- Email: [email protected]
CMI editorial report, 2016
EDITORIAL
CMI editorial report, 2016 M. Leffad1 and D. Raoult2 1) CMI Editorial Office and 2) Unité de Recherche sur les Maladies Infectieuses et Tropicales Emergentes, URMITE CNRS-IRD 198 UMR 6236, Faculté de Médecine, Université de la Méditerranée, Marseille, France Article published online: 10 November 2015
Corresponding author: D. Raoult, Unité de Recherche sur les Maladies Infectieuses et Tropicales Emergentes, URMITE CNRS-IRD 198 UMR 6236, Faculté de Médecine, Université de la Méditerranée, Marseille, France E-mail: [email protected]
Introduction We thank all of our reviewers for their work in 2015. The current editorial team will cease operations in April 2016; in 2008, the team from Marseille assumed the editorial functions for Clinical Microbiology and Infection (CMI). The work was completed voluntarily by many collaborators—editors in chief, associate editors and of course reviewers. This significant work was done to help create a high-level academic journal. The work was not done without difficulty as a result of the need to change the proportion of texts in CMI by increasing the number of publications in infectious disease, virology and parasitology, shown in Fig. 1 and Table 1, as well as technical difficulties in publishing a monthly themed issue, with a defection rate of approximately 10% and delays, especially at the start, that justified the use of rapidly mobilized teams, particularly in Marseille, to save the themed issues. With themed issues, we wanted to attract attention to still poorly known emerging fields; we thought this was the most important academically, with CMI playing a role in training and providing a source of information on emerging fields. One of CMI’s difficulties was the articulation, with the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID), of supplementary issues, with guidelines among these supplements. At first there was a separate editor in chief for special issues, but this has changed after 2 years, and all special issues and guidelines were published by the same editor in chief. This has raised the question of the opportunity for CMI to publish supplements or guidelines previously approved by the executive committee of the ESCMID without the editor in chief’s decision. This has been the subject of disagreements between the Executive Council of the ESCMID and CMI,
especially regarding guidelines, some of which did not correspond to the concept of what other societies thought the guidelines should be. These problems seem resolved, and we hope that our successor will have an easier situation. Further, we had to manage the problem of conflicts of interest, for which a certain tolerance seemed apparent in CMI compared to other journals and other strategies, particularly in North America. This was the subject of heated debate, as some colleagues had difficulty in recognizing the fact that having been invited to or having received honoraria from the pharmaceutical industry affected their ability to contribute editorially without conflict of interest. It appears that in Europe we still have from this point of view a high tolerance, which should disappear. A recent article on conflicts of interest and guidelines [1] should be adopted for ESCMID and CMI; along these lines, CMI recently published an editorial [2] which seems to us to go in the right direction. CMI’s editorial policy has resulted in growing success, which resulted in a significant increase in the number of submitted original papers and reviews. These increased from 908 submissions in 2008 to 1535 submissions in 2015. In parallel, the Impact Factor was under 3 the first year and has increased to 5.768. The current team’s latest Impact Factor will be the one of June 2017, which assesses the previous 2 years; our hope is that it will exceed 6. The Impact Factor is only an indirect reflection, but it reflects quality and a related influential role, of which themed issues are a major element. Under these conditions, the journal is one of four or five major journals in infectious diseases and clinical microbiology in publishing original articles. This success went with problems, the first being the decrease in the percentage of accepted papers, which now stands at 17% (Table 6). The reason articles are immediately rejected is shown in Fig. 2. When we assessed this high release rate, we thought that many submissions were from emerging countries, with articles that did not meet the standards of the scientific community and were not readily understandable. We thus created a special issue [3] indicating that we were welcoming of work from emerging countries, and Table 2 shows the wide geographical diversity of the countries that sent papers to CMI for consideration and CMI’s responsiveness.
Clin Microbiol Infect 2016; 22: 1–7 © 2015 Clinical Microbiology and Infection published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cmi.2015.10.028
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Clinical Microbiology and Infection, Volume 22 Number 1, January 2016
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FIG. 1. Evolution of CMI’s thematic coverage between 2013 and 2015.
This led us to consider creating a new journal that could receive papers of limited geographical importance that were worthy of publication and that would welcome new forms of scientific presentation. We thus created, along with the ESCMID, a new journal, New Microbes New Infections (NMNI), with M. Drancourt as the editor in chief. The journal was quickly indexed in PubMed and is doing well. This increase CMI’s quality came not only with an increase in the number of items—we publish twice as many articles and twice as many pages in 2014 than in 2008—but also with a considerable increase in the quality of items. Unfortunately, this
TABLE 1. Evolution of topics covered by CMI between 2010 and 2015 Ratio (%) of topic for: Topic
2008 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Bacteriology Epidemiology Infectious diseases Mycology Virology Tropical and parasitic diseases
74,00 2,00 6,00 8,00 7,00 3,00
42.40 14.40 17.70 10.30 15.20 0.00
34.40 10.10 21.20 7.70 19.30 7.40
36.62 11.27 16.43 11.74 18.31 5.63
36.02 13.44 22.04 8.60 17.74 2.15
34.10 10.49 23.28 7.54 20.33 4.26
24.32 7.37 28.25 10.81 24.81 4.42
also comes with a lot of frustration and aggression from authors who have had their papers refused at different stages of review. We also created a section, Infection Hot Topics, which draws attention to current issues of interest, although to date this new section has not been widely used. The journal’s organizational changes led us to publish part of the journal online only. The online-only version has grown significantly, and for 2 years, the acceptance of letters has helped increase the number of articles published online from 326 to 431, without the burdens inherent to print publication. However, keeping a journal in print preserves its educational aspect, particularly for the themed issues, and we remained attached to this form. Financially, in 2008 CMI had no profit—and indeed more than V100 000 of annual deficit. This was linked to the existence of a rented office in Paris, personnel intermediary between the receipt of articles and the editor in chief, and poor negotiations with the publisher. These problems have been resolved thanks to the considerable energy of G. Cornaglia, and for more than 3 years now, CMI has generated more than V100 000 per year of net earnings to ESCMID despite the considerable increase in the quality and the number of papers published.
