New year, new editorial team

In this Editorial, I reflect on my time as Editor in Chief of JCOM and thank the community of scholars and practitioners who have helped to ensure the success of JCOM by generously contributing their time as reviewers, as well as authors and readers. This community has made my time as Editor in Chief rewarding and informative, as I have learned more and more about our diverse field. I am sure that JCOM will continue to grow and develop under the directorship of Michelle Riedlinger and Marina Joubert.

Who published what on Somali health issues?

In this editorial we attempt to define additional rationales for SHAJ, the Somali Health Action Journal, further to those presented in our inaugural editorial. We recognize the health information divide as one of the three health gaps characterizing the global health inequality landscape. The SHAJ venture emerged from a joint Somali-Swedish initiative to revive a former collaborative research programme also recognizing the need for a Somali-based platform for research communication. The members of the SHAJ Editorial team decided to join forces in designing and carrying out an empirical bibliometric study to assess the state of the art of the published literature on Somali health issues over a 75-year period covering major societal development eras in Somali academic history. This editorial is basically presented in the form of a report from this study, concluding with a statement on the policy implications for SHAJ and Somali based research for health. The study raises concerns about the scarcity of research publications on Somali public health issues. This points to the need for research capacity strengthening in general and with special attention to the important role of the newly established Somali universities. We note a lack of balance regarding the topics and public health relevance of published papers in relation to the burden of prevailing health problems which calls for efforts to set research priorities in tune with the broad needs of the communities. Another observation is that the papers reviewed indicate a heavy dependence of the research agenda on external organisations and funders, which calls for active attention to research ownership issues in terms of Somali leadership and authorship. There is a lack of dissemination channels for Somali based health research and limited possibilities for young Somali scientists to publish their studies. As a Somali-owned journal, we envisage that SHAJ can play a catalytic role in the promotion and dissemination of "Essential Somali Health Research".

Commemorative Issue in Honor of Professor María Vallet Regí: 20 Years of Silica-Based Mesoporous Materials

This Special Issue entitled “Commemorative Issue in Honor of Professor María Vallet-Regí: 20 Years of Silica-Based Mesoporous Materials” arises from the initiative of the editorial team of Pharmaceutics to pay homage to Professor Maria Vallet-Regí for her ground-breaking pioneering scientific contribution to the field of silica-based mesoporous materials for biomedical applications [...]