About Alexandria Journal of Medicine

Alexandria Journal of Medicine

The Alexandria Journal of Medicine is the medical journal of the Faculty of Medicine of Alexandria University in Egypt, published in open access in English, with print ISSN 2090-5068 and online ISSN 2090-5076. It publishes original research, review articles and clinical trials, with a particular interest in diseases of high prevalence in the Middle East and North Africa — the MENA region — and in how the profile of those diseases in the region compares with their profile worldwide. It is now produced and hosted by Taylor & Francis on behalf of the Alexandria University Faculty of Medicine, following an earlier period, from 2011 to 2018, when its issues were hosted on ScienceDirect. This profile explains its scope, publishing history, editorial and peer-review standards, open access and fee information, indexing, and how an author should judge whether a manuscript belongs here.

A faculty journal with a regional brief occupies a useful middle ground in medical publishing. It is general enough to take work across internal medicine and its neighbouring fields, yet it has a declared regional focus that many global general journals lack. A study of the prevalence, presentation, management or outcomes of a common condition in Egypt or the wider MENA region, a clinical trial run in that population, or a review that compares regional and worldwide disease profiles speaks directly to this journal's stated purpose. At the same time, the journal welcomes manuscripts from the international scientific community, so regional focus is an invitation and a priority, not a geographical restriction on authorship.

For clinicians and researchers in Egypt and the region, the journal offers an English-language, open access, DOI-registered venue attached to one of the region's established medical faculties, indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals and in the Emerging Sources Citation Index. For readers, it offers freely readable clinical evidence about populations that are under-represented in the literature of North America and Europe, which is precisely the gap its regional focus is meant to help close.

At a glance

History and publishing arrangements — and a conflict in the records

The journal's modern archive begins in 2011. Previous issues from 2011 to 2018 are held on ScienceDirect under the print ISSN, and a note carried for the journal states plainly that it is now produced and hosted by Taylor & Francis on behalf of the Alexandria University Faculty of Medicine, with the current issue on the Taylor & Francis platform under journal code tajm20. Volume numbering on that platform had reached volume 61, number 1, for the 2025 volume year, with articles published online from late 2024 — a pattern consistent with a long-running faculty journal publishing one volume a year.

One conflict in the public record must be flagged, because authors and librarians will meet it. The Directory of Open Access Journals listing for this journal still names the publisher as Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications, in India, with Alexandria University's Faculty of Medicine named as another organisation. That listing reflects an earlier publishing arrangement and has not been brought into line with the present Taylor & Francis hosting. Separately, Web of Science journal data lists Taylor & Francis Ltd as the publisher for this title, with the same pair of ISSNs and the category Medicine, General and Internal, in the Emerging Sources Citation Index. The current, authoritative statement of the publishing arrangement is therefore the Taylor & Francis one — produced and hosted by Taylor & Francis on behalf of the Faculty of Medicine — and the DOAJ publisher line should be treated as out of date until the directory updates it. The ISSNs, the owning faculty and the journal's identity are consistent across all three records; only the publisher field differs.

Open access, in DOAJ's record, dates from 2016 for this journal. That means the older ScienceDirect-era issues and the current open access run should not be assumed to share identical access or licensing terms. Anyone citing or reusing an older article should check the terms attached to that article and its platform, and anyone submitting now should work from the current Taylor & Francis author instructions for the journal, which are the instructions the journal itself directs authors to consult for the detailed description of manuscript types.

Scope in detail

A MENA focus, in worldwide comparison

The journal's own statement of concern is specific: it provides a venue for the publication of research with a particular focus on diseases of high prevalence in MENA, and on the comparison of their profile in the region with their profile worldwide. That sentence should shape how an author frames a submission. A prevalence study, a clinical audit, a risk-factor analysis or a management study from the region is strongest here when it does at least one of three things: it reports data from a population that the international literature lacks; it compares regional findings explicitly with worldwide findings; or it draws out what is distinctive — in presentation, in comorbidity, in health-system conditions, or in outcomes — about the disease in the regional setting. A paper that could have been written identically about any population, with a regional sample used only as a convenience, fits the journal less well than its authors may expect.