© 2015 Clinical Microbiology and Infection published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, CMI, 22, 1–7
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FIG. 2. Reason articles are directly discharged.
Overall, for the editor in chief, the CMI experience was important, interesting and instructive; he has since 2008 read more than 12 000 abstracts submitted to the journal. CMI also needed to change economically, editorially and strategically; further, the editorial office had to face resistance to changes rendered absolutely necessary for the journal so that it might have the best success possible. Such problems are well behind us now, leaving the journal in good shape for the new editorial team.
The Journal’s Editorial Structure CMI appears monthly and includes peer-reviewed manuscripts, reviews, research notes and letters. Each print and online issue includes a themed section. These are organized by a guest editor and cover key topics. They consist of three to five invited reviews on the chosen topic, an editorial and related cover images. Table 3 shows all of the themed issues published in 2015 and those scheduled for 2016.
Submissions The proportion of manuscripts submitted as original articles, as research notes or as letters (separate from invited reviews and editorials) is continuously increasing. In addition, these manuscripts come from a large variety of countries. Table 2 shows that many authors in various countries submit to the journal, although acceptance rates are not equivalent for all countries. As compared to 2014, it is interesting to note that authors from
new countries, such as French Polynesia, have published for the first time in CMI. This clearly confirms the willingness of the journal to be open to the world, including emerging countries. It is also interesting to note that Taiwan and India are among the top ten countries with researchers submitting papers to CMI. The journal continues to make efforts to help improve papers of high scientific quality coming from countries with cultural and organizational difficulties, allowing them to reach a standard that is more consistent with the scientific community’s standards.
Citations CMI achieved excellent results in the latest Journal Citation Reports. Most significantly, the headline 2-year Impact Factor increased by 25% to 5.768, keeping the journal at above 5. As can be seen in Fig. 3, CMI’s Impact Factor has grown significantly over the last decade and is now high above the aggregate and median levels for both of its subject categories. The journal is now ranked 5 of 78 journals in infectious diseases and 16 of 119 in microbiology. CMI also achieved further growth in its Eigen factor (up 6%) and article influence score (up 4%), both of which are strong indicators of the journal’s prestige within the scientific community. The most cited article published in 2014 was ‘European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases: update of the treatment guidance document for Clostridium difficile infection’ [4], with 110 citations to date.
© 2015 Clinical Microbiology and Infection published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, CMI, 22, 1–7
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TABLE 2. Submissions and acceptance rates by country in 2015a
No. Country 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32
a
No. of No. of accepted Acceptance submissions manuscripts ratio (%)
France 121 Spain 141 Italy 71 China 143 United States 56 Netherlands 37 United Kingdom 45 Switzerland 28 Germany 40 Austria 19 Taiwan 42 Israel 20 Sweden 17 Korea, Republic of 25 Belgium 13 Turkey 29 Australia 12 Denmark 10 Slovenia 5 India 34 Portugal 16 Singapore 7 Brazil 24 Japan 18 Hong Kong 8 Canada 7 Norway 5 French Polynesia 2 South Africa 2 Gambia 1 Nicaragua 1 Viet Nam 1 Total accepted Poland 10 Greece 9 Egypt 8 Iran (Islamic Republic of) 9 Finland 6 Thailand 5 Czech Republic 4 Ireland 4 Argentina 3 Chile 3 Colombia 3 New Zealand 3 Pakistan 3 Russian Federation 3 Serbia 3 Croatia 2 Ghana 2 Hungary 2 Mexico 2 Bosnia and Herzegovina 1 Cyprus 1 Estonia 1 Iceland 1 Latvia 1 Luxembourg 1 Madagascar 1 Mozambique 1 Qatar 1 Romania 1 Senegal 1 Sudan 1 Tanzania, United Republic of 1 Tunisia 1 Total 1098
37 30 19 17 15 14 13 11 9 8 7 7 7 6 5 4 4 4 3 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 236 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 236
31 21 27 12 27 38 29 39 23 42 17 35 41 24 38 14 33 40 60 6 13 29 4 6 13 14 20 50 50 100 100 100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 21%
As of 15 September 2015.
CMI
reached 418 443. The most downloaded individual articles in the January–August 2015 period are listed in Table 4. The two most downloaded items in 2014 were guidelines: ‘European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases: update of the treatment guidance document for Clostridium difficile infection’ [4], followed by ‘ESCMID guidelines for the management of the infection control measures to reduce transmission of multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria in hospitalized patients’ [15]. New publications and older papers are both strongly represented among the most read (Table 4).
