Research and experimental medicine papers from Taiwan’s first English-language journal for biomedicine last year ranked as the most influential in Asia, the Ministry of Science and Technology said yesterday as the journal marks its 25th anniversary.
The ministry celebrated the anniversary of the Journal of Biomedical Science at a news conference in Taipei, which was attended by the journal’s current and former editors-in-chief.
The journal, launched by the ministry in January 1994, is the first international journal in biomedical science operated by a Taiwanese team, Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Shieh Dar-bin (謝達斌) said.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Science and Technology
Its impact factor, which reflects the yearly average number of citations its published articles received, rose from 0.99 in 1999 to 5.203 last year, Shieh said, citing information in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database released by the US Institute for Scientific Information earlier this year.
When the Journal of Biomedical Science first started publishing, only about three in every 100 submissions by Taiwanese researchers were accepted by international journals, said Chang Chuan-chiung (張傳炯), the journal’s founding editor-in-chief and Academia Sinica academician renowned for his research on snake venoms.
In research and experimental medicine, JCR ranked the Journal of Biomedical Science as No. 1 among 19 similar publications in Asia and 20th of 136 similar journals worldwide last year, said Chang Wen-chang (張文昌), its current editor-in-chief and chairman of Taipei Medical University’s board of trustees.
In cell biology, the journal was ranked fourth among 18 similar publications in Asia and 49th among 193 similar publications worldwide, he said, adding that the field is more competitive for studies involving both animal and plant cells.
The key to improving the Journal of Biomedical Science’s clout is to publish special issues on “trending topics” or subjects showcasing Taiwan’s research edge, such as enterovirus 71, dengue fever, hepatitis B, immunotherapy and neurodegenerative diseases, Chang Wen-chang said.
Over the past five years, the Journal of Biomedical Science had received 24 percent of submissions from China, 12 percent from India, 8 percent from Taiwan and 3 percent from the US, he said, adding that quality, not nationality, is the primary consideration for publication.
The journal is published by UK-based BioMed Central, part of global publisher Springer Nature, which helps it reach more readers in the US and Europe, he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater