IJMBS 2024: A New Year's Message

Welcome to the first issue of Volume 16. In this issue, we have one review, three original articles, a viewpoint, and a conference abstract article.

The review article by Atamanalp et al addressed the management of sigmoid volvulus. They discussed the indications, techniques, and results of various procedures in current clinical practice and clarified various controversies. They also discussed treatment options for sigmoid volvulus as well as patient selection criteria for recurrence-preventive treatment.

The original articles addressed three different research interests. The first was on the assessment of learning style preferences of nursing students by Mariano et al. Their findings provided the foundation for adaptive learning by identifying the individual preferences in learning among the nursing students. The authors also proposed that further research is required to explore the relationship between learning style preferences and learning outcomes with the inclusion of a larger sample size and representatives of two genders, both males and females. The second was on the causes of original kidney disease among 360 Libyan kidney transplant recipients by Elamouri and Algeblawi. However, the original cause in most recipients was undetermined, possibly due to limited diagnostic tools or delayed presentation. Chronic glomerulonephritis was the most prevalent known cause. The third was an analytical study of the prognostic value of symptoms and signs in geriatric acute pulmonary embolism by Özdemir and Özkan. They concluded that clinicians should not prioritize based on symptoms but should evaluate patients according to clinical severity scores. The viewpoint is a fascinating piece on an important professional matter by Samir Kahwash, lending us a piece of his mind in his capacity as chief of education for many years. He discusses the attributes that may help a person decide to pursue a career in academic medicine or private medical practice and the skills and talents required to advance in either direction.

The special communication section took a significant part of the volume. Publishing conference abstracts is a gesture from the journal to support good-quality academic activities in developing regions. The free communications of the seventh Annual Al Ain Research Day, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates, June 9, 2023, were edited for the journal by Nair et al. The abstracts spanned a wide academic interest of the medical research community in Al Ain. Many were interesting case reports, observational studies, and a fewer experimental studies. Unfortunately, the abstract submission process was not strict enough to create a more uniform size and layout of the abstracts, something, we should address on future occasions.

Back to the journal's life, the flow of submissions is steady, although it is still way less than optimal for an open-access journal 15 years after its launch. Whatever the number of submissions, we are strongly committed to the quality guarded by the peer-review processes and good scholarly publishing practices. Yet we remain optimistic about receiving more serious support from the medical and biomedical community. Last year, IJMBS received its first impact factor from Clarivate Analytics being on the Web of Science Master Journal List has reassured us that we are probably on the right track.

We hope the contents will be of interest to our readers.

Conflict of Interest

None declared.

Authors' Contributions

All the authors have contributed equally.

Compliance with Ethical Principles

No ethical approval is required.

Publication History

Article published online:
12 February 2024