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Journal Performance Report for 2010
JOURNAL PERFORMANCE REPORT
Journal Performance Report for 2010 Michael L. Callaham, MD Editor in Chief 0196-0644/$-see front matter Copyright © 2011 by the American College of Emergency Physicians. doi:10.1016/j.annemergmed.2011.07.013
Once a year, we report our performance as a journal, along with important changes and achievements. We report here data for calendar year 2010. We strive to regularly add new Web features and benefits for our readers; this year, the list includes a Facebook page (http:// www.facebook.com/pages/Annals-of-Emergency-Medicine/ 108117005909415) and a monthly podcast to provide a conversational look at each month’s Annals issue, including the latest research, news articles, and interviews with authors (http://www.annemergmed.com/content/podcast). We continue to expand our special topic article collections on the Web, including the constantly growing Patient Safety collection (under “Collections” at http://www.annemergmed.com) and a wealth of evidence-based emergency medicine articles and tools. Our Images collection is not only very large but also is now organized by medical topic area, making it easier to search and browse. Another useful feature is our list of the top 25 most popular Annals downloads from ScienceDirect so you can keep up with what others are reading. The Web site interface has been extensively modified and improved, and ACEP Research Forum abstracts are now available for mobile devices (an iPad application is in the works as well). Annals continues to be the largest-circulation peer-reviewed journal in emergency medicine (more than 28,000 subscribers, several times that of its nearest competitor). It is also one of the most accessible to nonsubscribing readers because 6,400 institutions (a 33% increase since the previous year) include Annals in their online licenses for ScienceDirect (the world’s largest electronic collection of full-text and bibliographic information for science, technology, and medicine). ScienceDirect was used to access Annals full-text articles approximately 658,000 times last year, 19% more than the previous year. Annals is also available on the Web (with full text of all articles dating back to its inception). The Web site had 392,286 visitors this year, 174,721 of them repeated visitors (an 83% increase from the previous year). Annals is the emergency medicine journal most frequently cited by authors and has had the highest impact factor over the years of all 19 journals in the emergency medicine category of the Science Citation Index. (The impact factor [the average number of citations per published article] is the commonest measure of journal influence.) The 2010 impact factor for Annals was 4.14, placing it in the top 12% of all 8,005 science and medical journals tracked by the Science Citation Index. Not Volume , . : September
only is Annals the most frequently cited journal but also it has been cited more promptly and longer than any other emergency medicine journal (9.5 years, 83% longer than its nearest competitor). In the past 5 years, more than 1,200 journals in the ISI science journal database cited an article in Annals, and in a typical year, Annals articles are cited by more than 400 scientific journals, most of them from a broad range of specialties outside of emergency medicine. Annals articles generate considerable interest in the lay media. From October 2009 through September 2010, there were 5,089 hits in various media outlets, including print, radio, and blogs. Major outlets included Wall Street Journal, ABC News, Boston Globe, Business Week, Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, USA Today, New York Times, Modern Healthcare, Washington Post, the AM News, Emergency Medicine News, Journal of Emergency Medical Services, and Reuters Health, as well as many trade publications. Annals is an international journal; 54% of the full-text articles accessed through ScienceDirect were downloaded by readers in 93 countries outside the United States. Our contributors are also international in scope; in 2010, submissions came to us from 46 countries, with 41% of submissions originating outside the United States and 25% originating outside North America and Western Europe. The largest volume other than from the United States was submitted from Taiwan, Canada, Turkey, France, the United Kingdom, China, Australia, Korea, the Netherlands, Italy, and Japan, in descending order. But the list also includes Brazil, Thailand, Tunisia, India, Iran, Nigeria, and Serbia. We continue our participation of many years’ duration in the Health Internetwork Access to Research Initiative (http://www.healthinternetwork.org/src/eligibility.php), which makes Annals available free or at greatly reduced cost to readers in low-income countries. A total of 1,618 articles were submitted to Annals in 2010 (an 11% increase over that of the previous year and a 25% increase in the past 5 years), and thanks to our compulsive editors, we had another year of timely performance. To speed decisions for authors, our editors reject some articles without sending them out for additional review (such as articles with topics not targeted to our readership). Such decisions were reached in a mean of 12 days from the submission of the article. For all original scientific studies submitted to the journal, including those sent out for full peer review, the mean time to Annals of Emergency Medicine 223
