Journal of Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome (JOMES) is in its 6th year after conversion into a full-English journal. JOMES is the official journal of the Korean Society for the Study of Obesity (KSSO) and is a peer-reviewed research journal that presents relevant academic research and the newest medical information in the field of obesity. JOMES was launched in 1992, with the foundation of the KSSO and diverse studies on obesity published under the title Journal of the Korean Society for the Study of Obesity until 2004. From 2005 to 2016, the journal was published with the title Korean Journal of Obesity; since 2017, the journal has been published in full English with the current title of JOMES.

The aim of the JOMES is to better perception, prevention, and treatment of obesity to improve the lives of those affected and to reduce the incidence of related metabolic disorders. The journal publishes articles covering all aspects of obesity, in particular epidemiology, etiology and pathogenesis, treatment, and prevention. The most important characteristic of this journal is that dietitians, sports curers, psychiatrists, psychologists, nutritional and sport scientists, as well as endocrinologist and internists can contribute to this journal.

Since the first publication of the full English journal in 2017, JOMES has experienced enormous growth in the number of submissions of original articles, in the number of international articles submitted from countries other than South Korea, and in the numbers of citations and accesses from readers all over the world. In addition, a larger number of highly qualified articles on meta-analyses and systemic reviews, analyses of national big data, and randomized controlled trials are being submitted, peer-reviewed, and published in JOMES. The editorial board is proud that researchers from various countries worldwide have access to JOMES and are submitting their works to our journal. In line with this popularity, citation of JOMES is rapidly increasing.

Since its publication in full English in 2017, JOMES was rapidly registered in numerous databases. JOMES was accepted in PubMed Central in November 2018 and in DOAJ in April 2018. In 2019, JOMES was indexed in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) by Clarivate Analytics and in Scopus by Elsevier. In addition, JOMES is indexed in other databases, such as KoreaMed, Science Central, EBSCO, and Google Scholar.

This review discusses the current status of JOMES and studies its past development and growth for the last 3 years from 2019 to 2021.

During the 2019–2021 period, 388 manuscripts were submitted to JOMES, and the number is increasing (Fig. 1). This number is a 4.7-fold increase in the number of manuscripts submitted to JOMES before that period. The increase in number of new submissions was remarkable between 2019 and 2020, and was assumed to be due to registration of JOMES in PubMed Central and ESCI in 2019.

JOMES receives submission requests from all over the world. Among the submitted papers to JOMES during this period, 68% were from international countries outside Korea (Fig. 1). In 2021, the new submissions were from 30 nations in six continents around the world, although the manuscripts from eight nations were accepted and published after peer-review (Figs. 2 and 3). This diversity in countries of submission to JOMES reflects how many people are reading and are interested in JOMES.

The proper amount of time spent for peer-review and complete processing of a manuscript submitted to a journal is important as a descent journal. The average time from submission to final decision of manuscripts submitted to JOMES is 49.6 days. The decision to “reject” or “go into peer-review” for a manuscript is made as soon as possible after its submission by the editorial board in their own expertise and finally by the Editor-in-Chief. We tried to shorten the peer-reviewed period as much as possible. In addition, we think the timeliness of publication of a peer-reviewed articles is most important for research articles. We tried to publish the manuscripts with completed review as soon as possible. It takes a mean of 77 days from “going into review” to publication.

High rejection rate is important to show how the journal is categorizing appropriate and inappropriate articles among the manuscripts submitted to the journal. In 2021, the rejection rate was 73.8%, which was 34.9% in 2019, showing 211% increase during this period (Fig. 4).

We can calculate the virtual impact factor (IF) of JOMES within Web of Science (WOS). The number of citations of JOMES within WOS is rapidly increasing (Fig. 5). Compared to the virtual IF calculated within WOS in 2019, which was 0.905, the IF increased to 5.317 in 2021, which is a greater than 5-fold increase during the last 2 years. This is extremely rapid progress in the aspects of citation and popularity. We believe that many researchers will be interested in our journal and citing the papers within in their research studies.