Online Publications The number of submitted papers has not diminished; therefore, the number of quality papers that we want to publish is increasing, and, despite the increased online-only page budget, the large volume of articles makes it difficult for the time to publication in an issue to decrease (Table 5).
Infection Hot Topics This category of articles, which are freely accessible, continues to provided an immediate platform for the entire editorial board and is thus closer to the current discussions of the scientific community. This selection has been a real success from the time of its establishment.
Future Evolution and Perspectives The percentage of rejected articles remains important, at 83% (Table 6), but since May 2013 some are redirected to NMNI. The journal will continue to have a themed section per issue as well as approximately ten original articles, on top of which research notes and longer articles will be available online. The journal also publishes supplementary issues that reflect congresses organized by the ESCMID (ECCMID) or conferences sponsored by partners (Table 7). These supplements also enjoy a relatively large number of citations. The editorial board has managed the supplementary issues since 2010.
Readership
Workflow—Evolution Since 2009
Online readership of CMI continues to grow at an impressive rate. In the first 7 months of 2015, total full-text downloads
The current processing time for manuscripts has continued to improve since 2009 (Table 8). In 2015, this averaged 16 days.
© 2015 Clinical Microbiology and Infection published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, CMI, 22, 1–7
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TABLE 3. Themed issues published in CMI in 2015 and scheduled for 2016 Month 2016 January February March April May June July August September October November December 2015 January February March April May June July August September October November December
Guest editors
Topic
M. Paul and D. Raoult G. Greub D. Raoult and G. Antonelli S. Cutler and G. Antonelli F. Allerberger I. Gyssens and J. M. Rolain E. Roilides G. Greub and G. Lina T. Panayotis and E. T. Piperaki G. Antonelli M. Drancourt and D. Raoult L. Poirel
Is there a terrible issue with bacterial resistance: pro–con New prokaryotes in humans (New emerging bacterial pathogens) When viruses are integrated in our genome Asymptomatic infections and the Koch postulates Poultry and human infections Outbreaks of community acquired urinary infections Emerging fungi in human infection Automation in clinical microbiology Emerging and reemerging parasitic infections in post industrial era Hepatitis C Paleomicrobiology Animal sources of resistant bacteria, true or false
M. Paul P. Gautret M. Paul G. Greub and M. Paul S. Cutler E. Bottieau T. Avsic Zupanc F. Allerberger M. Poljak M. Paul G. Antonelli E. Tacconelli and N. Mutters
Infection in the elderly Mass gathering Neuraminidase inhibitors for influenza: the new evidence The hidden killer: are we improving the management of bacteremia? Neglected zoonoses: forgotten infections among disregarded populations New diagnostic tools in parasitology New vector transmitted pathogens Acute diarrhoea: new perspective Human papillomaviruses Revival of old antibiotics: structuring the re-development process to optimise usage Why do infections cause cancer? Infection prevention and control in Europe—the picture in the mosaic
FIG. 3. CMI’s Impact Factor evolution since 2002.
TABLE 4. Most downloaded articles, January–August 2015 Author
Title
Vol.
Issue No. of full-text downloads
Reference
Høiby et al. Magiorakos et al.
ESCMID guideline for the diagnosis and treatment of biofilm infections 2014 Multidrug-resistant, extensively drug-resistant and pandrug-resistant bacteria: an international expert proposal for interim standard definitions for acquired resistance Detection of carbapenemases in Enterobacteriaceae: a challenge for diagnostic microbiological laboratories Borrelia miyamotoi infection in nature and in humans Neuraminidase inhibitors: who, when, where? Microbial culturomics: paradigm shift in the human gut microbiome study Spectrum of enteropathogens detected by the FilmArray GI Panel in a multicentre study of community-acquired gastroenteritis Rapid bacterial genome sequencing: methods and applications in clinical microbiology Management and diagnostic guidelines for fungal diseases in infectious diseases and clinical microbiology: critical appraisal The difficult-to-control spread of carbapenemase producers among Enterobacteriaceae worldwide
21 18
S1 3
10 050 2266
[5] [6]
20
9
1550
[7]
21 21 18 21
7 3 12 8
1499 1312 1097 1090
[8] [9] [10] [11]
19 19
9 12
1016 1008
[12] [13]
20
9
916
[14]
Hrabák et al. Krause et al. Nguyen-Van-Tam et al. Lagier et al. Spina et al. Bertelli and Greub Leroux and Ullmann Nordmann and Poirel
© 2015 Clinical Microbiology and Infection published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, CMI, 22, 1–7
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Clinical Microbiology and Infection, Volume 22 Number 1, January 2016
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TABLE 5. Year-by-year production summary Average no. of days from receipt at Wiley-Blackwell to: Year
Volume
No. of issues
No. of pages
No. of articles
Online publication
Print publication
2015a 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
10 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12
1000 2527 1800 1804 1912 1798 1194 1200 1244 1266
308 475 316 333 349 319 200 206 232 242
121 222 215 175 159 101 82 58 80 83
133 226 218 183 170 217 90 66 88 91
a
Elsevier.