Journal Performance Report initial decision was 19 days (correspondence, departments and columns, book reviews, Images in Emergency Medicine, and similar material are not included in this calculation; results for these excluded categories are similar or better). The mean time to initial decision for all articles sent out for full external review (mostly original research) was 26 days. This performance is among the very best of any medical scientific journal. It ensures a shorter duration of suspense for authors and more rapid dissemination of new science to our readers. The quality (as well as the timeliness) of our reviews continues to be outstanding.1 We continue to thank our peer reviewers in various ways, listing the best of the very best on our masthead every month. As you might expect from the statistics above, authors submitting their articles to Annals feel very positive about the experience. All submitting authors receive a survey to complete after they receive their decision (including those whose articles are not accepted for publication). One hundred authors completed a survey last year. In comparing the promptness and responsiveness of other scientific journals, they rated ours better or much better 90% of the time. Sixty-one percent thought our review process improved their article a moderate or large amount. Sixty-four percent found the communications and reviews more courteous and knowledgeable than those of other journals. Ninety percent would recommend Annals to other researchers very strongly. For every question, 5 (the best score) was the most common choice, usually by a large margin. Annals has always had a comprehensive policy on publication ethics and conflict of interest and continues to update it as standards change (http://journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/ ymem/article/PIIS0196064402849654/fulltext). The potential conflicts of interest of our editorial board are all listed at http:// www.annemergmed.com, reviewers must report any conflict of interest with each review, and authors are asked about a specific list of potential conflicts, which was expanded this year; each article reports their response to this query. Reviewers and editors (including the editor in chief) who have any potential conflicts of interest are required to report them before proceeding to manage any article, and if senior editors deem there is a potential conflict of interest, they are recused from any and all involvement. For the most recent year, instances of potential conflict of interest included 17 editorrelated issues, 35 reviewer-related, and 3 author-related. Of the first 2 categories, all were self-referred (in other words, the party with the potential conflict of interest reported it) and were handled by our usual recusal process. Author-related conflicts of
224 Annals of Emergency Medicine
interest were resolved by further queries to the authors. No issues were identified of actual biased behavior. In addition to obtaining feedback from authors, reviewers, and readers, we have a number of permanent quality improvement measures in place. All editors and reviewers are monitored for timeliness of decisionmaking; outliers are given feedback annually. Senior editors routinely (in addition to decision editors) provide additional review of randomly selected articles that meet certain conditions, such as those rejected without external review, articles requiring more than 1 revision, and (less frequently) any rejected original research and also international submissions. The goal is to be sure that the decisions of the editors managing the article are reasonable and equitable and the communications with the author are constructive and clear. All figures are reviewed by a senior editor with special expertise in graphics for clarity and accuracy. We routinely proctor all new editors for at least their first 12 articles, with an experienced decision editor who can help them learn Annals’ priorities and culture. Finally, each year at our annual editors’ retreat we discuss as a group several articles carefully selected for the difficult editorial issues they raise, an important part of our collective education and process improvement. Every year there are transitions on the editorial board. Those who stepped down (usually because of competing obligations) included Roger Lewis, Carlos Camargo, and Steve Dronen. A number of editors took on larger responsibilities (as the article volume steadily increases) and were promoted. Melissa McCarthy was promoted to the editorial board. Brendan Carr, Timothy Platts-Mills, and John Sarko joined as consulting editors. Jason Heiner joined as a department editor. Annals has also had a long practice of selecting residents from applicants throughout the United States and Canada for a 1year editorial fellowship; the success of that program (which has resulted in a number of its graduates joining our editorial board) is detailed elsewhere.2 In summary, Annals had another successful year and continued to represent our specialty by improving its quality among scientific journals. We thank our talented and hardworking editors, staff, reviewers, and authors who make it all possible. REFERENCES 1. Green SM, Callaham ML. Implementation of a journal peer reviewer stratification system based on quality and reliability. Ann Emerg Med. 2010;57:149-152. 2. Reynolds TA, Callaham ML. A survey of past participants in the Annals of Emergency Medicine Editorial Board fellowship program. Ann Emerg Med. 2010:57;161-164.
