Mediastinum indexed in PubMed Central: a new beginning for the new year

Along with our warm greetings for the New Year 2022, it is a great pleasure to announce that on November 11th, 2021, Mediastinum has passed the evaluations by PubMed Central (PMC) and has been officially accepted for inclusion in PubMed/PMC, an extensive digital repository of literature in biomedical and life science journals. The contents of Mediastinum published since 2019 will be fully indexed in PMC and accessible via PubMed, a search engine of biomedical citations and abstracts. This is another milestone for the journal merely 5 months after its acceptance for coverage in the Scopus, a comprehensive abstract and citation database by Elsevier. These steps forward represent a continuous growth of the impact of the journal. We hereby extend our sincere appreciation to all the editorial members, reviewers, authors and readers for their enthusiastic contribution to make these happen.

Five years ago, Mediastinum was launched as the first medical professional periodical specialized in diagnosis, management, and researches on diseases of the Mediastinum. For Mediastinum is an interesting, important, but less explored human space than other organs and systems. Management of the diseases involving the Mediastinum has largely lagged behind due to their rareness and thus lack of understanding. The initial goal of the journal was to build a platform for exchange of precious knowledge among interested peers and finally to benefit the patients. Luckily, Mediastinum has received enormous attention and contribution from medical professionals around the world who identify with the goal. Hundreds of authors from dozens of countries have shared their researches and experiences on this platform. And our international editorial board members have helped greatly to ensure the scientific quality of the contents published in this journal.

The idea of Mediastinum is based on the belief that “more hands help build a higher flame”. This coincides with the purpose of international societies on rare diseases, especially the International Thymic Malignancy Interest Group (ITMIG). The journal has been publishing abstract books dedicated to the ITMIG Annual Meetings since 2017. In close collaboration with the Education committee of the ITMIG, special issues, cases presentation from the ITMIG Tumor Board, and educational videos of surgical techniques in minimally invasive thymectomy have been successively published in the previous years. Contents of these publications could also be accessed via links on the official website of the ITMIG.

The success of Mediastinum has helped disseminate relevant information that used to be scattered among more general literature, provide visibility and recognition of precious research efforts that often fall into oblivion, and track the progress in this special field systemically. After the its inclusion in PubMed/PMC, greater endeavor will be invested in the future to attract more readers interested in mediastinal diseases. Together with our editorial board members, reviewers, and authors, we hope to move the journal forward to a higher level and to build a closer bond among all medical professionals engaged in this field in the years to come.

Acknowledgments

Funding: None.

Footnote

Provenance and Peer Review: This article was commissioned by the editorial office, Mediastinum. The article did not undergo external peer review.

Conflicts of Interest: The author has completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at https://med.amegroups.com/article/view/10.21037/med-22-2/coif). WF serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Mediastinum. The author has no other conflicts of interest to declare.

Ethical Statement: The author is accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Open Access Statement: This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits the non-commercial replication and distribution of the article with the strict proviso that no changes or edits are made and the original work is properly cited (including links to both the formal publication through the relevant DOI and the license). See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.