TABLE 6. Acceptance and rejection rates for original articles and research notes since 2008 Accepted
Rejected
Year
No. of decisions made
n
Rate (%)
n
Rate (%)
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015a
826 779 995 1138 1177 1183 1287 1033
240 208 239 214 244 236 259 176
29 27 24 19 21 20 20 17
586 571 756 924 933 947 1028 857
71 73 76 81 79 80 82 83
a
As of 15 September 2015.
TABLE 7. Supplement published in CMI in 2015
Editor
Topic
F. Allerberger
ESCMID 2014 guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of biofilm infections
Publication information Volume 21, Supplement 1, S1–S26
Date of online publication
Date of print publication
Sponsor
No. of paper s
Reference
14 January 2015
May 2015
ESCMID
25
[5]
TABLE 8. Evolution of processing time for treatment of manuscripts since 2009 Disposition
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015a
No. with immediate rejection No. with decision after peer review (accept, revise, reject) Average processing time (days)
17 63 40
11 44 27
9 31 20
7 44 29
4 74 39
4 67 35
5 27 16
a
As of 16 September 2015.
This is broken down into 5 days for immediate rejection and 27 days for a decision of acceptance, revision, or rejection after peer review, which, at present, appears reasonable.
Conclusion The ambition of CMI is to reflect the academic activities of the ESCMID, and more generally of the world of infectious diseases
© 2015 Clinical Microbiology and Infection published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, CMI, 22, 1–7
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and clinical microbiology, as well as to attract the best publications and reviews within the field. It also aims to attract attention to emerging fields and to questions based on the focus provided by themed issues.
Transparency Declaration Both authors report no conflicts of interest relevant to this editorial.
References [1] Schünemann HJ, Al-Ansary LA, Forland F, Kersten S, Komulainen J, Kopp IB, et al. Guidelines International Network: principles for disclosure of interests and management of conflicts in guidelines. Ann Intern Med 2015;163:548–53. [2] Raoult D, Hope W, Kahlmeter G. Guidelines need controls. Clin Microbiol Infect 2015 Dec;21(12):1043–4. [3] Raoult D, Cornaglia G, Kahlmeter G. Welcoming countries emerging on the scene of medical sciences in Clinical Microbiology and Infection. Clin Microbiol Infect 2012;18:1055. [4] Debast SB, Bauer MP, Kuijper EJ, European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. Update of the treatment guidance document for Clostridium difficile infection. Clin Microbiol Infect 2014;20(Suppl. 2):1–26. [5] Høiby N, Bjarnsholt T, Moser C, Bassi GL, Coenye T, Donelli G, et al., ESCMID Study Group for Biofilms and Consulting External Expert Werner Zimmerli. ESCMID guideline for the diagnosis and treatment of biofilm infections, 2014. Clin Microbiol Infect 2015;21(Suppl. 1):S1–25.
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[6] Magiorakos AP, Srinivasan A, Carey RB, Carmeli Y, Falagas ME, Giske CG, et al. Multidrug-resistant, extensively drug-resistant and pandrug-resistant bacteria: an international expert proposal for interim standard definitions for acquired resistance. Clin Microbiol Infect 2012;18:268–81. [7] Hrabák J, Chudácková E, Papagiannitsis CC. Detection of carbapenemases in Enterobacteriaceae: a challenge for diagnostic microbiological laboratories. Clin Microbiol Infect 2014;20:839–53. [8] Krause PJ, Fish D, Narasimhan S, Barbour AG. Borrelia miyamotoi infection in nature and in humans. Clin Microbiol Infect 2015;21: 631–9. [9] Nguyen-Van-Tam JS, Venkatesan S, Muthuri SG, Myles PR. Neuraminidase inhibitors: who, when, where? Clin Microbiol Infect 2015;21: 222–5. [10] Lagier JC, Armougom F, Million M, Hugon P, Pagnier I, Robert C, et al. Microbial culturomics: paradigm shift in the human gut microbiome study. Clin Microbiol Infect 2012;18:1185–93. [11] Spina A, Kerr KG, Cormican M, Barbut F, Eigentler A, Zerva L, et al. Spectrum of enteropathogens detected by the FilmArray GI Panel in a multicentre study of community-acquired gastroenteritis. Clin Microbiol Infect 2015;21:719–28. [12] Bertelli C, Greub G. Rapid bacterial genome sequencing: methods and applications in clinical microbiology. Clin Microbiol Infect 2013;19: 803–13. [13] Leroux S, Ullmann AJ. Management and diagnostic guidelines for fungal diseases in infectious diseases and clinical microbiology: critical appraisal. Clin Microbiol Infect 2013;19:1115–21. [14] Nordmann P, Poirel L. The difficult-to-control spread of carbapenemase producers among Enterobacteriaceae worldwide. Clin Microbiol Infect 2014;20:821–30. [15] Tacconelli E, Cataldo MA, Dancer SJ, De Angelis G, Falcone M, Frank U, et al. ESCMID guidelines for the management of the infection control measures to reduce transmission of multidrug-resistant Gramnegative bacteria in hospitalized patients. Clin Microbiol Infect 2014;20(Suppl. 1):1–55.
