- Sun Huh: Department of Parasitology and Institute of Medical Education, Hallym University College of Medicine, Chuncheon, Korea.
Background/Aims: Eight years have passed since Clinical and Molecular Hepatology changed its language policy to English-only in September 2010. The journal has been included in PubMed Central since September 2010. Present title continues the Korean Journal of Hepatology since June 2012. It has been indexed in the Web of Science Core Collection as an Emerging Sources Citation Index journal since 2015. I sought to determine whether the change in language policy was successful based on journal metrics. I also investigated whether the journal has become one of the top-ranked world journals in the category of gastroenterology and hepatology.
METHODS: The following journal metrics were calculated or analyzed based on the journal's bibliographic information from 2012 to 2017 and the Web of Science Core Collection database: citable and non-citable articles, country of authors, total cites, impact factor, the immediacy index, country of citing authors, citing journal titles, and the Hirsch index.
RESULTS: From 2012 to 2017, there were 282 citable articles. Authors from 29 countries have published in the journal. The number of total citations in 2017 was 611. The impact factor increased from 2.1 in 2014 to 2.8 in 2017. The citing authors were from 85 countries, and their papers have been cited in 663 journals. The Hirsch index was 19.
Conclusions: Based on journal metrics, Clinical and Molecular Hepatology has succeeded in becoming a top-ranked international journal 8 years after changing its language policy to English-only.