GCF Chan

The Editorial Board of Hong Kong Journal of Paediatrics (HKJP) gave me the honour to succeed Prof. Louis Low as the Chief Editor of the HKJP starting from this issue. Aware of the difficulties encountered and achievements attained by my 2 former predecessors (Prof. Yeung Chap-Yung & Prof. Louis Low) of the new series of HKJP, I really cannot hide my anxiety while I am taking up this task.

When I flipped through the history of the New Series of HKJP, I noticed that our journal gradually evolved from a local academic journal to a regional academic journal which embraced articles coming from China mainland and various parts of Asia. We can now broaden our view from local prevalent paediatric problems to a more complex regional perspective. Often times, these valuable information may not be found in other international literature and we are helping to bridge this gap. Our Editorial team will continue to drive our Journal towards this direction.

We also started to have more and more original articles written by local paediatricians and we are very please to have their contribution. We had repeatedly appealed for our local paediatricians to submit their original works to the HKJP in the past but the response had been less than optimal for quite sometimes. The reasons can be multiple and one of the reasons is the relatively small local paediatric community which can barely form a critical mass. Another important factor is the lack of support from the administrators of the local academic institutions towards local journals. Such situation remained unchanged but with then the establishment of the Hong Kong College of Paediatrician Accreditation Committee which recognises works published in our Journal as one of the accepted requirement for higher paediatric trainee, this new incentive gradually evoked positive responses. We started to witness encouraging changes in recent years.

With the continuous and valuable contributions from both local and overseas paediatricians, the HKJP is gradually gaining recognition from the international publication community. This is further enhanced by our open access webpage supported by Johnson & Johnson educational sponsorship. In the latest evaluation by the Scopus, a citation information network based on Elsevier databases including Biobase, Embase etc., HKJP ranks 129th in a total of 174 journals classified under "Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health". Scopus is a citation tracking service similar to the impact factor of Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Science. As the HKJP is indexed in Embase, citations can automatically be tracked by Scopus. Among the indicators produced by Scopus, "Cites per Documents (2 years)" measures the average citations per document in a 2 year period. It is computed considering the amount of citations received by a journal in the current year to the documents published in the two previous years, similar formula used by the Impact Factor. HKJP started to have baseline Cites per Documents and we are looking forward for further progress of our journal in the near future.

Another change that we noticed over the years was that HKJP has become a platform for exchange of opinions among local paediatricians in the letter to the Editor section. While the idea expressed may not be agreed by all, it does reflect that our Journal has been serving our local paediatricians and provides an opportunity for everyone to ventilate their thoughts and concerns related to paediatrics and child health.

As we all know, without the group effort of our editorial board members, reviewers, secretarial staff , authors, and the support from the 2 founding organisations, Hong Kong College of Paediatricians and Hong Kong Paediatric Society, the HKJP would not be able to progress over all these years. I therefore plead for the continuous support of our colleagues. By working together, I am sure that we can move further forward in the future.