Two international public platforms for the exposure of Archives of Plastic Surgery to worldwide researchers and surgeons: PubMed Central and Crossref

After changing the language of its articles from Korean or English to English only in 2012 [1], Archives of Plastic Surgery (APS) became an international journal, as evidenced by various metrics [2] and its inclusion in the Web of Science Core Collection in 2012 and Scopus in 2013. From 2018 to July 2020, authors from 45 countries published in APS (Suppl. 1). The 289 most recent articles from 2018 to present have been cited by researchers from 44 countries in articles in the Web of Science (Suppl. 2). These results originated from the APS editors’ laborious work on editing and publishing; furthermore, the content itself is top-tier in the field of plastic surgery. In this Editorial, I would like to explain the influence of two international public platforms that helped APS reach the international level through exposure to worldwide researchers and surgeons: PubMed Central (PMC) and Crossref. Of course, the influence of Google or Google Scholar on the exposure of APS to global researchers may have been greater than that of PubMed Central or Crossref. However, PubMed Central and Crossref are also powerful platforms for physicians and researchers.