Change to Progress

With this issue of Balkan Medical Journal, it is time for me to hand over the responsibilities of Editor-in-Chief to Cem Uzun, MD. I worked as an associate editor between the years 2005-2009 and then as the Editor-in-Chief from 2009 to 2012. During these years, many achievements were made including the establishment of online submission system, change to quarterly publication, immediate acquisition of DOI number, and accepting English as the official language of the journal. ICMJE, WAME and COPE standards were accepted and applied for the publication process. In order to raise ethical standards, we began to use a plagiarism software. Enhanced manuscript submissions (both in quality and quantity) led to publication of larger volumes. As a result of these achievements, Balkan Medical Journal succeeded in being covered in the most important international indexes (SCI-E, Journal Citation Reports, EMBASE, Scopus, DOAJ, Chemical Abstracts, Index Copernicus, etc).