Fixation on Histology

It was an extremely important milestone for the Journal of Histotechnology (JOH) to be accepted on PubMed/Medline in 2019. JOH is now found on the free search engine from US National Library of Medicine (NLM), National Institutes of Health (NIH) database containing over 30 million citations from journals and books primarily on biomedical and life sciences topics. It has taken many years of hard work and previous applications by former JOH Editors in Chief before finally succeeding in being accepted on Medline. JOH now has more prestige and visibility in the biomedical world. One important reason why NSH wanted JOH to be indexed is so that we can attract more manuscript submissions, particularly from PhDs, MDs, DVMs, and others who insist their publications are in journals indexed on PubMed/Medline. Applying to Medline is not a simple matter. With a 2019 NSH JOH Review Task Force recommendation, the application became one priority and put under the direction of Dr. Yongfu Wang, our Associate Editor. Dr. Wang worked diligently with the publisher, Taylor and Francis, to carry out the application process. As Editor in Chief, I thank Dr. Wang for giving his time and efforts and the Task Force for their input for JOH to be on Medline. How the application process worked is explained by Dr. Wang.

We began our task by reviewing the previous application case reports and identifying what factors were holding JOH back. Working with Francesca Everard and Shaunna Whitters at our publisher, we sorted out a list of tasks that could help our application. First, we needed to take actions to keep the format consistent within JOH online and print publications. The Editorial Board was updated and expanded, and each board member’s academic affiliation was listed in a consistent format. In addition, JOH spent a lot of efforts to ensure the accepted manuscripts have consistent style for table, figure and text content organization. Gayle also worked closely with the production team of the publisher to obtain the best quality page proof possible.

Another task we fulfilled was to review and then update JOH statements on financial support, ethics and conflict of interests, as well as to ensure every manuscript we accepted fully obeyed those statements. For all papers the JOH publishes, authors have to reveal the sources of financial support for their article and always include a conflict of interest statement. When applicable, a statement of informed consent, or a statement of human and animal rights must be included. This detailed information can be found at https://authorservices.taylorandfrancis.com/ethics-for-authors/

The most difficult task on the list was to attract more high-quality manuscripts to JOH. This is certainly an ongoing effort but the actions we took already helped with our application. In order to let our potential contributors, know which manuscripts will be interesting to our readership, the 2019 NSH JOH Review Task Force revised the Journal’s Aims and Scope. The NSH office and Editorial Board members started to promote JOH frequently on social media. We accepted direct manuscript submissions through bioRxiv (https://www.biorxiv.org/), created special editions, engaged the entire editorial board and NSH community to contribute or appeal manuscript submissions. NSH Board or Directors, NSH office, Taylor and Francis, and Gayle-led Editorial Board are working together to promote JOH in a global-wide scale. A solicitation page can be found here https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/yhismedline/ and another special edition for 2020 is ready to be released. Stay tuned!

We appreciate everyone who contributed on this success. A special thanks to Alex Haley, who completed and submitted the application form on behalf of JOH.