On 3 December 2025, the Philippine Association of Medical Journal Editors (PAMJE) convened its Annual Convention at Adamson University’s Co Po Ty Audio-Visual Hall. Guided by the theme “Publishing for National Relevance: Aligning Medical and Health Journals with the National Unified Health Research Agenda 2023–2028 (NUHRA)”, the event brought together journal editors, academics, health research institutions, and government partners committed to strengthening the Philippine scholarly publishing ecosystem and aligning it more closely with national health priorities.
101 Health Research proudly served as co-host, supporting both program development and on-the-day coordination, and helping create a platform for substantive dialogue across sectors.
Opening Messages
The convention opened with welcome messages from Dr. Rosula S. J. Reyes, Vice-President of Adamson University, and Dr. Cecilia Maramba-Lazarte, President of PAMJE. Both emphasized the urgent need to cultivate robust, ethical, and nationally responsive medical and health journals that can meaningfully support the country’s development agenda.
Opening Plenary: Aligning Health Journals with NUHRA 2023–2028
In the opening plenary, Dr. Venus Oliva Cloma-Rosales, Founder and Managing Director of 101 Health Research, presented a progress report on the NUHRA Mid-Term Evaluation, a national study currently being led by 101 Health Research.
Drawing from work completed to date, she outlined the evaluation methods already undertaken, including:
- Systematic document review of the National Unified Health Research Agenda and institutional research roadmaps
- Extraction of health research titles from HERDIN and regional research repositories
- Initial coding and thematic clustering of research outputs against NUHRA priority areas
- Gap analysis comparing national health priorities with actual research production
- Cross-mapping of institutional agendas and regional research and development thrusts
These approaches enabled the team to address the first set of research questions, particularly identifying which NUHRA priorities are well represented in existing research and which remain underexplored.
From her preliminary conclusions, Dr. Cloma-Rosales emphasized that while Philippine health research output continues to grow, alignment with NUHRA remains uneven. She highlighted opportunities to strengthen institutional agenda-setting, collaboration pathways, and research translation mechanisms. These are areas where journals play a critical role not only as disseminators of knowledge but also as strategic gatekeepers of national relevance.
First Panel Discussion: Bridging Research, Policy, and Practice for NUHRA-Aligned Outcomes
Moderated by Justin Embalsado (101 Health Research), the first panel examined how research, policy, and implementation intersect in practice, and why misalignment across these domains continues to challenge health systems.
From a government implementation perspective, Ghelvin Auriele Aguirre (Department of Health) highlighted the persistent gap between policy design and local realities. He emphasized that frontline health workers often need to adapt national policies due to resource constraints, uneven capacities, and evolving community needs, underscoring the importance of clear communication, continuous capacity building, and policy flexibility.
Offering a research and publishing lens, Dr. Miguel Antonio Salazar (Asian Journal of Public Health Practice) stressed that many decisions are still made without sufficient localized evidence. He pointed to the disconnect between research outputs and their practical use, calling for stronger collaboration among researchers, policymakers, and implementers, and for research designs that prioritize usability, ethical responsibility, and community benefit.
From a systems and academic standpoint, Dr. Ryan Ray Gatbonton (Adamson University) focused on sustainability challenges, noting how limited resources, short-term funding cycles, and competing institutional priorities often undermine long-term impact. He emphasized the need to embed initiatives within institutional systems and to incorporate feedback from implementers and communities into adaptive policy design.
Across the discussion, panelists converged on several themes: fragmented coordination, overburdened frontline personnel, and insufficient resources for monitoring and learning. There was broad agreement that no one-size-fits-all solution exists, and that durable impact depends on multi-sectoral partnerships, attention to local context, and a shift from short-term outputs toward long-term systems strengthening.