There are some reasons that we assume for this rapid increase in citation of JOMES. First, the prevalence of obesity is increasing rapidly worldwide. This pandemic of obesity increases the interest and research funds in the field of obesity, and this expansion of research interest produces more articles and need for excellent research articles. Therefore, our journal is more read and cited by many researchers in the world. Second, JOMES is one of the most fast-growing journals in this field, especially in the Asia-Pacific area. Although the research in the field of obesity in rapidly growing and the degree of research expertise is high in this field, journals devoted solely to obesity is scarce in proportion to the number of experts and researchers in this field. JOMES publishes excellent review articles written by distinguished experts in the field of obesity and metabolism and more and more excellent original articles are increasingly submitted from all over the world. Distinguished international researchers who are already experts in their research field are willing to contribute a review to JOMES. Recently, we published many excellent and essential articles such as guidelines, systemic reviews and meta-analyses, and articles using national big data in JOMES, hoping to expand the influence of the articles published in our journal on society.^1-5 Third, we also think the reputation of KSSO has contributed to the success of JOMES, growing hand in hand with the International Congress on Obesity and Metabolic Syndrome, the official annual meeting of KSSO, and it is a world-leading annual congress in this field of obesity. Lastly, the quality and the standards of research papers submitted to JOMES is high, and this leads to the upgrade of JOMES as time goes by.

The most outstanding aspect of JOMES is its distinguished editorial board members. JOMES possesses 34 international editorial board members from 13 countries with expertise in their field. On the website of JOMES, we added all the credentials and ORCID numbers and researcher IDs of the board members, so that anyone who is interested in the academic degrees and research expertise of the editorial board members can transparently analyze them. The status of a journal could be indirectly assessed via the editorial board members who are handling and reviewing the manuscripts that are submitted to the journal and also who are giving advice for prosperity of the journal. Therefore, JOMES has much opportunity for continued advancement thanks to its excellent editorial board members.

JOMES follows the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).⁶ Regarding the ethics for the animal experiments, we made it mandatory for the authors to state that the animal experiments must be approved by an animal ethics review committee and conform to the guidelines provided by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC). In addition, we encourage our authors to follow the “Sex and Gender Equity in Research: SAGER guidelines (https://researchintegrityjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s41073-016) and to include sex and gender considerations where relevant. We recommend that authors use the terms sex (biological attribute) and gender (shaped by social and cultural circumstances) carefully in order to avoid confusing the terms. Article titles and/or abstracts should indicate clearly the studied sex(es) of the study. Authors should also describe whether sex and/or gender differences may be expected; report how sex and/or gender were accounted for in the design of the study; provide disaggregated data by sex and/or gender, where appropriate; and discuss respective results. If a sex and/or gender analysis was not conducted, the rationale should be given in the Discussion.

We recommended that all the submitted manuscript that report the results of clinical trials adhere to Data Sharing Statements for Clinical Trials: A Requirement of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (https://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2017.32.7.1051). Whether the data could be publicized or not has to be clearly negotiated or stated in the process of peer-review. We also clearly stated the policy for appeals or complaints of the authors and stated that the policy of the journal is primarily aimed at protecting the authors, reviewers, editors, and publisher. In addition, for clarity and transparency, we added a policy stating that a submitted manuscript written by any of the editorial board members should not involve that author in any of the process of peer-review.

Last, we strongly recommend authors to follow the following reporting guidelines according to study design and article types: CONSORT (http://www.consort-statement.org) for randomized trials, STROBE for observational studies (https://strobe-statement.org/), PRISMA for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (http://www.prisma-statement.org/), and STARD for studies of diagnostic accuracy (http://www.stard-statement.org/).

We briefly introduced the changes and achievements in JOMES during the 2019–2021 period. JOMES is already indexed in ESCI and will be included in Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) in the recent future. In addition, JOMES is about to re-apply for inclusion in Medline in 2022. The changes and growth of JOMES have been remarkable and surprising, giving hope to all the readers and authors who have contributed to this journal.

We editors are ready to accept any helpful advice or comments on the growth and advancement of JOMES. We made every effort to produce JOMES as the world top-class journal in the field of obesity and metabolic syndrome. As read in this review article, JOMES is moving forward and updating its contents continuously. We believe that the most important role of a good journal is to publish excellent research to its readers and authors. We will do our best to maintain such a status.

Please visit us at jomes.org and search for JOMES articles of your interest. You could also be our authors by submitting your research to JOMES at https://www.jomes.org/submission. We are there with you.

Eun-Jung Rhee has been the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Obesity & Metabolic Syndrome. However, she was not involved in peer reviewer selection, evaluation, or decision process of this article. No other potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported.