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HOME > Sci Ed > Volume 12(1); 2025 > Article
Meeting Report
 Meeting report on the 8th Asian Science Editors’ Conference and Workshop 2024
Eun Jung Parkorcid
Science Editing 2025;12(1):66-69.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.6087/kcse.355
Published online: February 6, 2025

Division of Colon and Rectal Surgery, Department of Surgery, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea

Correspondence to Eun Jung Park kendoej@naver.com
• Received: January 6, 2025   • Accepted: January 19, 2025

Copyright © 2025 Korean Council of Science Editors

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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  • Meeting: The 8th Asian Science Editors’ Conference and Workshop 2024

  • Date: July 15–16, 2024

  • Venue: The Westin Jakarta, Indonesia

  • Organizer: Council of Asian Science Editors (CASE), Korean Council of Science Editors (KCSE), and Indonesian Association of Scientific Journal Editors (IASJE)

  • Theme: Reflecting on the past 10 years for the future of Asian science journals

The 8th Asian Science Editors’ Conference and Workshop was held in Jakarta, Indonesia, from July 15 to 16, 2024 (Fig. 1). Organized by the Council of Asian Science Editors (CASE), the conference brought together editors from across Asia, including representatives from Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, to share insights on the state of scholarly journals and discuss key topics in journal editing. This event provided a valuable platform for editors from diverse countries to build professional relationships and exchange ideas (Fig. 2). The participation of the Korean Council of Science Editors (KCSE) in the organizing committee was also highly meaningful, as its contributions enriched the proceedings of the congress (Fig. 3).
On the first day, the conference opened with official speeches from the CASE President Basil D’souza and Indonesia’s Minister of Education, Abdu Haris, hosted by two individuals dressed in traditional Indonesian attire. The morning plenary session featured a comprehensive review of Asian science journals, including analyses of publication volume and impact by country. Trends from 2012 to 2022, based on the Journal Citation Reports data, were discussed, highlighting the rising impact factors of journals from countries such as China, Korea, Japan, and India. However, despite the growth in the number of Asian journals, many still struggle to achieve significant citation counts. During this session, Science Editing was introduced as a success story, having quickly overcome such limitations [1]. As a Q2 journal with a rising citation count per paper, a strong international editorial board, and a diverse reviewer pool, Science Editing has become an attractive submission platform for institutions both domestically and internationally. Its unrestricted scope has been recognized as a key factor in its development. In Indonesia, while over 2,000 journals are listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), many remain confined to domestic circulation. This sparked discussions about the need for international collaboration to improve citations and establish a stronger presence in global journals.
Following this, editors from Korea, Japan, Thailand, and Malaysia presented updates on the development of their respective journals over the past decade. Professor Sue Kim, Chair of the Planning and Administrative Committee of KCSE and a professor at Yonsei University (Seoul, Korea), delivered a presentation titled “Past Ten Years of Korean Science Journals.” She traced the journey of Korean science journals, beginning with the publication of the first international journal in 2011 and the launch of Science Editing in 2012. She also highlighted milestones such as hosting the first Asian Science Editors’ Forum in 2013, organizing editor workshops, and signing memorandum of understandings (MOUs) with the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information and Elsevier. Her presentation reviewed the past decade, emphasizing how academic activities adapted to online platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Ritsuko Nakajima, Director of the Department for Information Infrastructure at the Japan Science and Technology Agency, presented on “Past Ten Years of J-STAGE,” providing an update on the status of Japanese journals. Since its inception in 1999, J-STAGE has grown to include over 4,000 journals. While many Japanese journals remain on the platform, the introduction of the preprint server Jxiv in 2022 has enhanced regional services. The platform maintains an e-journal system and is developing cooperative frameworks with academic societies, with a roadmap focused on digitization and global dissemination to make journal editing more accessible. Dr. Rattikorn Yimnirun, editor-in-chief of the Suranaree Journal of Science and Technology, discussed the development of Thai journals in international databases. The publication rate of Thai journals increased from 33% between 2013 and 2017 to 77% from 2017 to 2021, with further growth expected due to the TCI-TSRI-Scopus collaboration project. Professor Zuriati Zakaria provided an overview of Malaysian journals over the past decade. The Malaysian Citation Index platform, MyCite, manages 383 out of 1,056 academic journals, with only 65 Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI) journals and 13 indexed in the Web of Science, indicating the need for continued development.
In the afternoon of the first day, a workshop on “Improving the Quality of Journals” was held, followed by sessions on indexing in DOAJ, Scopus, and Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE). Attendees gained valuable insights from journal editors at Springer, Cactus, Scopus, and Elsevier, who shared strategies for the development of academic journals. Notably, Jeffrey Robens, a trainer at Nature Springer, shared his experiences transitioning from a scientist to a journal trainer over the past 20 years, underscoring the value of diverse backgrounds in journal editing. He outlined two key steps to enhance journal quality: improving visibility and implementing methods to filter the best submissions. He emphasized the importance of journal platforms that offer opportunities for personal promotion and expand social networks, suggesting that strengthening connections with submitters through platforms like social media and researcher networks is crucial. Additionally, he highlighted the need for a fair and well-structured peer review system, stressing the critical role of reviewers in ensuring expertise and accountability throughout the review process. Common criteria for acceptance in high-impact journals were also discussed, including alignment with the journal’s scope, originality, novelty, relevance to current trends, appropriate study design, and robust evidence to support conclusions. These considerations are essential for editors to keep in mind.
The final topic of the first day was a lecture on “Journal Publishing Ethics,” delivered by Professor Cheol-Heui Yun from Seoul National University (Seoul, Korea). His presentation, titled “Strategies and Actions Pertaining to Research and Publication Ethics,” emphasized the need for caution regarding predatory journals that prioritize submission fees over rigorous assessments of paper quality, plagiarism, or ethical standards. He highlighted the importance of evaluating a journal’s publication volume, acceptance rate, and reputation. Recent issues with certain journals gaining popularity due to rapid acceptance and open access publication, only to be listed as predatory, prompted reflections from both authors’ and editors’ perspectives. This discussion offered valuable insights into the ethical challenges facing scholarly publishing.
The first day concluded with a gala dinner featuring a traditional Indonesian dance performance. This was a precious opportunity to experience the beauty of Indonesian culture through its costumes, music, and dance. Sharing traditional Indonesian cuisine while enjoying the performances created a meaningful atmosphere, fostering camaraderie among editors from across Asia (Fig. 4).
On the second day, Professor Kihong Kim, president of the KCSE, delivered a lecture on “Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Journal Publishing,” addressing the growing use of AI tools like ChatGPT in writing and editing [2]. He explored the boundaries of AI’s role in automated journalism and emphasized the need to consider various factors, including data, images, statistics, references, and pre-review processes, when integrating AI into journal editing. He also raised concerns about potential issues related to inequality, humanity, data security, and ethics, stressing the importance of ongoing dialogue about how to responsibly utilize rapidly advancing AI technology in scholarly publishing.
In the final session, Professor Yera Hur from Hallym University (Chuncheon, Korea) presented a detailed lecture on Crossref, explaining how to check and process submitted papers through Crossref, including similarity checks. The last topic of the conference was a lecture on peer review. Finding good reviewers and receiving quality peer reviews are essential requirements for high-impact journals, yet it remains challenging to have a pool of excellent reviewers. There was considerable agreement on the need for peer review to maintain transparency, leave a record, and be recognized for its value (Fig. 5).
The afternoon of the second day featured a poster presentation session, with a total of 11 posters displayed. I presented a poster introducing Annals of Coloproctology, a journal covering surgical techniques, clinical research, and fundamental research in colorectal surgery. As the official journal of the Korean Society of Coloproctology and the Asia Pacific Federation of Coloproctology [3–5], Annals of Coloproctology has a Journal Impact Factor of 3.0, placing it in the Q1 category. This conference provided an excellent opportunity to promote the journal and contribute to the development of domestic journals and surgical academia (Fig. 6) [6–8]. I would also like to congratulate Ms. Jeonghee Im from M2PI in Korea for winning an award for her poster on journal editing techniques using AI platforms.
July is typically a hot month in Korea, and the weather in Jakarta was equally sweltering. As a clinician who works in a hospital, attending the conference during Korea’s ongoing medical strike was particularly challenging. Observing professors from nonmedical fields diligently pursuing academic achievements, despite the strike, prompted deep reflection and regret about the current state of healthcare in Korea. The passion of the editors gathered from various countries was even more intense than Jakarta’s heat, and I was inspired by their efforts to advance academic journals. I extend my heartfelt gratitude to the KCSE for providing this remarkable opportunity.

