Provincial or regional journals are established in a specific geographic area, generally as the vehicle of a provincial or regional society. However, this does not mean that they only publish studies pertaining to their geographic area or articles written by their members.

My personal experience is based on my work with the thoracic diseases journal, Revista SOCAMPAR. This journal is produced by SOCAMPAR, the Castile-La Mancha Society of Respiratory Disease. The statutes of the society embrace the concept of scientific communication through various media, including publication of a journal (article 4 point g).1

Scientific journals play a very important role in the medical profession: they serve as vehicles for the dissemination of knowledge, as teaching resources, as platforms for communicating discoveries, and as an arena for the disclosure and advancement of science.2

One of the major priorities of researchers in all areas of human knowledge is to share the ideas, breakthroughs, and discoveries that emerge from their research and academic activities.

Journals are an excellent tool for scientific communication. They validate and publish research, create and pool knowledge, and safeguard this heritage for future generations.

Our policy statement states that our journal will be dedicated to respiratory diseases, and that it will serve as the mouthpiece of SOCAMPAR to address essentially scientific matters. The journal will accept publications from society members and from external researchers, provided they are of scientific interest and comply with the objectives of the journal, that is to say:

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  To promote and disseminate knowledge of respiratory disease.

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  To contribute to the training and professional development of medical specialists and others interested in this disease.

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  To foster contacts and exchanges with other specialists involved in the management of these diseases.

However, this begs the question that even my own colleagues have raised: what can a new journal contribute?3

Our journal is intended as a platform for publishing the work of our members, which is sometimes interesting from a local or regional point of view, but which may not find a place in, or may even be rejected by other higher impact publications on the national or international stage. One example is the article published by Dr. Hidalgo, entitled “The status of home respiratory therapies in Castile-La Mancha”.4 Our journal, then, serves as a medium for communication and training in our own region.

Young researchers, physicians or trainee doctors should use the accessibility and propinquity of our journal as a source of support and encouragement for their publications, and as a source of feedback to help them in their training as investigators. Moreover, the publication of scientific studies is an incentive and apprenticeship for more ambitious objectives, such as dissemination in impact journals. Resident doctors must have basic training in research, they must know how to manage data resources, and they must acquire basic skills in the critical reading of the scientific literature. During their training, they should learn basic research methodology. Respiratory medicine specialists must acquire the skills necessary to conduct a research study. They must also know how to perform a critical evaluation of the scientific literature in the health sciences, how to design a study, and how to conduct field work, data collection, and statistical analyses, how to write a discussion and produce conclusions, and how to present data in the form of a communication or a publication.5

Our journal aims to open up access to the various tasks associated with the development of a scientific publication: review of articles, editing, and, primarily, authorship (preparation of articles, reviews, case reports, etc.). In this way, we foster interest in the critical reading of reports, and although we accept articles that other mainstream journals might reject, our first duty is to ensure the quality of the research and the publication.

The researchers, editors, and reviewers of scientific journals must always act, in any form of publication, as guarantors of methodological rigor, confidentiality, quality and ethical principles.6

One of the limitations of our journal is its lack of impact factor. We are registered in the Spanish Center of International Standard Serial Publications (ISSN) of the National Library and in the “Latindex” directory. Our aim is to register it in other indexes, but it is costly, time-consuming and very complicated for a local journal to achieve a high impact. This, however, does not detract from its educational value, as it is indexed in most databases, although other indexes (for example, university lists) will only include journals with an impact factor.

Another problem is lack of funding. This we have resolved by taking on part of the editorial work ourselves, since our journal is free of charge, both for readers and prospective authors.

Another point to consider is that authors are ambitious and aim to publish in high impact journals, and this can affect the number of submissions received by more modest publications such as ours.

In our case, focusing exclusively on the field of respiratory disease has enabled us to set up a forum of cooperation with other journals in this interest area to offer mutual support, dissemination, and educational opportunities for our members and readers. One of our aims is to ensure that interesting studies in our field do not lie forgotten in the drawers of the researchers after being rejected by one of our journals, but can be accepted and published by one of the others. The following groups are members of the Forum of Respiratory Disease Journals: Archivos de Bronconeumología (SEPAR), Revista de Patología Respiratoria (NeumoMadrid), Revista Española de Patología Respiratoria (NeumoSur), Revista Canaria de Neumología y Cirugía Torácica (NeumoCan) and the Revista SOCAMPAR.

Our website (http://www.revista-socampar.com) and social networks play an essential role in publicizing our work, while the combined efforts of the members of the Forum of Respiratory Disease Journals allow our studies reach as wide an audience as possible.

We thank the other members of the Forum of Respiratory Disease Journals and their representatives:

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  Dr. Esther Barreiro, Archivos de Bronconeumología.

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  Dr. Aurelio Arnedillo, Revista Española de Patología Respiratoria (NeumoSur).

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  Dr. Felipe Villar, Revista de Patología Respiratoria (NeumoMadrid), and Dr. Aurelio L. Wangüemert, Revista Canaria (NeumoCan), who contributed to the preparation of this editorial.