ISSN

to be registered  (PRINT)
2960-110X  (ONLINE)

Focus and scope

The Journal of the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa (JCMSA) is the first official scientific journal of the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa. As the national examining body for medical and dental professions in South Africa, the CMSA is unique in that it embraces 29 constituent Colleges representing all disciplines of medicine and dentistry. The JCMSA leverages this unique structure to foster aspects of medical and dental education and professionalism common to all specialities while showcasing the diversity of medical research and scholarship across different fields.

The JCMSA is a peer-reviewed and open-access publication promoting the highest skill, efficiency, and ethical medical and dental practice standards. The scope of the JCMSA encompasses original research articles, reviews, case reports, and other scholarly contributions that advance basic medical sciences, medical and dental knowledge, education, and practice.

The JCMSA aims to facilitate interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary dialogue and collaboration among healthcare professionals and researchers across different specialities and fields. The journal prioritises contributions, particularly emphasising the Southern African and African context while welcoming contributions from other regions.

In addition to scientific content, the JCMSA promotes human rights, social justice, and non-discrimination in medicine, dentistry, and healthcare. The journal strongly encourages submissions that address issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion in healthcare and challenge systemic barriers to access and quality of care. The JCMSA also welcomes contributions that address the social determinants of health, including poverty, inequality, and environmental factors.

The JCMSA aims to be a platform for high-quality, innovative, and socially responsible research and scholarship that contributes to advancing medicine, dentistry, and healthcare in Southern Africa, Africa, and beyond, consistent with the mission and values of the CMSA.

Historic data

Founded in 1954 by members of the medical profession, the Colleges of Medicine of South Africa (CMSA) is dedicated to the betterment of humanity through the continuous improvement of healthcare services and medical and dental professionals. In low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), including South Africa (SA), article processing charges pose a significant barrier to publication. CMSA’s primary objective of establishing JCMSA as an open-access journal is to mitigate high Article Processing Charges (APCs) and thereby ensure that the ability to pay is not a barrier to sharing research and to publishing data by medical and dental specialists and trainees in SA and other LMICs.

Sustainable Development Goals

Our mission is to contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by the United Nations in 2015. Open access is critical for ensuring that scientific finsing are translated into societal gains.

At our Journal, we are committed to promoting research that addresses the most pressing issues facing our planet. Through the publication of high-quality articles, we aim to support the implementation of the SDGs and create a more sustainable and equitable future for all.

We are proud to say that our Journal contributes to several SDGs, including but not limited to:

• SDG 3: Good Health and Well-being
• SDG 4: Quality Education
• SDG 5: Gender Equality
• SDG 9: Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure
• SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities
• SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities
• SDG 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions

We are excited to publish research from around the world that advances these goals.

Publication frequency

The journal publishes one issue each year. Articles are published online when ready for publication and then printed in an end-of-year compilation. Additional issues may be published for special events (e.g. conferences) and when special themes are addressed.

Types of articles published

Read full details on the submissions guidelines page.

Open access

This is an open-access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. This is in accordance with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) definition of open access. Learn more about the journal copyright, licensing and publishing rights.

Review process

The journal has a double-blinded peer review process. Manuscripts are initially examined by the editorial staff and are sent by the Editor-in-Chief to two expert independent reviewers, either directly or by a Section Editor. Read our full peer review process.

Marketing

AOSIS has a number of ways in which we promote publications. Learn more here.

Membership

AOSIS is a member and/or subscribes to the standards and code of practices of several leading industry organisations. This includes the Directory of Open Access Journals, Ithenticate, Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, CrossRef, Portico and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Learn more here.

All articles published in the journal are included in:

• GALE, CENGAGE Learning

We are working closely with relevant indexing services to ensure that articles published in the journal will be available in their databases when appropriate.

The full text of the journal articles is deposited in the following archives to guarantee long-term preservation:

• AOSIS Library
• Portico
• SA ePublications,Sabinet
• South African Government Libraries

AOSIS is also a participant in the LOCKSS (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) initiative. LOCKSS will enable any library to maintain their own archive of content from AOSIS and other publishers, with minimal technical effort and using cheaply available hardware. The URL to the LOCKSS Publisher Manifest for the journal is, https://jcmsa.org.za/index.php/jcmsa/gateway/lockss. Please inform us if you are using our manifest as we would like to add your name to the list above.

A journal's Impact Factor was originally designed in 1963 as a tool for libraries to compare journals, and identify the most popular ones to subscribe to. It was never intended to measure the quality of journals, and definitely not the quality of individual articles.

The Impact Factor is a journal-level measurement reflecting the yearly average number of citations of recent articles published in that journal. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field; journals with higher Impact Factors are often deemed to be more important than those with lower ones. Therefore, the more often articles in the journal are cited, the higher its Impact Factor.

The Impact Factor is highly discipline-dependent due to the speed with which articles get cited in each field and the related citation practices. The percentage of total citations occurring in the first two years after publication varies highly amongst disciplines. Accordingly, one cannot compare journals across disciplines based on their relative Impact Factors.

We provide several citation-based measurements for each of our journals, if available. We caution our authors, readers and researchers that they should assess the quality of the content of individual articles, and not judge the quality of articles by the reputation of the journal in which they are published.