Assessing the quality of a scientific journal: the case of Revista Brasileira de Psiquiatria

COVID-19, Anti-NMDA Receptor Encephalitis and MicroRNA

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had an enormous impact on the world, affecting people’s lifestyle, economy, and livelihood. Recently, with the development of vaccines, the number of infected cases has decreased. Many case reports have revealed that COVID-19 may induce other serious comorbidities such as anti-N-methyl-d-aspartate (anti-NMDA) receptor encephalitis. Anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis is an acute autoimmune disease that occurs more commonly in women than in men. To explore the association between COVID-19 and anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, the microRNA (miRNA) biomarkers of COVID-19, anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, and other related diseases from the literature are reviewed; then on the basis of these miRNA biomarkers, the relationship between COVID-19 and anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis is discussed. miRNAs are small non-coding RNAs that play important roles in cell differentiation, development, cell-cycle regulation, and apoptosis. miRNAs have been used as biological biomarkers for many diseases. The results in this study reveal that the relationship between anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis and COVID-19 infection or COVID-19 vaccination cannot be excluded; however, the risk that COVID-19 triggers the anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis is not high.

Performance of Malaysian Medical Journals

Indexation status matters for scholarly journal prestige and trust. The performance of Malaysian medical journals at the international level is gauged through the global citation databases, and at the national level through MyCite, a national citation indexing system. The performance indicators include journals publication productivity, the citations they garner, and their scores on other bibliometric indices such as journal impact factor (IF), and h-index. There is a growing consciousness amongst journal editorials to improve quality and increase chances of getting indexed in MyCite. Although it is now possible to gauge journal performance within Malaysia, through MyCite, the government and public are concerned about journal performance in international databases. Knowing the performance of journals in MyCite will help the editors and publishers to improve the quality and visibility of Malaysian journals and strategise to bring their journal to the international level of indexation.

The 5/95 gap in the indexation of psychiatric journals of low- and middle-income countries

OBJECTIVE

To investigate the relationship between science production and the indexation level of low- and middle-income countries (LAMIC) journals in international databases.

METHOD

Indicators of productivity in research were based on the number of articles produced over the 1994-2004 period. A survey in both Medline and ISI/Thomson was conducted to identify journals according to their country of origin. A WPA Task Force designed a collaborative process to assess distribution and quality of non-indexed LAMIC journals.

RESULTS

Twenty LAMIC were found to present more than 100 publications and a total of 222 indexed psychiatric journals were found, but only nine were from LAMIC. The Task Force received 26 questionnaires from editors of non-indexed journals, and concluded that five journals would meet criteria for indexation.

CONCLUSION

Barriers to indexation of journals contribute to the difficulties in achieving fair representation in the main literature databases for the scientific production in these countries.

Indexation of psychiatric journals from low- and middle-income countries: a survey and a case study

The objective of this cross-sectional study was to determine the prevalence of migraine headache among depressed Latino adolescents of Mexican American origin. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the first study of the prevalence of migraine among depressed adolescents of any ethnic/racial background. In a mental health clinic for the indigent, 132 consecutive Latino adolescents fulfilling the DSM-IV criteria for major depressive episode were compared with a sample of adolescents with other mental disorders. Logistic regression was used to test for associations and control for confounding effects. The prevalence of migraine headache among depressed adolescents was 6 times greater than that of the comparison patients (OR = 5.98, z = 2.35, p = 0.019). This finding is consistent with previously published reports involving adult samples, in which the prevalence of migraine was found to exceed that in the general population. However, contrary to what we previously found in Latino adults, the prevalence of migraine was not higher in bipolar than in unipolar adolescents.