Iranian Journal of Pediatrics after 20 Years

Iranian Journal of Pediatrics (Iran J Pediatr) is the first medical journal published in Iran focusing on one specific field. This journal was being published 1985 to 2006 in Persian language by the Department of Pediatrics, Tehran University of Medical Sciences. Since 2007, Iran J Pediatr is being published in English by the mentioned Department in collaboration with Growth and Development Research Center, Tehran University of Medical Sciences. From the first English issue, Iran J Pediatr was indexed in ISI, while it was being indexed in other international databases too. Impact factor of scientific journals is calculated and reported by
the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI), annually. Journal impact factor (IF) shows the number of citations of the journal during last 2 years with regard to the number of published articles during the same time period. According to ISI report, the first IF of Iran J Pediatr was 0.14 in 2010 and this increased to 0.29 in 2011. Two factors have the most important role on IF: first, more visibility and accessibility; second, the number of valuable papers published.
For the first factor, we tried the journal to be indexed in more valuable databases. PubMed and PubMed Central are the latest prestigious databases in which Iran J Pediatr is indexed. All papers published since the first issue of 2010 are available in PubMed. In addition, we designed a page in google scholar for showing paper citations in this free scholarly literature. Authors can follow the citation of their work in this page on the following address:
http://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=A_eVRcQAAAAJ.
For the second one, the acceptance rate of papers decreased to about 20% and we restricted the acceptance of case reports. On the other hand, reviewers recommend accepting comprehensive and competent original articles in new topics and avoid accepting repeated studies.
Recent trends in Iran J Pediatr show the readers of our journal expect more valuable study with observational designs and increasing international authorship. Authors and reviewers can contribute to improvement of this journal by submitting valuable original and review articles. In addition, they can recommend this journal to their institutional and university libraries or add the link of this journal in their personal or organizational websites. It helps us to keep ongoing improvement of the journal.   
The journal's electronic format can increase and make available greater readership. To increase the citation rate, we tried to publish the papers as “In Press” after accepting them. Now, from 2013 on, we plan to publish Iran J Pediatr bi-monthly. This reduces the expectation time of the paper to be published and increases citation rate of the papers as well.