Towards the third decade of Hong Kong Journal of Emergency Medicine

The first issue of the Hong Kong Journal of Emergency Medicine (HKJEM) was published in July 1994. In 2024, our journal will celebrate its 30th anniversary.

For almost 30 years, HKJEM has been a free platform for knowledge dissemination and an advocator of high-quality research originated from local and international emergency medicine community. Since its inception, our journal has witnessed tremendous development of emergency medicine in the Asian-Pacific region, not only in medical science and resuscitation skills^1–4 but also in the ways how knowledge is shared and passed on to our next generation of emergency medicine practitioners. ⁵ The arrival of smart hospital era has improved the safety and efficiency of our emergency departments and will certainly create new research opportunities from mega-data generated in the care process. ⁶

Thanks to the efforts of the past and current chief editors, editorial board members and advisors, HKJEM has continued to advance and provide the latest information to our readers. The journal has also been fortunate to be supported by a long list of dedicated reviewers over the past three decades. Apart from local and overseas emergency medicine practitioners, we are grateful to reviewers from other medical specialities for their time and effort. With the increasing recognition of emergency medicine research by other medical specialities, ⁷ their participation in both research and peer review will improve the quality of emergency medicine research that would ultimately benefit our patients. However, the increasing number of manuscripts with fabricated data and other ethical violations also calls for a stronger oversight by the journal editors and the research community to uphold the standard of scientific publication. ⁸

Globally, emergency medicine research has been flourishing over the past decade. In a bibliometric analysis, the annual publications in emergency medicine grew from 2500 in 2010 to over 3500 in 2019. ⁹ Of note, a significant growth in emergency medicine publications arose in mainland China, which had ranked the fifth in scholarly output following the United States, Turkey, Canada and Australia.^9,10 In Hong Kong, however, the number of published papers had declined from 2009 to 2018 despite a growing local emergency medicine community. ⁷ The ever-increasing pressure from frontline clinical work and other competing priorities in our emergency departments may have chipped away enthusiasm in research. ¹¹ The newly established Research Office of the Hong Kong College of Emergency Medicine represents a revitalised initiative to support local emergency department research through proactive engagement with young researchers and financial support. HKJEM will work closely with the Research Office to provide more support to both the researchers and reviewers through organising training workshops and other activities.

Striving towards the third decade, the editorial board is excited to announce the collaboration with a new publisher from 2024. There will be new changes to adapt to the changing needs of our readers and the global movement towards a free, open and immediate access to scientific knowledge without licensing restrictions to create impact. ¹² One essential change is the migration to the article processing charge (APC) model to ensure the sustainability of open access to our expanding archive of articles. HKJEM will work closely with the Hong Kong College of Emergency Medicine to streamline article submission and overcome financial barriers for local researchers. We will continue to connect with local and international readers, especially the next generation of emergency medicine practitioners, to make this journal better.