General medicine breadth

Within that focus, the journal is a general medical title. Its Web of Science category is Medicine, General and Internal, and its Library of Congress subject in DOAJ is Medicine in general, with the keyword medical sciences. Original research, reviews and clinical trials are all named article types. In practice that breadth suits work from internal medicine and its subspecialties, and clinical work from neighbouring fields that is of interest to a general medical readership, provided the MENA or comparative angle, or a clear general clinical interest, is present. Highly specialised technical work with no general or regional readership is better placed in a specialty title, several of which are also published by faculties of Alexandria University in fields such as dentistry, nursing and veterinary science — those are separate journals, and should not be confused with this one.

What the journal will not take

The journal states that articles containing promotional material, whether implicit or explicit, will not be included. Authors with industry relationships, sponsored research or a product-related study should therefore disclose fully, write in a strictly scientific register, and expect editorial scrutiny on this point. The journal also expects work involving human subjects to conform to ethical standards, and the procedures followed to be described in the paper — a requirement that is developed further in the peer review and ethics section of this profile.

Peer review, reporting guidelines and research ethics

The journal states that submitted material is subject to the highest standards of editorial revision and peer review. Detailed, current mechanics — the number of reviewers, whether review is blinded, and the structure of the submission system — are set out in the online instructions for authors on the Taylor & Francis platform, and authors should follow those instructions rather than any summary, including this one. What can be said from the journal's own statements is what it expects of a manuscript before review begins, and those expectations are substantive.

Authors are strongly directed to reporting guidelines. The journal says it is highly recommended to follow the reporting guidelines described on the EQUATOR Network home page. In practice that means choosing the guideline that matches the study design — for a randomised trial, a systematic review, an observational study, a diagnostic accuracy study or a case report — completing its checklist, and writing the manuscript so that the checklist's items can actually be found in the text. Reviewers for a general medical journal rely on those standards to judge whether a study can be appraised at all, and a manuscript that omits core items such as eligibility criteria, outcome definitions, or a flow of participants will struggle regardless of the interest of its topic.

Ethics receives explicit attention. Papers describing research involving human subjects, and the procedures followed, should conform to ethical standards. Authors should therefore state, in the manuscript, the approving ethics committee, the approval reference where one is given, how informed consent was obtained or why it was waived, and how participant data were protected. Clinical trials should be described as such and reported to trial standards. Patient-identifiable material, including images, requires particular care and documented consent. These are not formalities added at proof stage; editors can and do return manuscripts that lack them.

Open access, licensing, fees and archiving

DOAJ's record for the journal gives a clear, if dated, picture of its open access arrangements, and each element should be rechecked on the current publisher page before an author relies on it financially. The journal is recorded as having begun publishing in open access in 2016, as using a CC BY-NC licence, and as a title under which the author does not retain unrestricted copyright and publishing rights. It is recorded as charging up to 750 United States dollars as a publication fee, with a waiver policy for those charges. It is recorded as checking manuscripts for plagiarism. And it records an average of about ten weeks from submission to publication, which, if it still holds, is a comparatively brisk timetable for a general medical journal.

The CC BY-NC point deserves a sentence of its own, because it differs from the CC BY terms many open access authors now assume. A non-commercial licence restricts commercial reuse of the published article by others. Authors whose funder or institution mandates a specific licence should check that mandate against the licence the journal currently offers before submitting, not after acceptance, and should raise any conflict with the editorial office at submission. Likewise, the fee figure in DOAJ is a ceiling recorded by the directory, not a quote: the amount payable for a given article, the stage at which it is payable, and the waiver criteria must be confirmed in the current Taylor & Francis information for this journal.

For preservation, DOAJ records the journal's articles as digitally archived in CLOCKSS, LOCKSS and Portico, and records the DOI as its permanent article identifier. Triple archiving of that kind is a meaningful assurance for a faculty journal: the published record does not depend on a single platform surviving. Authors should still register the DOI of their article in their own records and institutional repository, following the licence and version rules that apply to the published version.

Indexing and standing

The journal is listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals, under its online ISSN, and it is described by its own listing note as indexed in DOAJ and in E-SCI — the Emerging Sources Citation Index, part of Web of Science. Web of Science journal data consulted for this profile places the journal in Medicine, General and Internal in that index, under Taylor & Francis Ltd, with a citation count in the low thousands, which is consistent with a regional general journal with an archive reaching back to 2011. This profile does not state a Journal Impact Factor or a quartile for the journal, because a verified, current figure from the publisher or from Journal Citation Reports was not established from the sources consulted, and emerging-sources titles have historically been treated differently from the flagship citation indexes in that respect. Authors who need a metric for a promotion or funding case should take it from the current Web of Science or publisher page for the journal, by ISSN, at the time they need it.