Second Panel Discussion: Research, Rankings, and the Role of Local Journals
Framing Talk: Research, Rankings, and Institutional Reputation
Prior to the panel discussion, Dr. Jonyl Garcia, Director of the Center for Research and Development of Adamson University, delivered a framing talk that situated the panel within the broader discourse on quality education, global rankings, and institutional reputation.
Drawing from UNESCO’s Quality Learning Framework and international ranking methodologies, Dr. Garcia explained how research performance contributes significantly to university standing. He highlighted that in the THE World University Rankings, research environment accounts for 29 percent of the overall score, while citations contribute 30 percent. In the QS World University Rankings, academic reputation and citations per faculty similarly exert substantial influence.
Dr. Garcia emphasized that research productivity strengthens not only rankings but also curricula and student learning through the teaching–research nexus. He underscored the strategic importance of local indexed journals—particularly those under CHED Journal Accreditation Service (JAS), PAMJE, and DOST–PCHRD—as critical platforms for national scholarship and as accessible publication pathways for early-career researchers.
Panel Discussion: Strengthening Research Quality, Capacity, and Dissemination
Moderated by Dr. Hazel Anne Lamadrid-Catublas (Adamson University), the second panel focused on how funding agencies, journals, and institutions collectively shape research quality, researcher development, and dissemination pathways.
From the perspective of national research funding, Mr. Paul Ernest De Leon (DOST–PCHRD) discussed the agency’s mandate to support priority health research aligned with national goals. He emphasized the importance of ensuring that funded research leads to policy-relevant and actionable outputs. Key challenges identified included variability in research quality across institutions and the need for stronger mentoring and capacity-building, particularly for early-career researchers. He stressed that strengthening the research ecosystem requires strategic investment in people, not just projects, and closer alignment among funding mechanisms, research agendas, and dissemination pathways.
Representing the journal community, Dr. Ivan Neil Gomez (Philippine Journal of Allied Health Sciences) highlighted the role of peer-reviewed journals as gatekeepers of research quality and ethics. He noted that many manuscript submissions reveal gaps in research design, reporting standards, and ethical compliance. To address these, he emphasized the need for capacity-building in scientific writing and peer review, greater recognition of local journals as legitimate and impactful publication venues, and the value of editorial mentorship, transparent review processes, and constructive feedback for emerging researchers.
From an institutional journal management perspective, Dr. Jennifer Nailes (UERMMC Health Sciences Institute Journal) discussed the operational and sustainability challenges faced by institution-based journals. She described the difficulty of balancing editorial quality with limited resources, particularly when faculty editors and reviewers must juggle multiple academic responsibilities. She underscored the importance of strong administrative support, clear editorial policies and workflows, and continuous training for editors and reviewers. Institutional journals, she noted, play a crucial role in nurturing novice researchers, providing accessible publication opportunities, and fostering a culture of research and scholarship.
Across the discussion, panelists converged on several themes: limited research capacity and mentorship, resource constraints affecting both journals and research offices, and misalignment between research production and dissemination. There was strong agreement that research quality must be addressed upstream, well before the publication stage, and that collaboration among funders, journals, and institutions is essential.
In closing, Dr. Hazel Anne Lamadrid-Catublas synthesized the discussion by emphasizing that a robust health research ecosystem depends on coordination across the entire research lifecycle: from funding and conduct to publication and dissemination. She highlighted the need to invest in researcher development, strengthen journals as capacity-building platforms, and align funding priorities with dissemination pathways. The panel’s core message was clear: sustainable impact is achieved when funders, journals, and institutions work together to uphold quality, ethics, and meaningful research use.
Global Perspectives: Predatory Journals and Ethical Publishing
The afternoon session opened with international perspectives delivered virtually.
Professor Peter L. Munk (University of British Columbia), former Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Association of Radiologists Journal and current Associate Editor of the British Journal of Radiology, presented a lecture entitled “Predatory Journals: What Are They, Why Should I Care, and What’s New.” Serving as International Liaison for the Asia-Pacific Association of Medical Journal Editors (APAME), Prof. Munk clarified that open access publishing is intended to widen public access to knowledge, promote transparency, and remove paywall barriers.