Conflict of Interest

No potential conflict of interest relevant to this article was reported.

Funding

The author received no financial support for this article.

Data Availability

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.

The author did not provide any supplementary materials for this article.
Fig. 1.
Photo booth at the 8th Asian Science Editors’ Conference and Workshop 2024.
kcse-355f1.jpg
Fig. 2.
Participants attending the conference.
kcse-355f2.jpg
Fig. 3.
Members of the Korean Council of Science Editors.
kcse-355f3.jpg
Fig. 4.
A performance of a traditional Indonesian dance.
kcse-355f4.jpg
Fig. 5.
Speakers presenting at the conference.
kcse-355f5.jpg
Fig. 6.
The poster presentation booth.
kcse-355f6.jpg

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      Meeting report on the 8th Asian Science Editors’ Conference and Workshop 2024
      Image Image Image Image Image Image
      Fig. 1. Photo booth at the 8th Asian Science Editors’ Conference and Workshop 2024.
      Fig. 2. Participants attending the conference.
      Fig. 3. Members of the Korean Council of Science Editors.
      Fig. 4. A performance of a traditional Indonesian dance.
      Fig. 5. Speakers presenting at the conference.
      Fig. 6. The poster presentation booth.

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      Meeting report on the 8th Asian Science Editors’ Conference and Workshop 2024
      Science Editing : Science Editing
      © Korean Council of Science Editors.
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