Standing, for this journal, is better judged on grounds that can be verified: an owning medical faculty at Alexandria University; a continuous archive since 2011; current production and hosting by a major international publisher on the faculty's behalf; open access with recognised archiving; and a declared regional mission that gives its contents a coherence many general journals lack. A regional author choosing between this journal and an unfamiliar title that promises a high metric should weigh those verifiable facts heavily, and should be wary of any third-party page that attaches a striking impact figure to this journal without showing its ISSN and source.

Submitting well: a practical guide

Start with fit, stated in the first paragraph of the introduction and in the cover letter: which high-prevalence disease or clinical problem in MENA does this paper address, what regional data does it add, and how does its profile compare with the worldwide picture? If the honest answer is that the paper is a general clinical study with an international rather than regional interest, the journal still welcomes international manuscripts, but the author should then make the general interest explicit — a method, a comparison, a question of wide clinical relevance — rather than leaving the editors to guess.

Then build the manuscript to the journal's stated expectations. Use the reporting guideline for the design, and say in the methods that it was followed. Write the ethics statement before submission, with committee and consent details, not after a reviewer asks. Keep promotional language out entirely, and declare funding and competing interests plainly. Follow the detailed manuscript-type descriptions in the Taylor & Francis instructions for authors for this journal, including its reference style, figure and table requirements, and submission route, because those instructions, not a directory summary, govern what the editorial office will check first.

Finally, plan for the business side in advance. Confirm the current article processing charge and the waiver policy before submission if cost is a constraint, and confirm the licence on offer if a funder mandates terms. Keep copies of the submitted, accepted and published versions, record the DOI on publication, and check the published article promptly for errors in names, affiliations, tables and figures, when correction is easiest. Authors who do those things give a good regional paper its best chance of a smooth passage through a journal that exists, in large part, to publish exactly that kind of work.

Frequently asked questions

Who owns the Alexandria Journal of Medicine, and who publishes it now?

It is the journal of the Faculty of Medicine of Alexandria University in Egypt. It is now produced and hosted by Taylor & Francis on behalf of that faculty. An older DOAJ listing naming Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications as publisher is out of date and is flagged in this profile.

What are its ISSNs?

Print ISSN 2090-5068 and online ISSN 2090-5076. Use those numbers to identify the journal in Web of Science, DOAJ and library records, and to avoid confusing it with other Alexandria University faculty journals in dentistry, nursing or veterinary science.

What does it publish, and what is its special focus?

Original research articles, review articles and clinical trials in general medicine, with a particular focus on diseases of high prevalence in the Middle East and North Africa and on comparing their regional profile with their worldwide profile. International submissions are also welcomed.

Is it open access, and what does it charge?

It is an open access journal; DOAJ records open access from 2016, a CC BY-NC licence, charges up to 750 USD with a waiver policy, and an average of about ten weeks from submission to publication. Those directory figures are dated, so confirm the current charge, waiver and licence on the Taylor & Francis page before submitting.

Which reporting and ethics standards does it expect?

It highly recommends following the reporting guidelines described by the EQUATOR Network for the study design in question, and it requires research involving human subjects, and the procedures followed, to conform to ethical standards, with those procedures described in the paper. Promotional material, implicit or explicit, is excluded.

How this profile was verified

This profile was prepared from the journal's statement of scope and publishing arrangements carried on African Journals Online, the Taylor & Francis platform record for the journal (code tajm20, volume 61), its Directory of Open Access Journals listing under ISSN 2090-5076, and Web of Science journal data for the same ISSN pair. The disagreement between the DOAJ publisher line and the current Taylor & Francis hosting is reported openly in the history section above.

Where an official source and an older directory record disagreed, this profile says so openly rather than choosing a convenient answer. Where a detail could not be verified from an official or authoritative source consulted for this profile, it is described as not publicly disclosed or as a point to confirm on the journal's own website before submission, rather than being filled in by guesswork. Authors should always check the live author instructions on the journal's official site on the day they submit, because fees, editors, templates and submission systems can change between issues.