Voicing Rivers

Welcome to this Special Issue of River Research and Applications, entitled Voicing Rivers. As an editorial group, it has been a great privilege to read and consider responses to our call for contributions and share with readers, authors and reviewers involved in this journey. We invited proposals for articles and creative work to focus on stories of, by, from and for rivers, from a variety of perspectives. This Special Issue has been a collaborative project involving nearly 20 rivers and over 50 people. We thank contributors, reviewers and the River Research and Applications journal editorial and production team.

Guías de publicación: ¿eficiencia editorial o desesperación profesional?

Author publication guidelines (APG) are created by scientific journals to instruct authors when submitting manuscripts for publication. These documents include formal elements that articles must comply with for submission (e.g., format of references, document layout, word limit, and structure), as well as ethical aspects related to the scientific research or journal editorial policies. Despite the importance of these documents for research management, their clarity and quality vary among journals, causing frustration for research staff and financial expense for publishers. The objective of this study is to propose generic recommendations for publication guidelines and to classify the informative elements to be included in these documents. Resumen Las guías de publicación (GP) son documentos elaborados por las revistas con el fin de instruir a los autores a la hora de enviar un manuscrito para su publicación. A tal fin incluyen desde aspectos formales que deben cumplir los documentos para su envío (formato de las referencias bibliográficas, extensión, estructura, etc.) hasta información relativa a aspectos éticos del trabajo científico o políticas editoriales de las revistas. Pese a la importancia de estos documentos para la gestión de la investigación, su claridad y calidad son muy desiguales entre publicaciones, generando frustración al personal investigador y gastos económicos a las editoriales. El objetivo de este trabajo es proponer un decálogo de recomendaciones genéricas para la elaboración de guías de publicación, así como establecer una taxonomía de elementos informativos a incluir en estos documentos.

Celebrating the 50th Issue of Qatar Medical Journal: Editorial Letter

It is with great pride that we celebrate the 50th issue of Qatar Medical Journal (QMJ) that has achieved significant growth recently. Our mission is to encourage authors to submit high-quality and innovative research promoting medical advancements. In the past two years, manuscripts submissions have tripled in number and were enriched by a more diverse pool of authors with global representation, resulting in an increase in the number of published issues moving from being a biannual to a triannual journal. Additionally, the number of articles published in an issue has doubled. QMJ continues to be an open-access peer-reviewed journal, publishing original research work, reviews, editorials, and case reports that are particularly relevant to medicine and free of charge to authors. It is indexed in several renowned and highly ranked platforms such as PubMed Central, Scopus, Scimago, Google Scholar, and the Directory of Open Access Journals. It was also recently indexed in the World Health Organization's Index Medicus for the Eastern Mediterranean Region (IMEMR). We look forwards to becoming the highest-rated medical journal, in terms of impact factor, regionally.

“Catch-22” in Starting a New Science Journal (Editorial)

In our continuous effort to consolidate the journal DRC Sustainable Future, we encounter a somewhat similar situation, a kind of Catch-22, applicable to publishing in a recently launched science journal. Our periodical is peer-reviewed and free of all publication and processing charges (so, it is not a predatory journal), and it has a sound international editorial board. Nevertheless, authors refrain from submitting their manuscripts to the journal, as it has not yet been entered in the database of Scopus or ISI Web of Science. In other words, so far, the journal has not earned an impact factor, and it cannot receive one wPagiet:heo16u1/t164publishing articles of broad interest to the scientific community. For publishing such papers, one needs high rating of the journal, translated in an impact factor. This dilemma is, indeed, difficult to solve. Our dedicated authors, scientists from 11 countries of 5 continents made it possible to publish 2 volumes with 2 issues per year, a total of over 40 papers, which received numerous citations. We are confident that our co-workers will get rewarded soon when the journal will be included in the Scopus and/or ISI Web of Science database. Our present issue expands our targeted realm of sustainability to the fields of transportation, architecture, education, and sustainability of the process of innovation. Editors of DRC Sustainable Future are hopeful that the fourth issue of the journal contains several interesting papers, appealing to a wide segment of the scientific community. Our second issue of volume 2 of DRC Sustainable Future benefits of both interesting topics and famous authors.

Obituary for Dr Harriet Nabudere (1973– 2021), Former Managing Editor of the East African Health Research Journal

It is with great sadness we learned about the sudden demise of our colleague, and former Managing Editor of the East African Health Research Journal (EAHRJ) Dr Harriet Nabudere who passed away on 07th August 2021. Dr Nabudere is remembered as one of the founders of the EAHRJ. Dr Nabudere was instrumental for establishing the infrastructure of the EAHRJ notable the journal Editorial Manager (EM) system. Her range of contributions on publishing EAHRJ issues regularly was extraordinary. Dr Nabudere initially was an associate editor of the EAHRJ before she was promoted to the position of Managing Editor (ME).

On relations in science: the case of the scientific journal editorial board

This article analyses the connections between members of the editorial board of a scientific journal which are formed based on their reviews of scientific articles. It is shown that the connections can be represented as a graph. The research uses the data for six years of article reviewing in the scientific and technical Journal of "Almaz — Antey" Air and Space Defence Corporation.The methods of analysis are combinatorics and graph theory, as well as the relevant graph characteristics: adjacency matrix, incidence matrix, reachability matrix, graph fullness and connectivity, nearest neighbours graph and graph spanning tree.It is shown that cooperation of the reviewers of the Journal helps plot a connected graph with links between any two vertices, i.e. between any reviewers.The graph is analysed and the methods of its application to calculate the Journal’s scientometric indicators are demonstrated. As the research reveals, a journal that publishes articles in numerous disciplines forms connections between all reviewers and this parameter can be indicative of interchangeability within the scientific fields or, conversely, of a joint work in this scientific field when reviewing manuscripts. Based on the research results, it is possible to search for new reviewers in the areas where competencies are underdeveloped. And by the areas where competencies are strong, we can determine the core competence of the reviewers of a scientific journal, reflecting the main focus of the evaluated scientific research.The work resulted in the formulated scientometric indicators of the journal, which can be used to search for and involve new reviewers or to represent data on a strong team of reviewers on a specific topic, as well as on a new scientific field just emerging for research.