JECM and Taipei Medical University: What Are We About?

©2010 Taipei Medical University

E D I TO R I A L

J Exp Clin Med 2010;2(1):1–3

1. Introduction

In December 2009, Taipei Medical University (TMU) staged a marvelous event. We unveiled the first issue of our new journal published by Elsevier: Journal of

Exper-imental and Clinical Medicine (JECM). Fortunately, it

co-incided with TMU and President Wen-Ta Chiu hosting the congress of the Asia-Pacific Academic Consortium for Public Health (APACPH). This auspicious gathering provided our Executive Editor Dr. Kuang-Sheng Yeh the opportunity to monitor the JECM display table, recruit-ing potential authors by distributrecruit-ing gratis copies of Volume 1, Number 1.1–9 Dr. Yeh was also able to recruit potential authors for future issues, some of whom may appear in Volume 2, Number 1.10–14 Personal approaches are essential to our outreach strategy to ensure the future survival of JECM.

We convened the first JECM Editorial Board meeting with the following members present (Wen-Ta Chiu, Founding Editor of JECM and President of TMU; Jacqueline Whang-Peng, Vice Editor-in-Chief and Chair of the Cancer Research Center, TMU Wan Fang Hospital; Yu-Chuan Li, Associate Editor of JECM and Vice President of TMU; Der-Zen Liu, Associate Editor of JECM and Director of the Office of Research and Development of TMU; Ching-Hua Su, Vice President of TMU; Ta-Liang Chen, Vice President of TMU; Yuan-Tseh Lee, Distinguished Research Fellow, Institute of Atomic and Molecular

Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taiwan; Cheng-Wen Wu, Honorary Investigator, Institute of Cancer Research, National Health Research Institute, Taiwan; Che-Kun James Shen, Distinguished Research Fellow, Institute of Molecular Biology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan; Chun-Jen Shih, former Minister of Department of Health, Executive Yuan, Taiwan; Ming-Thau Sheu, Professor of Pharmacy, TMU; Shih-Yi Huang, Professor of School of Nutrition and Health Sciences, TMU; Yung-Hsiao Chiang, Head of Department of Neurosurgery, TMU Hospital; Ching-Chang Hung, Professor of Department of Neurosurgery, TMU Hospital; Liang-Yo Yang, Head of Research Promotion Section, Office of Research and Development of TMU; Yuan-Soon Ho, Professor of School of Medical Laboratory Science and Biotech nology, TMU). Because this meeting was in Taipei, only the editorial board members from Taiwan were present.

The Executive Editor, Dr. Kuang-Sheng Yeh, indi-cated our current situation in a brief description. Many questions were posed to Ms. Sabine Yu, the representa-tive from our publisher Elsevier, who provided a clear overview of JECM relationships. This included a rather lengthy discussion concerned with such crucial topics as SCI indexing and most especially that the attainment of an early Impact Factor (IF) is absolutely essential in Asian and European universities and other scientific in-stitutions. Respectable IFs (i.e., high!) are keys to open

JECM and Taipei Medical University: What

Are We About?

Edwin L. Cooper*,

.

.,

.

.

Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Experimental and Clinical Medicine

Distinguished Professor, Laboratory of Comparative Neuroimmunology, Department of Neurobiology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA

*Corresponding author. Laboratory of Comparative Neuroimmunology, Department of Neurobiology, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, University of California, Los Angeles, California 90095-1763, USA.

2 E.L. Cooper doors for grants, publications, and prestige in general.

Although controversial, JECM editorial board members emphasized the need and indeed the requirement that

JECM attain a high respectable IF. To do so, it must

maintain an international thrust—it would not be in its best interests to become a Taiwan journal, although it is a component of TMU. At this point, JECM would not gain prominence if its trajectory remained provincial, i.e., entirely local.

Members expressed substantial enthusiasm for JECM and its initiatives. There were also pledges to fully sup-port its current and emerging vision as enunciated by the Editor-in-Chief, emphasized from the point of view of the biomedical scientist. There was unanimous agree-ment that appealing incentives must be made available and offered to potential authors especially for securing prominent and timely reviews. There should not be an active recruitment of papers that deal with more con-troversial ancient medical practices. We were then in-vited to a dinner to continue more discussions and to outline our strategies.

A wonderful surprise event added luster to the en-tire meeting in Taipei: President Chiu conferred on me the title: Chair Professorship, for Educational and

Scien-tific Excellence. I now therefore have a feeling of being

officially a member of Taipei Medical University and its academic community—a deeply felt honor with pro-found appreciation! Let us turn now to the details of what JECM is all about.

2. Journal Overview (Aims & Scope)

The JECM aims to publish high quality scientific re-search in the field of experimental and clinical medi-cine, with the goal of promoting and disseminating medical science knowledge to improve global health. Articles on clinical, laboratory and social research in medicine and other related fields that are of interest to the medical and health care profession are eligible for consideration. Examples include: translational and personalized approaches to biomedicine, metabolic diseases, and cancer, aging that employ cutting edge molecular approaches (e.g., proteomics, genomics). Applicable animal models and in vitro assays will also be considered. The JECM publishes review articles, origi-nal articles, case reports, short communications and letters to the editor. (We do not anticipate a focus on complementary and alternative medicine practices.)

2.1. Key points

JECM has assembled an international editorial board

that reflects globalization of biomedicine. JECM will aim to enhance increasing publication track records by en-couraging more regional publications and at the same time remain completely international. High quality

manuscripts will be considered in several categories including up-to-date experimental and clinical reviews and original papers. We expect to balance clinical pa-pers with experimental papa-pers that utilize several ap-proaches to defining convincing, rigorously analyzed data. All papers will be required to enhance the writing by including hypothetical interpretative diagrams that help authors and readers clarify and understand impli-cations of their results. These approaches will facilitate the advancement and application of evidenced-based observations.

2.2. Justification

Real and potential cutting edge research findings con-tinue to rise, especially as globalization expands our horizons and brings our international communities closer together. Accessibility is thus the single imper-ative that supports the need for this new journal, JECM. There may be certain similar journals, but their ap-proach and general thrust are not sufficiently main-stream as defined in items I–V below. Items I–III will assist to move research applications more rapidly. Animal and in vitro models are less difficult than re-peated and pertinent but increasingly more expensive clinical trials.

3. Our Approach

I. Use of relevant vertebrate animal models of disease processes (e.g., various knock-out mice: obese mice). After all, the earliest of biomedical discover-ies were achieved through prescient experiments on frog larvae revealing clues on thyroid function. II. Use of invertebrate animal models of disease

pro-cesses (e.g., the fruit fly, Drosophila; the nematode worm, Caenorhabditis elegans). These creatures have been and continue to be essential for understand-ing basic mechanisms that can be applied to human diseases. For example, the original discovery of phagocytosis in the late 1800s was basic to under-standing inflammation, connected so intimately with the innate and adaptive immune systems. III. Define the conditions that seem to exempt certain

models from diseases such as cancer whereas oth-ers are consistently vulnerable.

IV. Focus on the use of cutting edge technologies and methodologies that promise to deliver results ob-tained by molecular strategies.

V. Focus on translation of these results to the patient in order to link the findings of basic molecular bio-medicine, thus giving relevant meaning to findings. VI. Recognize the advantages of certain human pop-ulations that merit closer scrutiny from the point of view of gene analysis so that translation can mani-fest. Problems include obesity, cancer, and aging.

JECM and Taipei Medical University 3

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