Inclusion in PubMed Central
Ewha Medical Journal (EMJ) applied to PMC on August 21, 2024 (Eastern Standard Time). On January 31, 2025, a scientific quality review was completed (
Fig. 1) [
1]. I am grateful to the PMC staff for their generous handling of EMJ and their ongoing communication regarding technical and administrative matters. Having produced Journal Article Tag Suite (JATS) XML (PMC XML) for an article in 2005, I am aware of the challenges involved in reviewing the technical quality of JATS XML. I previously applied this format to the
Journal of Educational Evaluation for Health Professions [
2]. Before 2014, all medical journals from Korea could be included in PMC if the journal was published in English and full-text XML (PMC XML) was produced. As a result, many medical journal editors in Korea transitioned their journals to English and sought PMC inclusion. However, since 2014, the criteria for scientific quality review have become stricter, causing some journals to fail in their attempts to enter PMC. EMJ was also unsuccessful on March 12, 2022. It is therefore fortunate that EMJ has now achieved inclusion in PMC after meeting both scientific and technical quality standards on its second application. The United States National Library of Medicine, which maintains PMC and PubMed, demonstrates global leadership in biomedical science for the betterment of human health. Without PMC, many local medical journals in Korea would be unable to reach the international stage, as inclusion in MEDLINE remains highly challenging for local journals. Therefore, the inclusion of abstracts in PubMed could not be anticipated.
What does it mean to be a PMC journal? When a journal is indexed in PMC, its abstracts are automatically ingested into PubMed, making all PMC‑listed titles retrievable through PubMed, the world’s largest biomedical literature database [
3]. Inclusion in both PMC and PubMed significantly improves a journal’s international visibility and often leads to increased submissions from researchers outside Korea [
4]. Indeed, Korean journals typically experience a substantial rise in citation rates—sometimes as much as tenfold—after achieving PubMed and PMC indexing [
5]. We expect that EMJ will enjoy a similar increase in citations once it is indexed as well.
When I assumed the editorship of EMJ, one of my objectives was to have the journal included in the Directory of Open Access Journals, MEDLINE, PMC, and Scopus [
6]. Of these 4, I have succeeded in 2 databases: the Directory of Open Access Journals and PMC [
1]. We will soon prepare an application to MEDLINE and add previous articles to the PMC retrospective collection, extending back to 2011 [
7].
Invitation of an AI article editor due to the increase in those articles
In May 2025, I invited Dr. Dohyung Rim to join the editorial board as an artificial intelligence (AI) article editor. Although I have learned about machine learning, deep learning, and large language models, I still find these topics challenging to fully understand and edit. Therefore, a specialist was appointed to handle such manuscripts. In his editorial as AI editor, Dr. Rim presented 10 guidelines for contributors to medical artificial intelligence research [
8]. These guidelines will be valuable for researchers preparing machine learning and deep learning manuscripts.
In this issue, 2 papers on machine learning and deep learning models are featured. Suh et al. [
9] trained trichoscopic images to detect androgenetic alopecia at an early stage. A ResNet-18 convolutional neural network, pretrained on ImageNet, was used for training. This model demonstrated high accuracy and generalizability in detecting early-stage androgenetic alopecia from trichoscopic images. The first author, Min Jung Suh, is a junior medical student who responded to reviewer comments by revising both the Python code and the manuscript with excellence. I believe this was possible because of Ewha Woman’s University College of Medicine’s extracurricular programs, such as the Green Ribbon Project [
10], where faculty members teach students Python and deep learning. It was remarkable to see a junior student demonstrate such competency in problem-solving with a deep neural network.
The machine learning article from Statistics Korea was also noteworthy. In Korea, cause of death statistics is based on the physician’s death certificate. However, direct copying of these certificates to the cause-of-death database is not possible because the initial draft by physicians must be modified in accordance with the 10th revision of the International Classification of Diseases. To minimize discrepancies between the initial draft and the final coding of cause of death, a machine learning model was developed and applied to death certificates. Among 306,898 certificates from 2022, the final cause model achieved an accuracy of 62.65%. Given that there are approximately 18,000 categories for cause of death, this result is excellent. Nevertheless, to further improve accuracy, the quality of death certificates, which serve as the foundational data source, should be enhanced [
11].
Guidelines for researchers, physicians, and the general people
The reporting guidelines of CONSORT 2025 for randomized controlled studies [
12], the transparent reporting of a multivariable model for individual prognosis or diagnosis (TRIPOD)-AI statement for deep learning studies in the medical field [
13], and the TRIPOD-AI large language model (LLM) statement for large language model studies in medical research have been translated into Korean to facilitate easier and faster understanding among Korean researchers [
14]. This translation was made possible through the support of the original guideline authors, Korean proofreading by Yoon Joo Seo, an expert manuscript editor in Korea with a background in Korean language and literature, and back-translation by Jeong-Ju Yoo, Professor of Gastroenterology at Soonchunhyang University Bucheon Hospital. For a bilingual Korean/English journal, providing such essential tools for article writing is invaluable.
The “Ten guidelines for a healthy life: Korean Medical Association Statement (2017)” was a significant achievement by the Korean Medical Association. While each recommendation was already widely known among the public, framing them within a scientifically grounded structure and supplementing them with actionable strategies added meaningful value. Additionally, the original text was expanded to include a detailed action plan. These 10 guidelines will benefit not only physicians advising clients and patients on healthy habits but also the general public interested in adopting healthier behaviors [
15]. The publication of the abridged version was made possible with the cooperation of the academic leaders of the Korean Medical Association.
Finally, I would like to highlight an ecological study conducted by Dr. Eunhee Ha’s lab [
16]. Dr. Ha is an eminent medical researcher in environmental medicine, particularly renowned for her work on particulate matter. As noted in the “Ten guidelines for a healthy life” [
15], particulate matter poses a serious health risk. In the current ecology article, the authors observed that “In winter, strong associations were observed between O
3, NO
2, and all disease outcomes. In spring, PM
2.5 and PM
10 were strongly linked to cardiac and stroke-related visits. This connection became more pronounced in autumn, especially for NO
2 and cardiac arrest.” Accordingly, targeted control of O
3 and NO
2 is an urgent priority, especially in urban environments.
One of my colleague editors of Women's Health Nursing, Dr. Sue Kim, recently remarked that EMJ covers a diverse range of interesting topics. My intention has always been to make EMJ a stimulating journal and a forum for communication among researchers in the health professions, including physicians, dentists, nurses, and dietitians. I am unsure how much the journal has achieved this goal, but I hope readers of EMJ find the articles in this issue enjoyable and gain at least a small sense of happiness from them.
-
Authors’ contributions
All work was done by Sun Huh.
-
Conflict of interest
Sun Huh has edited Ewha Medical Journal since September 2023. However, he was not involved in the peer review process or decision-making. Otherwise, no potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.
-
Funding
None.
-
Data availability
Not applicable.
-
Acknowledgments
None.
-
Supplementary materials
None.
Fig. 1.Application history and review results of Ewha Medical Journal presented in PMC Publisher Portal from August 21, 2024, to July 24, 2025.
References
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