Malaysian Journal of Medical Sciences’ Performance Status in 2017 and the Challenges

This report presents a review of the Malaysian Journal of Medical Sciences’ (MJMS) performance status throughout 2017, which covers the submission pattern of original manuscripts by month, the geographical distribution of submitting authors, the types of manuscripts and overall acceptance/rejection rates. As the years progress, MJMS continues to receive an escalating number of manuscript submissions. This contributes to an ever-increasing workload, which makes administrative tasks continually more challenging. Although the manuscript submission platform seeks to minimise the pre-publication workload of the journal administrator, it is still a time-consuming task, particularly when authors seek exclusive attention for their submitted manuscripts.


Introduction
As expected, the number of original manuscripts sent to the Malaysian Journal of Medical Sciences (MJMS) via our electronic submission system, ScholarOne Manuscripts™, has shown an increase of 17.5%, from 301 manuscripts in 2016 (1) to 365 manuscripts in 2017. This increment proves that the existence of MJMS is recognised by medical peer groups in other parts of the world. Moreover, all researchers are concerned with publication in scientific journals, as they are the most important medium for the dissemination of their work (2).

Submission by Manuscript Type
Out of 365 manuscripts submitted in 2017, 'Original Article' manuscripts were the most common, with 273 submissions in 2017 compared to 213 submissions in 2016 (1). 'Review Article' manuscripts were the second most submitted, followed by 'Brief Communications' manuscripts ( Figure 2).

Submission by Geography
Malaysia has remained the top manuscript contributor, with 154 submissions (42.2%). Table 1 shows that the number of manuscripts submitted by Malaysian authors is more than double those submitted from Iran. As seen in Table 1, India has fallen to third place, compared to 2016, when the country used to be listed in second place, followed by Iran in third (1). Indonesia is in fourth place with 32 submissions, followed by Nigeria with 22. The rest included those with a minimum of one submission. publishing process more efficient and readily accessible to both authors and reviewers.
On the other side of things, however, the journal administrator faces increasing challenges along the journey of journal publication, when finding solutions and technical troubleshooting become additional tasks alongside juggling the responsibilities of being a copy editor, production editor and system administrator.
One recurring difficulty is time pressure. This is defined as the subjective feeling of having less time than required to complete a task. It arises each time the journal administrator has to perform a long list of tasks which must keep moving in order to meet deadlines. This includes having to respond to queries by authors through emails while the queue of new submitted revision, which is proportionately high compared to 8.3% slated for minor revision. Only 0.7% of post-reviewed manuscripts were accepted for publication. These figures show that MJMS is really concerned with quality rather than quantity.

Challenges Faced by the Journal Administrator
Submission of research manuscripts is a much easier process today because of online submission systems like ScholarOne, Editorial Manager and Evise ® used by publishers all over the world (3). These systems work in a largely similar way, and are meant to make the  Source: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/maljms manuscripts continues to build up, and keeping authors updated when they insist on exclusive attention. The reality is that everyone wants their manuscript to be entertained first. Last but not least, the administrator must deal with imperfect manuscripts which do not meet the journal's requirements as given in its guidelines.
Based on a study by Moore and Tenney (4), time pressure generally impairs performance because it places constraints on our capacity for thought and action which limit exploration and increase reliance on well-learned or heuristic strategies. Thus, time pressure increases performance speed, but at the expense of quality.