Peer-reviewed cytopathology journals are important resource for practitioners in many medical specialties. This report shed some light on the current peer-reviewed periodicals in cytopathology.

Al Aboud K, Idris N, Al Zaaidi R, Abdullah Halwani AM, Al Joaid M, et al. (2015) Peer-Reviewed Cytopathology Journals; a Tabulation Overview. Ann Clin Cytol Pathol 1(3): 1012.

•    Cytopathology
•    Journal
•    Periodicals

Cytopathology is a discipline of medical sciences that studies and diagnoses diseases on the cellular level. It is frequently, less precisely, called cytology. Historically, many factors influenced the development of this branch of pathology [1-3].

There are several national and international professional societies in cytopathology. There are increasing numbers of training programs in this branch of pathology. In an earlier study, it has shown that , there are 90 Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education-accredited cytopathology fellowship training programs in the United States, each with its own unique curriculum designed to achieve these goals and objectives [4].

Many studies in this field are being published in general pathology journals.

There are also journals that publish studies of cytopathology along with papers from histopathology or histology. Examples of these are; Peertechz Journal of Cytology and Pathology (http:// www.peertechz.com/Cytology-Pathology/aboutJ.php), Annals of Clinical Cytology and Pathology (http://www.jscimedcentral. com/ClinicalCytology/), and International Journal of Histology and Cytology (http://internationalscholarsjournals.org/journal/ ijhc).

However, our aim in this commentary is to shed some light on the available periodical which is devoted solely to cytopathology.

Peer-reviewed journals in cytopathology are important vehicle of scientific information. In table 1, we listed selected examples of the existing journals in cytopathology.

Reading these periodicals on a routine basis is a necessity to the pathologists in general and cytopathology practitioners in particular.

Reviewing these journals is a must for residents in training programs.

There are several differences between Peer-reviewed journals in cytopathology. These include for example, the sponsoring society, the frequency of publication and the language.

Cytopathology periodicals make a major contribution to Continuing Medical Education (CME) and they are essential reading for every practicing cytopathologist and cytotechnologist who wishes to keep abreast of new developments in this rapidly developing field.

Readership of cytopthology periodicals also include practitioners in related fields such as Oncologists, Gynecologists, and Endocrinologists.

Periodicals in cytopathology would publish peer-reviewed original research papers, case reports, systematic reviews, meta-analysis, and debates.

They publish in all aspects of diagnostic cytology, including fine needle aspiration cytology, gynecological and non-gynecological cytology. They publish also studies on ancillary techniques, like cytochemistry, immunocytochemistry, electron microscopy, molecular cytopathology, as applied to cytological material.

Readers are benefiting now from sophisticated tools such as RSS (Rich Site Summary) content feeds and social bookmarks to enable easy linking to blogs and reference management platforms.

Medical journals in general compete for rapid peer review and very fast online publication times and many of them move to an online submission platforms such as Scholar One and journal on web.

Some researcher advocate online publication and they don’t prefer printed publication. The benefits of an online journal can include rapid turnaround time, real time publication, significant cost savings, and a reduction in the environmental burden engendered in the production and disposal of a print publication [5].

Many of cytopathology periodicals are listed in bibliographic services such as Pubmed/Medline and Excerpta Medica.

It is expected that the numbers of cytopathology journals will continue to increase, as many publishers wish to invest in electronic publication with Open Access (OA) model. In this model, the authors cover all or part of the cost of the publication of their paper.

OA model is a legitimate platform for publication with comparable or even higher citation rates to traditional journals.

One reason for the growth of OA in the medical community is the known advantage this platform has for both the readers and the authors [5-8].

Other than increasing the citation rates, an additional relatively less appreciated beneficial aspect of the OA charter is the retention of copyright by the intellectual property (IP) owner of the individual publication, which is its author/researcher.

Social media and new smart phones applications and technologies changed medical journalism dramatically and lead to many advantages to the readers and the journals.

Journals are now being able to create additional features such as contests and quizzes, and thus increasing the live interactions with readers.

Some remarks have been published on the contents of the cytopathology journals. One of them is that, they are relatively deficient in utilizing high-quality evidence-based medicine (EBM) in the form of Systematic review (SR), meta-analysis (MA) and randomized controlled trials (RCTs) compared with clinical medicine [9].

Needless to say that there are many challenges (which are not in the scope of this report) facing these periodicals. For example the utilization of internet and technologies to allow their contents to be available in social media website and e-mail and to be reached easily in cell phones raising the impact factor (IF) and inclusion in the PubMed remain an important task for the newly launched journals.

In an earlier study, Cancer Cytopathology (CC) was shown to have the highest IF compared to 3 other cytopathology journals. The author of that paper stressed on the fact that, IF should not be abandoned because it might encourage competition between cytopathology journals, but it should not dictate their content [10].

Table 1: Selected peer-reviewed periodicals in cytopathology (listed alphabetically).

1. Wright JR. Cytopathology: why did it take so long to thrive? Diagn Cytopathol. 2015; 43: 257-263.

2. Powers CN. Happy new year from Cancer Cytopathology! Cancer Cytopathol. 2015; 123: 3-4.

3. Powers CN. Cancer cytopathology 2010: leading the way into the future. Cancer Cytopathol. 2010; 118: 229-232.

4. Naritoku WY, Black-Schaffer WS. Cytopathology fellowship milestones. Cancer Cytopathol. 2014; 122: 859-865.

5. Shidham VB, Cafaro A, Atkinson BF. CytoJournal joins ‘open access’ philosophy. Cytojournal. 2004; 1: 1.

6. Frisch NK, Nathan R, Ahmed YK, Shidham VB. Authors attain comparable or slightly higher rates of citation publishing in an open access journal (CytoJournal) compared to traditional cytopathology  journals - A five year (2007-2011) experience. Cytojournal. 2014; 11: 10.

7. Lawrence S. Free online availability substantially increases a paper’s impact. Nature. 2001; 411: 521.

8. Craig ID, Plume AM, McVeigh ME, Pringle J, Amin M. Do open access articles have greater citation impact? A critical review of the literature. J Informetr. 2007; 1: 239–248.

9. AbdullGaffar B. Systematic review, meta-analysis and randomized controlled trials in cytopathology. Acta Cytol. 2012; 56: 221-227.

10. Abdullgaffar B. Impact factor in cytopathology journals: what does it reflect and how much does it matter? Cytopathology. 2012; 23: 320- 324.