had long called for, and which REML joined in recognizing in its first editorial in 2015.8 This past year was particularly busy for legislative reforms, from the removal of lack of due care and minor offences with the reform of the Penal Code, which was the subject of an editorial,9 to the previously-mentioned new traffic accident assessment system, which was the subject of a monograph enriched by the participation of various authors.5

Finally, we wish to express our sincere appreciation to the readers, authors and, of course, the reviewers (Table 1), without whose selfless participation this project would not be possible.