© 2015 Clinical Microbiology and Infection published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, CMI, 22, 1–7
CMI editorial report, 2016 M. Leffad1 and D. Raoult2 1) CMI Editorial Office and 2) Unité de Recherche sur les Maladies Infectieuses et Tropicales Emergentes, URMITE CNRS-IRD 198 UMR 6236, Faculté de Médecine, Université de la Méditerranée, Marseille, France Article published online: 10 November 2015
Corresponding author: D. Raoult, Unité de Recherche sur les Maladies Infectieuses et Tropicales Emergentes, URMITE CNRS-IRD 198 UMR 6236, Faculté de Médecine, Université de la Méditerranée, Marseille, France E-mail: [email protected]
Introduction We thank all of our reviewers for their work in 2015. The current editorial team will cease operations in April 2016; in 2008, the team from Marseille assumed the editorial functions for Clinical Microbiology and Infection (CMI). The work was completed voluntarily by many collaborators—editors in chief, associate editors and of course reviewers. This significant work was done to help create a high-level academic journal. The work was not done without difficulty as a result of the need to change the proportion of texts in CMI by increasing the number of publications in infectious disease, virology and parasitology, shown in Fig. 1 and Table 1, as well as technical difficulties in publishing a monthly themed issue, with a defection rate of approximately 10% and delays, especially at the start, that justified the use of rapidly mobilized teams, particularly in Marseille, to save the themed issues. With themed issues, we wanted to attract attention to still poorly known emerging fields; we thought this was the most important academically, with CMI playing a role in training and providing a source of information on emerging fields. One of CMI’s difficulties was the articulation, with the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ESCMID), of supplementary issues, with guidelines among these supplements. At first there was a separate editor in chief for special issues, but this has changed after 2 years, and all special issues and guidelines were published by the same editor in chief. This has raised the question of the opportunity for CMI to publish supplements or guidelines previously approved by the executive committee of the ESCMID without the editor in chief’s decision. This has been the subject of disagreements between the Executive Council of the ESCMID and CMI,
especially regarding guidelines, some of which did not correspond to the concept of what other societies thought the guidelines should be. These problems seem resolved, and we hope that our successor will have an easier situation. Further, we had to manage the problem of conflicts of interest, for which a certain tolerance seemed apparent in CMI compared to other journals and other strategies, particularly in North America. This was the subject of heated debate, as some colleagues had difficulty in recognizing the fact that having been invited to or having received honoraria from the pharmaceutical industry affected their ability to contribute editorially without conflict of interest. It appears that in Europe we still have from this point of view a high tolerance, which should disappear. A recent article on conflicts of interest and guidelines [1] should be adopted for ESCMID and CMI; along these lines, CMI recently published an editorial [2] which seems to us to go in the right direction. CMI’s editorial policy has resulted in growing success, which resulted in a significant increase in the number of submitted original papers and reviews. These increased from 908 submissions in 2008 to 1535 submissions in 2015. In parallel, the Impact Factor was under 3 the first year and has increased to 5.768. The current team’s latest Impact Factor will be the one of June 2017, which assesses the previous 2 years; our hope is that it will exceed 6. The Impact Factor is only an indirect reflection, but it reflects quality and a related influential role, of which themed issues are a major element. Under these conditions, the journal is one of four or five major journals in infectious diseases and clinical microbiology in publishing original articles. This success went with problems, the first being the decrease in the percentage of accepted papers, which now stands at 17% (Table 6). The reason articles are immediately rejected is shown in Fig. 2. When we assessed this high release rate, we thought that many submissions were from emerging countries, with articles that did not meet the standards of the scientific community and were not readily understandable. We thus created a special issue [3] indicating that we were welcoming of work from emerging countries, and Table 2 shows the wide geographical diversity of the countries that sent papers to CMI for consideration and CMI’s responsiveness.
Clin Microbiol Infect 2016; 22: 1–7 © 2015 Clinical Microbiology and Infection published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cmi.2015.10.028
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Clinical Microbiology and Infection, Volume 22 Number 1, January 2016
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FIG. 1. Evolution of CMI’s thematic coverage between 2013 and 2015.
This led us to consider creating a new journal that could receive papers of limited geographical importance that were worthy of publication and that would welcome new forms of scientific presentation. We thus created, along with the ESCMID, a new journal, New Microbes New Infections (NMNI), with M. Drancourt as the editor in chief. The journal was quickly indexed in PubMed and is doing well. This increase CMI’s quality came not only with an increase in the number of items—we publish twice as many articles and twice as many pages in 2014 than in 2008—but also with a considerable increase in the quality of items. Unfortunately, this
TABLE 1. Evolution of topics covered by CMI between 2010 and 2015 Ratio (%) of topic for: Topic
2008 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015
Bacteriology Epidemiology Infectious diseases Mycology Virology Tropical and parasitic diseases
74,00 2,00 6,00 8,00 7,00 3,00
42.40 14.40 17.70 10.30 15.20 0.00
34.40 10.10 21.20 7.70 19.30 7.40
36.62 11.27 16.43 11.74 18.31 5.63
36.02 13.44 22.04 8.60 17.74 2.15
34.10 10.49 23.28 7.54 20.33 4.26
24.32 7.37 28.25 10.81 24.81 4.42
also comes with a lot of frustration and aggression from authors who have had their papers refused at different stages of review. We also created a section, Infection Hot Topics, which draws attention to current issues of interest, although to date this new section has not been widely used. The journal’s organizational changes led us to publish part of the journal online only. The online-only version has grown significantly, and for 2 years, the acceptance of letters has helped increase the number of articles published online from 326 to 431, without the burdens inherent to print publication. However, keeping a journal in print preserves its educational aspect, particularly for the themed issues, and we remained attached to this form. Financially, in 2008 CMI had no profit—and indeed more than V100 000 of annual deficit. This was linked to the existence of a rented office in Paris, personnel intermediary between the receipt of articles and the editor in chief, and poor negotiations with the publisher. These problems have been resolved thanks to the considerable energy of G. Cornaglia, and for more than 3 years now, CMI has generated more than V100 000 per year of net earnings to ESCMID despite the considerable increase in the quality and the number of papers published.
