Abstract
Purpose: The purposes of the authors' analysis were to assess the values that plastic surgery journals demonstrate in terms of the standardized measures created by the Korea Medical Citation Index, and to assess the relationship between these values and the turnaround time of these journals. Methods: The overall indexes of J Korean Soc Plast Reconstr Surg(JKSPRS), J Korean Soc Aesthetic Plast Surg(JKSAPS), J Korean Cleft Palate-Craniofac Assoc (JKCPRA) were compared with those of journals related with Korean plastic surgery using the following parameters: impact factor, cited half-life, total articles, and the number of journals. Korean plastic surgery journals were compared with journals from relative fields. In addition, an evaluation of all original articles published in 2007, assessing the time intervals from submission to publication was conducted for Korean plastic surgery journals and various journals which were related with plastic surgery. Results: The number of articles for Korean plastic surgery journals for 2006 ranged from 19 for JKCPRA to 149 for JKSPRS. The time interval from submission to publication of an article among Korean plastic surgery journals for 2007 ranged from 73.7 days for JKSAPS to 176.2 days for JKSPRS. The variation in impact factor of JKSPRS for the period from 2002 to 2005 increased from 0.084 in the year 2002 to 0.168 in 2005. But the impact factor in 2006 has fallen to 0.112. Conclusion: JKSPRS demonstrated comparatively high overall index values and a short turnaround time in comparison to relative journals. To improve the status of Korean plastic surgery journals, members of Korean plastic surgeons should quate Korean plastic surgery journals and adjust key word to MeSH. The title written down in Korean should use medical terminology published by Korean medical association.