- Email: [email protected]
Editor's farewell
Nutrition, Metabolism & Cardiovascular Diseases (2014) 24, 1051
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
Nutrition, Metabolism & Cardiovascular Diseases journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/nmcd
EDITORIAL
Editor’s farewell Three years ago the inception of my three-year term as Editor-in-chief of NMCD coincided with the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the journal founded by Mario Mancini with a small group of prestigious scientists. The founders envisaged for the new publication the mission to bridge the communication gap between researchers and clinicians working on the nutritional and metabolic aspects of cardiovascular disease prevention. The adherence to the mission of this journal, as traced by its founders, has in fact inspired my conduction of the journal along these three years. In my first editorial I stated that I felt privileged to be appointed Editor-in-Chief of NMCD. Today, I must tell you that it was an extraordinary experience and a rewarding job, no matter the commitment and extra-time request that this task obviously involves. I am not immune from the temptation to use this farewell editorial to draw a balance of the work done, but I think the balance could be more objectively presented, together with the perspectives for future developments, by the incoming Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Andrea Giaccari. Andrea has been co-editor of the journal for the last six years and has accumulated all the experience and everyday practice with the editorial machine needed to effectively take over the leadership of the journal. I only wish to share with our readers, authors and editorial board members the satisfaction for the successful efforts to reduce the time from the acceptance to the printing of an article to less than four months and the time from submission to first decision to an average of four weeks, while increasing the 5-yr journal impact factor to 4.1. As we worked hard to meet these primary targets trying to perform as efficiently as we could, tremendous changes were occurring in the editorial word: a large number of new publications were launched in the fields of nutrition, endocrinology and metabolism, and cardiovascular diseases, most of them based on an exclusive open-access policy and many of them on an online-only publication system. But this was only part of the revolution, the other part being the “fast and furious” development of the electronic evaluation metrics and the progressive interaction of the editorial agencies with the new communication media, allowing previously unforeseen options for the access to the journal contents and for an interactive relationship of the
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.numecd.2014.08.005 0939-4753/ª 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
readers with their journals. So, while keeping an eye to the indicators of performance on strictly editorial grounds, NMCD and its Publisher have been engaged in this race toward modernization and I think that we did it effectively, introducing substantial changes in the journal format aiming at saving space while improving readability, giving the possibility of a cheaper electronic-only access to the journal subscribers, introducing the open access option upon request for its authors, participating in the promotion of Elsevier’s new Altmetrics campaign, to mention just a few recent initiatives. Sincere thanks go to Elsevier’s editorial team for the continuous and clever commitment in support of the ordinary activity of the editorial office as well as of the editors’ proposals. It was a privilege to work together with the NMCD co-editors and associate editors and editorial assistants, with whom I have shared the pleasure of our regular editorial meetings which along the years since the journal’s inception have been one of the secrets of its success. The highly professional and tireless work of Rosanna Scala, senior editorial assistant, and Grazia Fanara is not a secret and is widely recognized. My gratitude also goes to the associate editors who reside abroad and cannot participate to the local meetings but equally provide their formidable contribution mainly through the competent and wise handling of a significant portion of the material submitted to the journal. And of course a warm acknowledgment goes to the most valuable activity of the editorial board members and of all the NMCD reviewers who generously devote their expertise and precious time to the journal. I wish to thank the Societies, their Presidents and all the subscribers for their friendly support to the editorial activity and, last but not least, all our readers and authors who allow the journal to keep the pace by sending numerous (30% increase this year) and valuable contributions. Long live NMCD. P. Strazzullo, Editor-in-Chief Naples, Italy E-mail address: [email protected]
22 August 2014
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
Nutrition, Metabolism & Cardiovascular Diseases journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/nmcd
EDITORIAL
Editor’s farewell Three years ago the inception of my three-year term as Editor-in-chief of NMCD coincided with the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the journal founded by Mario Mancini with a small group of prestigious scientists. The founders envisaged for the new publication the mission to bridge the communication gap between researchers and clinicians working on the nutritional and metabolic aspects of cardiovascular disease prevention. The adherence to the mission of this journal, as traced by its founders, has in fact inspired my conduction of the journal along these three years. In my first editorial I stated that I felt privileged to be appointed Editor-in-Chief of NMCD. Today, I must tell you that it was an extraordinary experience and a rewarding job, no matter the commitment and extra-time request that this task obviously involves. I am not immune from the temptation to use this farewell editorial to draw a balance of the work done, but I think the balance could be more objectively presented, together with the perspectives for future developments, by the incoming Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Andrea Giaccari. Andrea has been co-editor of the journal for the last six years and has accumulated all the experience and everyday practice with the editorial machine needed to effectively take over the leadership of the journal. I only wish to share with our readers, authors and editorial board members the satisfaction for the successful efforts to reduce the time from the acceptance to the printing of an article to less than four months and the time from submission to first decision to an average of four weeks, while increasing the 5-yr journal impact factor to 4.1. As we worked hard to meet these primary targets trying to perform as efficiently as we could, tremendous changes were occurring in the editorial word: a large number of new publications were launched in the fields of nutrition, endocrinology and metabolism, and cardiovascular diseases, most of them based on an exclusive open-access policy and many of them on an online-only publication system. But this was only part of the revolution, the other part being the “fast and furious” development of the electronic evaluation metrics and the progressive interaction of the editorial agencies with the new communication media, allowing previously unforeseen options for the access to the journal contents and for an interactive relationship of the
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.numecd.2014.08.005 0939-4753/ª 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
readers with their journals. So, while keeping an eye to the indicators of performance on strictly editorial grounds, NMCD and its Publisher have been engaged in this race toward modernization and I think that we did it effectively, introducing substantial changes in the journal format aiming at saving space while improving readability, giving the possibility of a cheaper electronic-only access to the journal subscribers, introducing the open access option upon request for its authors, participating in the promotion of Elsevier’s new Altmetrics campaign, to mention just a few recent initiatives. Sincere thanks go to Elsevier’s editorial team for the continuous and clever commitment in support of the ordinary activity of the editorial office as well as of the editors’ proposals. It was a privilege to work together with the NMCD co-editors and associate editors and editorial assistants, with whom I have shared the pleasure of our regular editorial meetings which along the years since the journal’s inception have been one of the secrets of its success. The highly professional and tireless work of Rosanna Scala, senior editorial assistant, and Grazia Fanara is not a secret and is widely recognized. My gratitude also goes to the associate editors who reside abroad and cannot participate to the local meetings but equally provide their formidable contribution mainly through the competent and wise handling of a significant portion of the material submitted to the journal. And of course a warm acknowledgment goes to the most valuable activity of the editorial board members and of all the NMCD reviewers who generously devote their expertise and precious time to the journal. I wish to thank the Societies, their Presidents and all the subscribers for their friendly support to the editorial activity and, last but not least, all our readers and authors who allow the journal to keep the pace by sending numerous (30% increase this year) and valuable contributions. Long live NMCD. P. Strazzullo, Editor-in-Chief Naples, Italy E-mail address: [email protected]
22 August 2014