© 2015 Clinical Microbiology and Infection published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, CMI, 22, 1–7
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FIG. 2. Reason articles are directly discharged.
Overall, for the editor in chief, the CMI experience was important, interesting and instructive; he has since 2008 read more than 12 000 abstracts submitted to the journal. CMI also needed to change economically, editorially and strategically; further, the editorial office had to face resistance to changes rendered absolutely necessary for the journal so that it might have the best success possible. Such problems are well behind us now, leaving the journal in good shape for the new editorial team.
The Journal’s Editorial Structure CMI appears monthly and includes peer-reviewed manuscripts, reviews, research notes and letters. Each print and online issue includes a themed section. These are organized by a guest editor and cover key topics. They consist of three to five invited reviews on the chosen topic, an editorial and related cover images. Table 3 shows all of the themed issues published in 2015 and those scheduled for 2016.
Submissions The proportion of manuscripts submitted as original articles, as research notes or as letters (separate from invited reviews and editorials) is continuously increasing. In addition, these manuscripts come from a large variety of countries. Table 2 shows that many authors in various countries submit to the journal, although acceptance rates are not equivalent for all countries. As compared to 2014, it is interesting to note that authors from
new countries, such as French Polynesia, have published for the first time in CMI. This clearly confirms the willingness of the journal to be open to the world, including emerging countries. It is also interesting to note that Taiwan and India are among the top ten countries with researchers submitting papers to CMI. The journal continues to make efforts to help improve papers of high scientific quality coming from countries with cultural and organizational difficulties, allowing them to reach a standard that is more consistent with the scientific community’s standards.
Citations CMI achieved excellent results in the latest Journal Citation Reports. Most significantly, the headline 2-year Impact Factor increased by 25% to 5.768, keeping the journal at above 5. As can be seen in Fig. 3, CMI’s Impact Factor has grown significantly over the last decade and is now high above the aggregate and median levels for both of its subject categories. The journal is now ranked 5 of 78 journals in infectious diseases and 16 of 119 in microbiology. CMI also achieved further growth in its Eigen factor (up 6%) and article influence score (up 4%), both of which are strong indicators of the journal’s prestige within the scientific community. The most cited article published in 2014 was ‘European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases: update of the treatment guidance document for Clostridium difficile infection’ [4], with 110 citations to date.
© 2015 Clinical Microbiology and Infection published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, CMI, 22, 1–7
Clinical Microbiology and Infection, Volume 22 Number 1, January 2016
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TABLE 2. Submissions and acceptance rates by country in 2015a
No. Country 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32
a
No. of No. of accepted Acceptance submissions manuscripts ratio (%)
France 121 Spain 141 Italy 71 China 143 United States 56 Netherlands 37 United Kingdom 45 Switzerland 28 Germany 40 Austria 19 Taiwan 42 Israel 20 Sweden 17 Korea, Republic of 25 Belgium 13 Turkey 29 Australia 12 Denmark 10 Slovenia 5 India 34 Portugal 16 Singapore 7 Brazil 24 Japan 18 Hong Kong 8 Canada 7 Norway 5 French Polynesia 2 South Africa 2 Gambia 1 Nicaragua 1 Viet Nam 1 Total accepted Poland 10 Greece 9 Egypt 8 Iran (Islamic Republic of) 9 Finland 6 Thailand 5 Czech Republic 4 Ireland 4 Argentina 3 Chile 3 Colombia 3 New Zealand 3 Pakistan 3 Russian Federation 3 Serbia 3 Croatia 2 Ghana 2 Hungary 2 Mexico 2 Bosnia and Herzegovina 1 Cyprus 1 Estonia 1 Iceland 1 Latvia 1 Luxembourg 1 Madagascar 1 Mozambique 1 Qatar 1 Romania 1 Senegal 1 Sudan 1 Tanzania, United Republic of 1 Tunisia 1 Total 1098
37 30 19 17 15 14 13 11 9 8 7 7 7 6 5 4 4 4 3 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 236 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 236
31 21 27 12 27 38 29 39 23 42 17 35 41 24 38 14 33 40 60 6 13 29 4 6 13 14 20 50 50 100 100 100 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 21%
As of 15 September 2015.
CMI
reached 418 443. The most downloaded individual articles in the January–August 2015 period are listed in Table 4. The two most downloaded items in 2014 were guidelines: ‘European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases: update of the treatment guidance document for Clostridium difficile infection’ [4], followed by ‘ESCMID guidelines for the management of the infection control measures to reduce transmission of multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria in hospitalized patients’ [15]. New publications and older papers are both strongly represented among the most read (Table 4).
