Journal of Gastroenterology in the era of globalization.

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The Journal of Gastroenterology (JG) is the flagship journal of three periodicals that the Japanese Society of Gastroenterology (JSGE) publishes, the other two being the Journal of the Japanese Society of Gastroenterology (JJSG), published in Japanese, and the Clinical Journal of Gastroenterology (CJG), an internet journal focusing on case reports. During my service on the editorial board of JG, the name of the journal was changed from Gastroenterologia Japonica to the current one, hoping to attract more international interest (Fig. 1). Indeed, during the last 20 years, an increasing number of manuscripts have been submitted to this journal, as the impact factor (IF) of this journal has jumped up from less than 0.5 to over 4.0 at present, which of course is positively correlated. However, JG still stands far behind other major journals such as Gastroenterology [the official journal of the American Gastroenterological Association (AGA)], and Gut [the official journal of the British Society of Gastroenterology (BSG)] in the ranking of gastrointestinal journals (Table 1). Although impact factor is only one of the measures for evaluating the value of the journals, I think there are many points that our journal can learn from these top medical journals’ policies to improve further our performance necessary to grow into a truly international journal. First of all, it is important to invite more editorial board members from abroad, in particular from Asian–Pacific countries where we are located. Currently, among 67 editorial board members (including editor-in-chief and associate editors) of JG, only 9 are from outside Japan and none are from Asia, which can be interpreted as that the journal is heavily skewed to domestic orientation. In contrast, both AGA and BSG are approaching Asian counties to strengthen the relation to these countries, particularly China, as they recognize the importance of papers from these countries that are growing rapidly and share considerable portion of their journals. By appointing productive young gastroenterologists from Asian countries, we can expect more high-quality papers from them. We can also host editorial board meetings at international conventions such as APDW or JDDW to promote mutual communications by directly hearing their comments and proposals. As I already proposed this idea to Professor Mamoru Watanabe, the editorial director of JG, I hope it will be realized in the near future. Second, we need to enhance further the visibility of JG. If you look at what Gastroenterology and Gut are doing, you will notice that JG has been less active with advertising as these two. When I was the president of JSGE, I prompted the JSGE office to send the contents of JG to all JSGE members through e-mail. This journal alert has since been continued. However, many Japanese members may not look at the notice of contents written in English. As this kind of attitude (‘‘English allergy’’) of many Japanese members was expected, I also recommended that editorial members write a short summary of each article in Japanese, so that Japanese readers can grasp the contents published in JG. Gastric Cancer, a journal dedicated to articles related to gastric cancer and now ranked higher than JG, initiated this in an effort to attract the attention of Japanese readers during my period as associated editor of the journal. There are also other ways to increase awareness whenever a new issue is published, for example, by providing commentaries on the articles from editorial members or other experts, such as senior editorial board members, to highlight the K. Sugano (&) Jichi Medical University, 3311-1 Yakushiji, Shimotsuke, Tochigi 329-0498, Japan e-mail: sugano@jichi.ac.jp