The possibilities of editorial advancement of a journal are defined by the understanding and adoption of technological resources, the organization of processes and the permanent updating of the editorial committee. The most important factor seems to be an editorial committee that interprets the needs of authors, readers and all participants in editorial processes, and that accordingly, demands technical needs to improve communication and dissemination of scientific content.

More than 20 years ago, the editors of Colombia Médica understood the potential of the internet, opted for an electronic journal and risked abandoning paper printing with good results. In the last decade, with the same vision and knowledge of the limitations of managing a journal as a web page, the editorial content manager Open Journal System was implemented, which from the beginning was understood as a system for managing the editorial process and publication.

With the acceptance of the journal in the Pubmed/Medline bibliographic database, the editorial body faced the need to publish in the XML-JATS (eXtensible Markup Language-Journal Article Tag Suite) language, little known among Latin American publishers. The support of the SciELO Brazil project (Scientific Electronic Library Online) to understand and implement this language in the articles was valuable. This was the technical requirement of the PubMed Central full-text database to accept the journal in its open access collection ¹. The reward was almost immediate: the reading public and the scientists who require the journal articles expanded to the 5 continents.

To guide the journal through the position it has reached, Colombia Medica became an instrument for the dissemination and generation of knowledge networks of Colombian and Latin American scientists with the rest of the world. Although the journal publishes contributions from authors from all countries, we recognize ourselves as a journal with a Latin American vision and we strive to exalt our scientists with the highest demands.

On turning 50, the journal considered that the best celebration is with our readers and authors. For our readers, we have improved the presentation of our website and now the articles are offered in XML and PDF formats in two languages. Furthermore, we changed the layout of PDF files; now the texts are published in a single column aligned to the left so that the spaces between the words are of equal size, which we hope will make it easier to read and understand. The figures are edited in vector format so they can be used in scientific presentations without losing image quality. Links were placed between the citations in the text and the bibliographic references to improve the query during the reading, and the metadata of the article was included in the information of the PDF document, allowing for better and faster archiving with the bibliographic reference managers (such as Mendeley, Zotero or EndNote).

Most of the form requirements for requests for editorial evaluation by our authors were withdrawn. It was considered that completing the submission of an article was a process that could cover about 6 hours, and moreover, many times adjustments and formats were requested before a first editorial examination that if the result was not satisfactory would mean a similar process in another journal ². We have applications such as Crossref's Simple Text Query form, which recognize bibliographic references and add DOI identifiers to them, tools that suggest keywords such as MESH on Demand from the National Library of Medicine-NLM, conflict of interest formats (provided by ICMJE) and cover letter formats that simplify these requirements. It is estimated that the process of sending a manuscript to the journal takes less than 30 minutes. We also implemented the plugin of the identifier ORCID (Open Identifier of Researcher and Collaborator), which allows us to automatically update the curriculum of the authors along the publication of the article in the journal ³.

Starting next year, articles will be published in a continuous edition. This means that as soon as a manuscript is accepted for publication, it will be outlined in the journal formats and will be published immediately without waiting to complete a number. Continuous editing increases the publishing opportunity for authors, allows the journal to make a specific disclosure for each article on social media, and will continuously provide articles to our readers ⁴.

Among the pending tasks for the following years are the recognition of the evaluating pairs and the implementation of the pre-prints. We are indebted to peer reviewers who do essential, anonymous work for the journal. We are studying the best way to recognize their work and thank them publicly ⁵. Preprints require additional technological development and training of the scientific community to contribute in solidarity to improve the quality of these documents in order to be published.

Colombia Medica is the prospect of four generations of editors and editorial committees who have identified themselves as readers, researchers, and evaluators, and who have interpreted editorial needs and sought answers in technology and processes.