Online Publications The number of submitted papers has not diminished; therefore, the number of quality papers that we want to publish is increasing, and, despite the increased online-only page budget, the large volume of articles makes it difficult for the time to publication in an issue to decrease (Table 5).
Infection Hot Topics This category of articles, which are freely accessible, continues to provided an immediate platform for the entire editorial board and is thus closer to the current discussions of the scientific community. This selection has been a real success from the time of its establishment.
Future Evolution and Perspectives The percentage of rejected articles remains important, at 83% (Table 6), but since May 2013 some are redirected to NMNI. The journal will continue to have a themed section per issue as well as approximately ten original articles, on top of which research notes and longer articles will be available online. The journal also publishes supplementary issues that reflect congresses organized by the ESCMID (ECCMID) or conferences sponsored by partners (Table 7). These supplements also enjoy a relatively large number of citations. The editorial board has managed the supplementary issues since 2010.
Readership
Workflow—Evolution Since 2009
Online readership of CMI continues to grow at an impressive rate. In the first 7 months of 2015, total full-text downloads
The current processing time for manuscripts has continued to improve since 2009 (Table 8). In 2015, this averaged 16 days.
© 2015 Clinical Microbiology and Infection published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, CMI, 22, 1–7
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TABLE 3. Themed issues published in CMI in 2015 and scheduled for 2016 Month 2016 January February March April May June July August September October November December 2015 January February March April May June July August September October November December
Guest editors
Topic
M. Paul and D. Raoult G. Greub D. Raoult and G. Antonelli S. Cutler and G. Antonelli F. Allerberger I. Gyssens and J. M. Rolain E. Roilides G. Greub and G. Lina T. Panayotis and E. T. Piperaki G. Antonelli M. Drancourt and D. Raoult L. Poirel
Is there a terrible issue with bacterial resistance: pro–con New prokaryotes in humans (New emerging bacterial pathogens) When viruses are integrated in our genome Asymptomatic infections and the Koch postulates Poultry and human infections Outbreaks of community acquired urinary infections Emerging fungi in human infection Automation in clinical microbiology Emerging and reemerging parasitic infections in post industrial era Hepatitis C Paleomicrobiology Animal sources of resistant bacteria, true or false
M. Paul P. Gautret M. Paul G. Greub and M. Paul S. Cutler E. Bottieau T. Avsic Zupanc F. Allerberger M. Poljak M. Paul G. Antonelli E. Tacconelli and N. Mutters
Infection in the elderly Mass gathering Neuraminidase inhibitors for influenza: the new evidence The hidden killer: are we improving the management of bacteremia? Neglected zoonoses: forgotten infections among disregarded populations New diagnostic tools in parasitology New vector transmitted pathogens Acute diarrhoea: new perspective Human papillomaviruses Revival of old antibiotics: structuring the re-development process to optimise usage Why do infections cause cancer? Infection prevention and control in Europe—the picture in the mosaic
FIG. 3. CMI’s Impact Factor evolution since 2002.
TABLE 4. Most downloaded articles, January–August 2015 Author
Title
Vol.
Issue No. of full-text downloads
Reference
Høiby et al. Magiorakos et al.
ESCMID guideline for the diagnosis and treatment of biofilm infections 2014 Multidrug-resistant, extensively drug-resistant and pandrug-resistant bacteria: an international expert proposal for interim standard definitions for acquired resistance Detection of carbapenemases in Enterobacteriaceae: a challenge for diagnostic microbiological laboratories Borrelia miyamotoi infection in nature and in humans Neuraminidase inhibitors: who, when, where? Microbial culturomics: paradigm shift in the human gut microbiome study Spectrum of enteropathogens detected by the FilmArray GI Panel in a multicentre study of community-acquired gastroenteritis Rapid bacterial genome sequencing: methods and applications in clinical microbiology Management and diagnostic guidelines for fungal diseases in infectious diseases and clinical microbiology: critical appraisal The difficult-to-control spread of carbapenemase producers among Enterobacteriaceae worldwide
21 18
S1 3
10 050 2266
[5] [6]
20
9
1550
[7]
21 21 18 21
7 3 12 8
1499 1312 1097 1090
[8] [9] [10] [11]
19 19
9 12
1016 1008
[12] [13]
20
9
916
[14]
Hrabák et al. Krause et al. Nguyen-Van-Tam et al. Lagier et al. Spina et al. Bertelli and Greub Leroux and Ullmann Nordmann and Poirel
© 2015 Clinical Microbiology and Infection published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, CMI, 22, 1–7
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Clinical Microbiology and Infection, Volume 22 Number 1, January 2016
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TABLE 5. Year-by-year production summary Average no. of days from receipt at Wiley-Blackwell to: Year
Volume
No. of issues
No. of pages
No. of articles
Online publication
Print publication
2015a 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
10 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12 12
1000 2527 1800 1804 1912 1798 1194 1200 1244 1266
308 475 316 333 349 319 200 206 232 242
121 222 215 175 159 101 82 58 80 83
133 226 218 183 170 217 90 66 88 91
a
Elsevier.