He cautioned, however, that predatory journals exploit the open access model by charging publication fees without providing legitimate peer review, editorial oversight, or indexing quality. He also warned about hijacked journal sites, which mimic the branding and ISSNs of reputable journals, deceiving authors and eroding scholarly trust. These practices, he stressed, undermine open science, distort citation landscapes, and pose particular risks to early-career researchers.
Models of Peer Review and Reviewer Responsibilities
Following this, Dr. Wilfred C. G. Peh (Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, Singapore; Clinical Professor at the National University of Singapore), Immediate Past President of APAME, joined Dr. Cecilia Maramba-Lazarte in a session focused on strengthening peer review in Philippine journals.
They outlined several peer-review models currently in use internationally:
- Single-blind peer review
- Double-blind peer review
- Open peer review, where reviewer identities and reports may be disclosed
- Post-publication peer review
The session emphasized the central role of reviewers in safeguarding research quality. Responsibilities highlighted included rigorous manuscript evaluation, confidentiality, transparency in conflicts of interest, ethical vigilance, and the provision of constructive feedback that supports both authors and editors in maintaining the integrity of the scholarly record.
Best Practices in Running a Philippine Journal
A dedicated panel on “Best Practices in Running a Philippine Journal,” moderated by Dr. Amado Tandoc (Philippine Journal of Pathology), brought together insights from leading local publishing experiences.
Dr. Tandoc reflected on the 15-year journey of the Journal of the ASEAN Federation of Endocrine Societies (JAFES), which overcame early challenges of irregular publication and limited resources to achieve international indexing through sustained governance reforms, digitization, and editorial capacity-building.
Dr. Erlinda Palaganas, Editor-in-Chief of the Philippine Journal of Nursing and PAMJE Vice President, shared PJN’s transformation anchored on three pillars:
- Digitization and workflow modernization, including OJS adoption, DOI and ORCID integration, metadata standardization, and digital preservation
- Enhanced journal visibility through structured indexing pathways, from DOAJ to WPRIM and onward to Scopus or ESCI
- Institutional collaboration, positioning PJN as a national voice for Philippine nursing scholarship\
Ms. Angelique Regio (DOST–PCHRD) then presented updates on HERDIN, highlighting its more than 62,000 publicly accessible records, WPRIM indexing workflows, and institutional reporting tools. She also acknowledged 101 Health Research’s AI and data engineering project, which supports automated encoding and improves HERDIN’s efficiency and data accuracy.
Closing Lecture: Academic Integrity and Publication Ethics in the Era of AI
The convention concluded with a lecture by Dr. Jacinto Blas V. Mantaring III, Professor of Clinical Epidemiology at the University of the Philippines College of Medicine, on “Ensuring Academic Integrity and Publication Ethics in the Era of AI.”
From his presentation, Dr. Mantaring outlined allowable uses of artificial intelligence in research and publishing, including:
- Search and literature retrieval
- Summarization
- Classification
- Clustering
- Extraction
- Rewriting for clarity
He emphasized that while AI can support data processing, modeling, and analysis, it must never replace human judgment. Transparency, disclosure of AI use, and careful validation of outputs are essential. Practices such as fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, and deceptive AI-generated content, he warned, constitute serious research misconduct.
A Collective Commitment to National Relevance
As co-host, 101 Health Research supported the PAMJE Annual Convention from planning through execution, ensuring smooth coordination and a space for meaningful exchange among stakeholders.
By convening local and international voices, the PAMJE Annual Convention 2025 affirmed a shared commitment to strengthen journal quality, uphold ethical standards, embrace digital innovation, and align Philippine research more closely with national health priorities under NUHRA. The event underscored a central belief: when institutions, editors, researchers, and advocates work together, the Philippine health research publishing ecosystem becomes stronger, more visible, and more impactful.
