The Journal of Gynecologic Oncology and the Asian Society of Gynecologic Oncology: the history, the present and the future

The Journal of Gynecologic Oncology (JGO) is the official publication of the Asian Society of Gynecologic Oncology (ASGO), published jointly by ASGO and the Korean Society of Gynecologic Oncology (KSGO). The KSGO was established in 1984, the journal being launched in 1990 and has been published quarterly since 1993. From the June 2008 issue on, the name of the journal has been changed to the 'Journal of Gynecologic Oncology' and the whole contents have begun to be published in English. The journal was indexed by SCIE in May 2009 and afterward successively by numerous indexing databases, such as PubMed, PubMed Central, Scopus, Embase, KoreaMed, and Synapse. The journal aims to become a representative journal in gynecologic oncology in the region of Asia and Oceania. One of the leading SCI(E) journals in gynecologic oncology is 'Gynecologic Oncology' (GO), which was launched in 1972 and has been published by the Society of Gynecologic Oncology (SGO). Another is 'International Journal of Gynecological Cancer' (IJGC), launched in 1991 as an official publication of International Gynecologic Cancer Society (IGCS) initially and now also of European Society of Gynaecological Oncology (ESGO). These 3 organizations and 2 journals in gynecologic oncology are mainly based in North America, Europe, and Australia. As of the year of 2008, there was actually no international journal based on Asia, but only domestic journals published in the individual countries of Asia. The Japan Society of Gynecologic Oncology (JSGO) has a longer history than KSGO but has not yet launched an English journal, and the situation is the same in China, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, and Australia. The ASGO was established 3 years ago, but it may be considered that its seed was sowed during the 9th IGCS Meeting held in 2002 in Seoul. During that biennial meeting, a satellite meeting was held between Japan Gynecologic Oncology Group (JGOG) and the corresponding Korean organization according to the request of Japan. JGOG was a research organization established to carry out clinical trials related to gynecologic cancers, and at that time no corresponding Korean organization had been established. So taking that opportunity, Korean Gynecologic Oncology Group (KGOG) was organized, and since then Korea-Japan Gynecologic Cancer Joint Meeting (GCJM) has been held every year as a shuttle meeting, alternately in Korea and Japan. As the meeting continued to be held year by year, a consensus had been developed that the meeting needed to be upgraded to the Asian Society of Gynecologic Oncology. Eventually, in November 2008, the meeting for inaugurating ASGO was held during the 7th Korea-Japan GCJM. Beginning with the September 2006 issue, JGO had already been distributed to more than 300 organizations all over the world; and after being changed to an English journal, it has been distributed to a wider range of recipients, including influential gynecologic oncologists of every nation. Since the journal was indexed by SCIE in May 2009, the fact of having been indexed is clearly stated on the journal cover, and it has been distributed to IGCS, ESGO, JSGO, Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Chinese Society of Gynecologic Oncology, Taiwan Association of Gynecologic Oncologists, Thai Gynecologic Cancer Society, and Asia and Oceania Federation of Obstetrics and Gynecology. The distribution has been executed by personally visiting their meeting sites, or by contacting their secretariat offices and asking them for cooperation so that 100 to 500 copies of JGO could be sent to them beforehand by airmail to be distributed at their meeting sites. Meanwhile, the activities of the ASGO have been actively introduced through JGO. For example, several review articles concerning the epidemiologic data of gynecologic cancer that had been presented at the inauguration meeting by the representatives of Korea, Japan, China, Thailand, Indonesia, India, and the Philippines were published in the March/June 2009 issues of JGO, under the subject of 'Current Status of Gynecologic Cancer in Asia'. After it was indexed by SCIE in May 2009, all the council members of ASGO were appointed to the editorial board of JGO, and they were requested to write at least one article, such as a review or a meeting report. In addition, the representatives of individual countries were requested to submit advertisement files of their domestic society meetings, and the files were published in JGO free of charge. The advertisement for the 1st ASGO Biennial Meeting, scheduled in November 2009, began to be published inside the cover of the June 2009 issue of JGO. Also an article by the Founding President of the ASGO, 'ASGO: a central platform against gynecologic cancers in Asia' was invited and published. The December 2009 issue contained a report on the 1st ASGO meeting, held in Tokyo in the same year, which a representative of Taiwan was requested to write. The March 2010 issue contained an article by Dr. Ted Trimble, who is a leading member of National Cancer Institute of USA and gave the celebration lecture at the 1st ASGO Biennial Meeting. In this article, ASGO was introduced as one of the '7 Sister Organizations' that stood shoulder to shoulder with ever existing gynecologic oncology-related international academic organizations, such as IGCS, ESGO, SGO, International Society of Gynecological Pathologists, Gynecologic Oncology Committee of the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics, and Gynecologic Cancer Intergroup. As a result of such activities, JGO was unanimously adopted as an official journal of ASGO at the 3rd council meeting held in July 2010, that is, 2 years after being changed to an English journal and about 1 year after being indexed by SCIE. However, in many aspects JGO cannot be considered as a journal that competes with GO or IJGC. There is a remarkable difference in the total number of papers, total cites, impact factor (IF), as well as in the history of related societies. GO, with 40 years of history, is a preferred journal for the submission of a paper that is not eligible for the top journals, such as Journal of Clinical Oncology, Journal of the National Cancer Institute, the Lancet, and New England Journal of Medicine. Many of the papers rejected by GO have been submitted to IJGC. The 2010 edition of Journal Citation Reports shows that of the 77 journals in obstetrics and gynecology, GO was ranked as the 5th (IF, 3.760), and IJGC, which had been in a slump, as the 42nd (IF, 1.558). Yet when the number of papers are taken into consideration that have been published in many famous journals, including GO and IJGC, by researchers of gynecologic oncology in Asia (Korea, Japan, China, etc.), there is a sufficiently promising potential. JGO will receive the first IF score (2011) in the coming year. It is anticipated that the score will probably be a little higher than 1. The mid-term goal of JGO for the next 10 years is to achieve an IF score of higher than 2, being ranked among the 30 best journals among the category of obstetrics and gynecology and becoming the most preferred journal by those majoring in gynecologic oncology in Asia. To achieve this goal, a plan has been set up to publish it bimonthly and gradually increase the number of published papers. In addition, in order to improve the level of editing, a consideration is being given to the expansion and training of editorial staff as well as to cooperation with professional publishing companies. After all, a good journal essentially demands timely papers and articles that can develop the consensus and interests of relevant researchers, policy makers and students. As Asia is becoming the center of the global economy of the 21st century, so JGO is going to grow beyond the boundary of Asia, together with ASGO, to become one of the main platforms of gynecologic oncology research.