The OB/GYN physician is a professional who keeps abreast with knowledge about health and disease in order to provide his patients with upto-date knowledge. To do so, he reads and listens to new information, but he may also be interested in writing to secure his information and share it. In the Peruvian Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology (SPOG, by its acronym in Spanish) have been Presidents of the Steering Committees who at the end of their responsibility of office decided to undertake and strengthen an organ for dissemination of institutional activities and advances in the specialty. It was the seventh President of SPOG, Dr. Lucas Molina Navia, who in 1955 created and directed the new journal Gynecology and Obstetrics until 1971^1). Four of the next six Editors have also been outgoing Presidents of SPOG, and the current one took over in 1994.

The undertaking of medical publishing requires a dedication that takes time away from professional medical and family duties to, in addition to the delicate editorial work, manage funding for staff, printing, distribution and others. Initially, articles were on demand, written and then prepared for printing on typewriters, with continuous visits to the printer, in addition to visits to the sponsoring companies. Several of the members of the current Committee have been with the Journal since the second editor of the RPGO, Dr. Eduardo Valdivia Ponce, between 1972-1977, who created the emblem. The administrative support of the various directives of SPOG has been permanent and independent, managing and obtaining indexing in LIPECS, LILACS, Latindex, Imbiomed, SciELO, Redalyc, DOAJ, Dialnet, REDIB, HINARI, ESCI Web of Science, MIAR. The RPGO ceased publication only in 1978, 1982 and 1984.

In March of this year, and after a rigorous evaluation process, the Peruvian Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics (RPGO, by its acronym in Spanish) was accepted by Scopus to be included in its prestigious database. Since then, and facing future challenges, the activity of the PRGO has been strengthened, establishing an editorial team and tools that allow the already initiated professionalization of the processes of the editorial activity^2).

The purpose of the RPGO is to promote and disseminate research and publication in the field of obstetrics and gynecology and subspecialties, i.e. obstetrics^3-5), gynecology^6), human reproduction^7), sexual health and reproductive rights^{(8, 9),} gynecologic oncology(10), climacteric and menopause^11), public health¹² and, in recent years, maternal fetal medicine and surgery, reproductive endocrinology and infertility, gender violence and teaching.

The visibility and impact of the RPGO has been previously reported, according to the Open Journal Systems (OJS), a computer system where the issues of the RPGO are published in electronic format. Between the years 2013-2015, there were 85,922 views to the abstracts of published articles, as well as 48,272 article downloads^13). In this regard, and with updated data from the OJS of the RPGO, during the last year (September 2022 to September 2023), the number of visits to the abstracts exceeds 3,000 monthly visits, with peaks of up to 10,638 (Figure 1) and exceeds 1,610 monthly downloads of articles in PDF format with peaks of up to 9,715 (Figure 2) in this same period. That is, over the years, the number of readers of the RPGO has increased, which is an incentive and a challenge for the Editorial Committee, since, as expected, the recent indexing to Scopus will have an increasing number of readers in the coming years, given the international visibility of this indexer.

Figure 1 Number of visits to the abstracts of articles in the Revista Peruana de Ginecología y Obstetricia, September 2022-September 2023. 

Figure 2 Number of article downloads (in PDF format) from the Revista Peruana de Ginecología y Obstetricia, September 2022-September 2023. 

Scopus, published by Elsevier, is one of the most important databases of scientific journals worldwide, with wide visibility, rigorous selection processes, and prestige for its quality sources and selection criteria. Likewise, they provide scientiometric data that allow the mapping of scientific dynamics and production, constituting an important source of new scientific evidence that allows the advancement of science in all its disciplines^14).

Bibliometrics is a discipline that uses methods such as citation analysis to evaluate the performance of published research. Thus, the citations of an article are used to determine the quantitative impact over time according to the number of times it was cited^15). The production of highly cited articles is now a measure of academic success and identification of influential articles, which in turn contribute to clinical practice, science and the conduct of new research^16).

The main databases such as Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed and Google Scholar are sources of bibliometric analysis. Although with dissimilar search engines, particular metrics and different coverage^17), they have in common the h-index^18). The h-index, initially proposed as a method to measure the performance of an author, is defined as the h number of articles published by a researcher, at least h times, in a given period of time. This index measures both the productivity of the author and the impact of the research through the citations received by the research^19).

The h5 index was proposed by Google Scholar for the bibliometric analysis of authors and scientific publications; that is, the production h for each author or scientific publication during the last 5 years^20). At the national level, the RPGO ranks 13th among Peruvian journals in multiple disciplines of science^2).

In the field of scientific journals in the field of obstetrics and gynecology at the international level, which is the scenario where the RPGO will have challenges and opportunities, most of them in Latin America and Spain are indexed in Scopus (Table 1). In this context, it is important to highlight that the measurement of the h5 index (2018-2022) by Google Scholar Metrics for each of said publications, places the RPGO in third place with an h5 index of 20²¹ (Table 1). Those 20 articles that were cited 20 or more times during the period 2018-2022(22) are shown in Table 2.

Table 1 Index h5 and median h5 of obstetrics and gynecology journals. Google Scholar Metrics, 2018-2022(21). 

Table 2 Ranking of most cited articles of the Revista Peruana de Ginecología y Obstetricia, according to h5 index. Google Scholar Metrics, 2018 to 2022(22). 

Thus, the future potential of the RPGO from its recent indexing in Scopus and future issues that will be incorporated into this indexing system will allow its monitoring by means of the CiteScore, which is the monthly metric stipulated by Scopus to measure the impact of its publications¹⁴ with respect to the obstetrics and gynecology journals shown in Table 1. This will allow the identification of strengths and weaknesses, as well as the exploration of topics and types of articles that are most frequently cited, which will allow the projection of future issues.

The next bibliometric indicators of the RPGO will be important, and this requires the commitment of the editorial team and especially the contributions of authors, reviewers and readers, for the visibility of research in the field of obstetrics and gynecology developed in our continent and, in general, by researchers who publish articles of interest and impact that contribute to our medical specialty.