In the twentieth century there was a quantitative leap in the development of science, technique and productive forces, mediated by the information and communication technologies (ICTs).

The Scientific Technical Revolution is a permanent process, where the science-technology-technique-production chain narrows more and more and in an increasing way. The main axis shifts toward science, and it can be said that contemporary technology is a product of it, where ICTs play an essential role. In addition, not only production is automated, but also the transfer of scientific knowledge to the production and acquisition of new knowledge¹.

ICTs have revolutionized the area of information treatment, greatly facilitating its organization, access and use; but it happens that, in many occasions, so much information overwhelms, what is also a serious difficulty, especially if it cannot be used in solving a problem.

There is a generalized trend toward the intensification of scientific publications: world editorial production in 2019 was 21% higher than in 2015, and continuous to increase. According to Fire and Guestrin², the volume of articles has increased considerably: from less than a million published in 1980 to more than 7 million in 2014. In addition, researchers can share and publish their research at greater speed. Along with this, both scientific journals-in 2014 there were more than 34 000 active peer-reviewed journals-and the researchers who publish increased. As part of this process, metrics such as quantity of published articles, the number of citations, the h-index and altmetrics are used to calculate the impact factor of articles, journals, researchers, and universities.

In the field of medicine, as well as in other areas of knowledge, to publish the results of a research is part of the process of their validation. Subjecting them to a prior scrutiny by experts on the topic, testing them, criticizing them, commenting on them, refusing them, or finally accepting them, are an essential part of the researcher’s daily life³.

According to Chavarro⁴, quantitative forms of research follow-up or evaluation are used to measure the relative performance of researchers, laboratories, universities and national scientific systems. Many of these evaluations use indicators based on data published by scientific journals. This has determined that these journals are classified into three groups: 1) the conventional ones or mainstream journals. The term also denotes those that, generally, reflect dominant tendencies of thought, influence or activity, that is, those that publish excellent research and that are indexed in the Web of Science and Scopus databases. 2) those called non-conventional, that are less recognized in research evaluation, under the assumption that they publish articles of lower quality; and 3) predatory journals, which are a constant threat to the credibility of science. By faking or bypassing academic peer, published content becomes pseudoscience and thus loses academic value.

This type of journals uses aggressive techniques to recruit prominent users to their platforms. Hundreds of emails send each month-with tempting and derisory promises-flood our inboxes. These serial publications or publishing houses are scammers on a grand scale: they offer fast publishing services-without cumbersome procedures-within any area of knowledge, use ostentatious names and publish any document regardless of its content. Experts agree that the main reasons why this practice may be considered fraudulent are because it does not carry out the pertinent scientific review, and because its aim is not to publish and disseminate scientific content, but to raise money³.

For their part, conventional journals are peer-reviewed, are indexed in prestigious international databases and collaborate in the development of the universal knowledge.

Bibliographic databases are a valuable tool for the information storage and processing. They are, also, easily accessible and efficient in the different knowledge assets. These bases are considered secondary sources since they are the input key to the original source.

An indexed journal is one that has met a series of quality criteria, which has entered a selective information system when approving the evaluation of the database. This inclusion determines that the results of scientific research have greater visibility.

In Cuba, it is considered that scientific articles in journals, annals of congresses or events and arbitrated books, are a relevant result that provide added value and quality guarantees to the research process, and is the main form of communication, dissemination and evaluation in correspondence with the rigor of external arbitration, being also sources of interchange, scientific debate and indispensable reference base for other researchers.

That is why, Resolution Nr. 1/2020 of the National Commission of Scientific Degrees on compliance with the requirement of publishing the essential results of the scientific research during doctoral training, stablishes classification criteria -based on the admitted regional and international indexing and summary systems with their respective evaluations-, and classifies publications in maximum, medium and minimum levels, according to areas of knowledge⁵.

The Electronic Medical Journal is indexed in SciELO, LILACS, Latindex, DOAJ, Cumed databases, among others. As of this year, it is in Scopus-it includes the issues published from 2019 to date-, so its publications rank at the highest level.

Scopus is a database of abstracts and citations of articles, chosen by independent experts in the field. It puts powerful tools of discovery and analysis on the hands of researchers, librarians, institutional research managers and funders. With more than 25 100 titles of more than 5 000 international editorial houses, Scopus offers the most complete general vision of the world research production in the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences and arts, and humanities⁶.

Inclusion in databases demands a constant work on the quality of articles, metadata, complementary documents, the use of the Credit taxonomy and ORCID identifier by the authors, as well as a fast and efficient work by reviewers and editors. The indexation of Medica Electronica in Scopus is a recognition and a commitment to carry out a work every day better and more demanding, at the height of the researchers who select this journal as the way to make known to the world the results of their researches.