What is Medwave

Medwave is a peer-reviewed, biomedical and public health journal. Since its foundation in 2001 (Volume 1) it has always been an online only, open access publication that does not charge subscription or reader fees. Since January 2011 (Volume 11, Number 1), all articles are peer-reviewed.

Without losing sight of the importance of evidence-based approach and methodological soundness, the journal accepts for publication articles that focus on providing updates for clinical practice, review and analysis articles on topics such as ethics, public health and health policy; clinical, social and economic health determinants; clinical and health research findings from all of the major disciplines of medicine, medical science and public health. The journal does not publish basic science manuscripts or experiments conducted on animals.

Until March 2013, Medwave was publishing 11-12 numbers a year. Each issue would be posted on the homepage on day 1 of each month, except for Chile’s summer holiday when the issue would cover two months.

Starting from April 2013, Medwave adopted the continuous mode of publication, which means that the copyedited accepted articles are posted on the journal’s homepage as they are ready. They are then collated in the respective issue and included in the Past Issues section.

History

Medwave was conceived in 2000 with the idea of filling a void in continuing medical education in Chile. Its purpose was to become a resource center and an interdisciplinary hub for the Spanish-speaking doctors who are in clinical practice.

Medwave was founded by Vivienne C. Bachelet. The journal has always preserved its independence either from the pharmaceutical industry or from learned or trade associations. Funding ins secured from Medwave Companies, from Fundación Medwave, and from author processing charges. We do not sell advertisement.

Vivienne C. Bachelet was the managing editor since foundation up to 2010, when the journal started transitioning into a peer-reviewed mode. The first editor-in-chief was Dr. Miguel Araujo Alonso from 2010 to 2013. His contribution was fundamental in setting up the early editorial policies. In 2013 Dr. Bachelet became the editor-in-chief, a position that she holds to date.

Medwave is recognized by CONICYT (Corporación Nacional de Investigación en Ciencia y Tecnología) as a scientific journal with ISSN 0717-6384. Back then there was no distinction between electronic and print journal ISSNs. All articles are archived for future reference, which makes it an invaluable resource for practicing clinicians, as well as researchers and academics.

Purpose

The articles that the journal publishes must always strive to be helpful in the clinical decision-making process and for health policy makers. In other words, our content should be of aid to those who care for patients in the clinical context, or to those who are in charge of developing and formulating public health policies, including public health programs.

Thus, we appreciate non solicited contributions from authors of any country of the world who submit original research manuscripts, as well as review or analysis articles, and evidence summaries.

Mission

With time, Medwave has become a reference hub for physicians, investigators, students and policy-makers. We seek to improve quality of health care in our continent and territories where we reach out and impact care. We also seek to enhance the methodological competencies of those who are devoted to studying the reality of health.

Our mission is to contribute to elevate medical professional standards in Chile and in Latin America, by facilitating access to updated content for doctors and allied professions, overcoming geographical and economic barriers. We actively promote evidence-based medicine and making health decisions based on the principles of rationality, efficiency, ethics and social justice.

Medwave seeks to improve the quality of scientific reporting and research by offering Spanish-speaking academics and investigators a high-quality editorial standard. We publish methodological series that cover different aspects of health research and reporting. Our purpose is to strengthen both researchers and student’s skills.

Open access policy and copyright

Medwave does not charge readers for full-text access. All of our contents are open to the lay public as well. No registration is required to access our content. However, if the reader wishes to: submit a manuscript; receive our table-of-content alerts or other journal-relevant communication; download article PDFs; comment in the forum that is available in every article; then he or she must register here.

If you are interested in peer-reviewing manuscripts for the journal, you can sign up here and give us information about your background and interests.

Registration is always free of charge.

Both the HTML and PDF format of every article state our adherence to Creative Commons, which is our copyright license. This is indicated at the end of each published article.

Indexation

Medwave is indexed in:

• MEDLINE/PubMed
• Scopus
  
• LILACS
• DOAJ
• Latindex Catalogue
• Google Scholar
• Clarivate Analytics' Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI, WoS).

Medwave is a member of COPE.

Archiving and preservation

In order to ensure the online ongoing availability of our published articles, Medwave uses DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers) to point at its URLs and for cross citations it uses CrossRef.

For permanent preservation of our electronic articles and digital objects that are part of the article contents (PDFs, annexes, etc.), we deposit our issues in Portico.

Languages

Medwave publishes in Spanish and English.

The journal recently changed its language policy and now any accepted manuscript that was submitted in Spanish will be translated by the journal into English and published simultaneously. There will be no delays in the PubMed/MEDLINE deposits due to language versions.

Medwave does not generate duplicate publications when articles are published both in Spanish and English, as both versions will fall under a unique DOI. Therefore, the citation is the same for both. Currently, the DOI points to the Spanish version first, as our natural readership is Spanish-speaking.

Impact

Medwave reaches all of the Ibero-American countries, including Chile, Mexico, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Spain, Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Bolivia, and so forth.

In 2012, Medwave received roughly 2 million unique visits and over 6 million page views. On November, 2013, the journal already had over 5 million page views and an average of 6000 unique visitors per day. Daily visits fluctuated between 5000 and 7000 depending on the month of the year. In 2015, the journal stabilized at about 15 000 unique visitors a day, on average. As of 2015, we have stopped monitoring unique visits and page views.

There are over 60 000 health care professionals registered in our data base, of which over 90% are subscribed to the newsletter. Each day around 20 health care professionals from different countries register from all corners of Latin America and The Caribbean.

Metrics

Medwave provides article-level metrics that are displayed in the “Metrics” tab of each article powered by Plum Analytics.  Indicators are grouped under five categories: usage, citations, mentions, captures and social media. HTML views and PDF downloads for each article are found under the category “usage”, where robotic activity has been removed in order to provide a true idea of article impact. Often, metrics are hyperlinked to the source, where users can find further interesting information.

Note from the editor: Due to a major overhall of our information systems, this feature will not be available for new articles published in 2021, and articles published prior to this date are not having their article-level metrics updated. We hope to pick up with article-level metrics once the technological upgrades have concluded.

Author processing charges

Last update

September 14, 2021