Abstract The International Research Interdisciplinary School (IRIS) provides an interdisciplinary international environment for training skills required for preparing research study protocols, scientific manuscript and international collaboration. It is a common initiative of the Journal of Electrocardiology, Anatolian Journal of Cardiology, Monitor of Medicine of the Slovak Medical Society, Balkan Medical Journal, Central Asian Medical Journal, and Journal of Kyrgyz State Medical Academy, Cardiovascular Systems. In the period from 2006 to 2016, nineteen IRIS courses were organized in twelve countries on three continents (Austria, Brazil, Croatia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey). Total number of participants is 315, from 33 countries (Albania, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, China, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Georgia, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania, Macedonia, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey, Ukraine, USA, Venezuela). The evaluation of the scientific performance of trainees for the period 2007–2013 showed that the IRIS training was associated with identifiable increase in scientific publication activity. The Journals benefited from the increased quality of submitted manuscripts and an increased pool of peer-reviewers.