Launching of Mycite or Malaysian Citation Index

As the editorial assistant of Malaysian Applied Biology Journal (MABJ), I attended the launching of Mycite on 22 May 2012. The launching ceremony was officiated by the Minister of Higher Education, Yang Berhormat Dato Seri Mohamed Khaled Nordin and followed by International Conference on Journal Citation Systems in Asia Pacific Countries. Honestly, I was very blur before I attended this event. I was told that there are some talks but I wasn’t aware that a conference will be held. Not long before that, I found out that MyJurnal (a part of Mycite now) has included abstracts from MABJ in its website. The chief editor almost thought that the journal has been sabotaged but fortunately, one of the associate editors explained that MyJurnal is an initiative by MOHE.
                                               

What is Mycite? MyCite or Malaysian Citation Index is an initiative by MOHE with objectives to a) To improve journal publication in Malaysia; b) To improve rating of Malaysian publishers; c) To list all Malaysian journal publications; d) To measure the scientific impact of Malaysian journals; e) To increase global visibility of Malaysian publications. MyCite covers all fields in Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine, Social Sciences and Humanities. It is linked to Myjurnal. In the future, Mycite aimed to form ASEAN Citation Index with other countries and to suggest Malaysian journals for Scopus evaluation. In simple terms, I think we can say that Mycite is a database similar to Scopus and Thomson Reuter Journal Citation Report that was developed for Malaysian higher education, researchers and journals.

History of Mycite. Mycite was adopted from MyAIS (Malaysian Abstracting and Indexing System from UM). Malaysia Citation Centre (MCC) was established in Universiti Malaya on April 2011 to develop MyCite. More details available at link.

Significance of Mycite to authors and publishers

• Authors can search for articles published by local journals using Myjurnal
• Authors can check the articles they have published in local journals
• Authors can check who is citing their work
• Publishers can find out their journals impact in 2 and 5 years window, h index and immediacy index.

International conference on Journal Citation Systems in Asia Pacific Countries

After MyCite launching ceremony, nine speakers from Southeast Asia and other part of Asia presented their work on citation database, namely Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, Korea and China. Out of these, only one speaker is affiliated with private company.  I think the most interesting talk is given by Prof. Dr. Narongrit Sombatsompop from Thailand. The Thai-Journal Citation Index (TCI) was established about 10 years ago and has made great archievements, i.e. producing publications and organizing conferences. In addition, it’s a privilege to listen to Prof. Dr. Su Xinning from Nanjing University, China. He developed the first citation index in China in 1989 which has been used as a model in citation database for many countries. I'm amazed that I stayed awake during all the talks which are very similar and doesn't relate much to me. Generally, I think the whole event is a great success. It has provided a great platform for publishers to network besides learning more about citation database. It has gave me an opportunity to speak to Prof. Dato’ Dr. Looi from UM and found out about APAME 2012. Details as follow:

Asia Pacific Association of Medical Journal Editors Convention 2012 (APAME 2012)

Theme: New Horizons in Scientific Writing and Publishing

Venue: University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Date: 31 August - 3 September 2012

Registration fee: USD120 (local) & USD 250 (overseas)

website: http://ammje.org/apame2012/

There are three Post-Convention Workshops which cost USD50 each: 1) Keeping standards high - how to be a reviewer; 2) Evaluation journal; 3) Bibliography managing - Enduree & Mendely. I find it rather strange to pay to attend a workshop on how to become a good reviewer as most reviewers did not get paid.