Toho Journal of Medicine Now Available on J-STAGE

I suppose many of you are in a similar situation, but my spam folder is filled with manuscript request emails from biomedical journals I have never heard of. The reason behind these submission requests is the vast number of medical biology journals. All journals are engaged in various activities to try to survive, and the email requesting submissions to researchers worldwide is just one of those activities. It is estimated that there are at least 30,000 medical biology journals, which has doubled in the past 20 years.

The Toho Journal of Medicine was launched in 2015 as an independent journal for the publication of English-language articles, based on the Journal of the Medical Society of Toho University or Toho Igakukai Zasshi, which had previously published articles in both Japanese and English. The Toho Journal of Medicine is a valuable entity that provides a high-quality review system and continues to publish papers at a reasonable cost in the face of rising publication costs. Have the published papers been read and cited by researchers? Unfortunately, 10 years have passed since the first publication of the paper, but the citation status of the published paper is not encouraging. According to Google Scholar, most of the articles have never been cited or are only self-cited. So why are they not cited by other researchers? The reason is simple: they do not appear in the search results of Google and other search engines.

I am very happy to inform you that The Toho Journal of Medicine is now available on J-STAGE and that we can expect higher visibility of the Journal with this registration. J-STAGE is an online platform of the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), which aims to disseminate Japanese science and technology both domestically and internationally. I myself have many times found and cited J-STAGE registered papers that I searched on Google to reinforce my own opinions in my original papers and review articles or to respond to reviewers' comments.

In 2024, we published an article from abroad for the first time, as if to herald a great leap forward. We contacted the authors directly and confirmed that they are not related to Toho University and that they found The Toho Journal of Medicine through an Internet search and submitted their paper. We sincerely encourage everyone to submit original papers, case reports, and other articles to the Toho Journal of Medicine.