TABLE 6. Acceptance and rejection rates for original articles and research notes since 2008 Accepted
Rejected
Year
No. of decisions made
n
Rate (%)
n
Rate (%)
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015a
826 779 995 1138 1177 1183 1287 1033
240 208 239 214 244 236 259 176
29 27 24 19 21 20 20 17
586 571 756 924 933 947 1028 857
71 73 76 81 79 80 82 83
a
As of 15 September 2015.
TABLE 7. Supplement published in CMI in 2015
Editor
Topic
F. Allerberger
ESCMID 2014 guidelines for the diagnosis and treatment of biofilm infections
Publication information Volume 21, Supplement 1, S1–S26
Date of online publication
Date of print publication
Sponsor
No. of paper s
Reference
14 January 2015
May 2015
ESCMID
25
[5]
TABLE 8. Evolution of processing time for treatment of manuscripts since 2009 Disposition
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015a
No. with immediate rejection No. with decision after peer review (accept, revise, reject) Average processing time (days)
17 63 40
11 44 27
9 31 20
7 44 29
4 74 39
4 67 35
5 27 16
a
As of 16 September 2015.
This is broken down into 5 days for immediate rejection and 27 days for a decision of acceptance, revision, or rejection after peer review, which, at present, appears reasonable.
Conclusion The ambition of CMI is to reflect the academic activities of the ESCMID, and more generally of the world of infectious diseases
© 2015 Clinical Microbiology and Infection published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, CMI, 22, 1–7
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Editorial
and clinical microbiology, as well as to attract the best publications and reviews within the field. It also aims to attract attention to emerging fields and to questions based on the focus provided by themed issues.
Transparency Declaration Both authors report no conflicts of interest relevant to this editorial.
References [1] Schünemann HJ, Al-Ansary LA, Forland F, Kersten S, Komulainen J, Kopp IB, et al. Guidelines International Network: principles for disclosure of interests and management of conflicts in guidelines. Ann Intern Med 2015;163:548–53. [2] Raoult D, Hope W, Kahlmeter G. Guidelines need controls. Clin Microbiol Infect 2015 Dec;21(12):1043–4. [3] Raoult D, Cornaglia G, Kahlmeter G. Welcoming countries emerging on the scene of medical sciences in Clinical Microbiology and Infection. Clin Microbiol Infect 2012;18:1055. [4] Debast SB, Bauer MP, Kuijper EJ, European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases. Update of the treatment guidance document for Clostridium difficile infection. Clin Microbiol Infect 2014;20(Suppl. 2):1–26. [5] Høiby N, Bjarnsholt T, Moser C, Bassi GL, Coenye T, Donelli G, et al., ESCMID Study Group for Biofilms and Consulting External Expert Werner Zimmerli. ESCMID guideline for the diagnosis and treatment of biofilm infections, 2014. Clin Microbiol Infect 2015;21(Suppl. 1):S1–25.
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[6] Magiorakos AP, Srinivasan A, Carey RB, Carmeli Y, Falagas ME, Giske CG, et al. Multidrug-resistant, extensively drug-resistant and pandrug-resistant bacteria: an international expert proposal for interim standard definitions for acquired resistance. Clin Microbiol Infect 2012;18:268–81. [7] Hrabák J, Chudácková E, Papagiannitsis CC. Detection of carbapenemases in Enterobacteriaceae: a challenge for diagnostic microbiological laboratories. Clin Microbiol Infect 2014;20:839–53. [8] Krause PJ, Fish D, Narasimhan S, Barbour AG. Borrelia miyamotoi infection in nature and in humans. Clin Microbiol Infect 2015;21: 631–9. [9] Nguyen-Van-Tam JS, Venkatesan S, Muthuri SG, Myles PR. Neuraminidase inhibitors: who, when, where? Clin Microbiol Infect 2015;21: 222–5. [10] Lagier JC, Armougom F, Million M, Hugon P, Pagnier I, Robert C, et al. Microbial culturomics: paradigm shift in the human gut microbiome study. Clin Microbiol Infect 2012;18:1185–93. [11] Spina A, Kerr KG, Cormican M, Barbut F, Eigentler A, Zerva L, et al. Spectrum of enteropathogens detected by the FilmArray GI Panel in a multicentre study of community-acquired gastroenteritis. Clin Microbiol Infect 2015;21:719–28. [12] Bertelli C, Greub G. Rapid bacterial genome sequencing: methods and applications in clinical microbiology. Clin Microbiol Infect 2013;19: 803–13. [13] Leroux S, Ullmann AJ. Management and diagnostic guidelines for fungal diseases in infectious diseases and clinical microbiology: critical appraisal. Clin Microbiol Infect 2013;19:1115–21. [14] Nordmann P, Poirel L. The difficult-to-control spread of carbapenemase producers among Enterobacteriaceae worldwide. Clin Microbiol Infect 2014;20:821–30. [15] Tacconelli E, Cataldo MA, Dancer SJ, De Angelis G, Falcone M, Frank U, et al. ESCMID guidelines for the management of the infection control measures to reduce transmission of multidrug-resistant Gramnegative bacteria in hospitalized patients. Clin Microbiol Infect 2014;20(Suppl. 1):1–55.
© 2015 Clinical Microbiology and Infection published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, CMI, 22, 1–7