Updated 28/08/2026
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Plain-language summary of research published in the Georgian Medical Journal. Written for the general public by the GMJ News editorial team.
Anyone can claim editorial rigour. A structured self-assessment in the Georgian Medical Journal puts that claim to an actual test, scoring the journal’s own inaugural year against a standardised international evaluation instrument — and publishing the results, gaps included.
The Method: Self-Assessment, Publicly Documented
The team applied the LMU Journal Evaluation Tool — a 16-criteria, 1-to-3-point rubric widely used to distinguish legitimate journals from predatory ones — to GMJ on 5 May 2026, scoring every criterion using evidence visible on the journal’s own public pages. They then supplemented that with four additional frameworks: Think.Check.Submit., the COPE–DOAJ–OASPA–WAME Principles of Transparency, DOAJ’s own application criteria, and ICMJE/NLM standards.
The Score, and the One Honest Gap
GMJ scored 46 out of 48 on the LMU rubric — landing in the “Good” band — with 15 of 16 criteria hitting the maximum 3/3, including confirmed indexing across 11 international databases: Crossref, Google Scholar, Zenodo, OpenAIRE, BASE, OpenDOAR, OpenAlex, ERIH+, ASCI, and ETH Library/swisscovery among them. Cross-checking against the other four frameworks produced consistent results, 92–96% across the board.
At a glance — the headline figures.
The one gap the assessment doesn’t hide: DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) listing remains pending approval, scoring 1 out of 3 — a specific, named limitation rather than something glossed over. The editorial recommends annual re-assessment using this same multi-framework approach as standard editorial practice, effectively committing GMJ to repeating this public accountability check every year rather than treating credibility as something established once and never revisited.
Read the Original Research
Original article: Can a New Medical Journal Prove It’s Trustworthy? GMJ Puts Itself Under the Microscope
Published in: Georgian Medical Journal, Vol. 1 No. 2 (2026)
DOI: 10.66636/gmj.v1.i2.a87
📄 Read the full article at gmj.ge →
Georgian Medical Journal (GMJ) · ISSN 3088-4322 · gmj.ge · Open Access CC BY 4.0 · Published by the Public Health Institute of Georgia (PHIG). This summary is an independent editorial product of GMJ News; for clinical decisions, consult the original peer-reviewed article and a qualified professional.
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