Volume , . : September
Journal Performance Report for 2010 Michael L. Callaham, MD Editor in Chief 0196-0644/$-see front matter Copyright © 2011 by the American College of Emergency Physicians. doi:10.1016/j.annemergmed.2011.07.013
Once a year, we report our performance as a journal, along with important changes and achievements. We report here data for calendar year 2010. We strive to regularly add new Web features and benefits for our readers; this year, the list includes a Facebook page (http:// www.facebook.com/pages/Annals-of-Emergency-Medicine/ 108117005909415) and a monthly podcast to provide a conversational look at each month’s Annals issue, including the latest research, news articles, and interviews with authors (http://www.annemergmed.com/content/podcast). We continue to expand our special topic article collections on the Web, including the constantly growing Patient Safety collection (under “Collections” at http://www.annemergmed.com) and a wealth of evidence-based emergency medicine articles and tools. Our Images collection is not only very large but also is now organized by medical topic area, making it easier to search and browse. Another useful feature is our list of the top 25 most popular Annals downloads from ScienceDirect so you can keep up with what others are reading. The Web site interface has been extensively modified and improved, and ACEP Research Forum abstracts are now available for mobile devices (an iPad application is in the works as well). Annals continues to be the largest-circulation peer-reviewed journal in emergency medicine (more than 28,000 subscribers, several times that of its nearest competitor). It is also one of the most accessible to nonsubscribing readers because 6,400 institutions (a 33% increase since the previous year) include Annals in their online licenses for ScienceDirect (the world’s largest electronic collection of full-text and bibliographic information for science, technology, and medicine). ScienceDirect was used to access Annals full-text articles approximately 658,000 times last year, 19% more than the previous year. Annals is also available on the Web (with full text of all articles dating back to its inception). The Web site had 392,286 visitors this year, 174,721 of them repeated visitors (an 83% increase from the previous year). Annals is the emergency medicine journal most frequently cited by authors and has had the highest impact factor over the years of all 19 journals in the emergency medicine category of the Science Citation Index. (The impact factor [the average number of citations per published article] is the commonest measure of journal influence.) The 2010 impact factor for Annals was 4.14, placing it in the top 12% of all 8,005 science and medical journals tracked by the Science Citation Index. Not Volume , . : September
only is Annals the most frequently cited journal but also it has been cited more promptly and longer than any other emergency medicine journal (9.5 years, 83% longer than its nearest competitor). In the past 5 years, more than 1,200 journals in the ISI science journal database cited an article in Annals, and in a typical year, Annals articles are cited by more than 400 scientific journals, most of them from a broad range of specialties outside of emergency medicine. Annals articles generate considerable interest in the lay media. From October 2009 through September 2010, there were 5,089 hits in various media outlets, including print, radio, and blogs. Major outlets included Wall Street Journal, ABC News, Boston Globe, Business Week, Los Angeles Times, MSNBC, USA Today, New York Times, Modern Healthcare, Washington Post, the AM News, Emergency Medicine News, Journal of Emergency Medical Services, and Reuters Health, as well as many trade publications. Annals is an international journal; 54% of the full-text articles accessed through ScienceDirect were downloaded by readers in 93 countries outside the United States. Our contributors are also international in scope; in 2010, submissions came to us from 46 countries, with 41% of submissions originating outside the United States and 25% originating outside North America and Western Europe. The largest volume other than from the United States was submitted from Taiwan, Canada, Turkey, France, the United Kingdom, China, Australia, Korea, the Netherlands, Italy, and Japan, in descending order. But the list also includes Brazil, Thailand, Tunisia, India, Iran, Nigeria, and Serbia. We continue our participation of many years’ duration in the Health Internetwork Access to Research Initiative (http://www.healthinternetwork.org/src/eligibility.php), which makes Annals available free or at greatly reduced cost to readers in low-income countries. A total of 1,618 articles were submitted to Annals in 2010 (an 11% increase over that of the previous year and a 25% increase in the past 5 years), and thanks to our compulsive editors, we had another year of timely performance. To speed decisions for authors, our editors reject some articles without sending them out for additional review (such as articles with topics not targeted to our readership). Such decisions were reached in a mean of 12 days from the submission of the article. For all original scientific studies submitted to the journal, including those sent out for full peer review, the mean time to Annals of Emergency Medicine 223
Journal Performance Report initial decision was 19 days (correspondence, departments and columns, book reviews, Images in Emergency Medicine, and similar material are not included in this calculation; results for these excluded categories are similar or better). The mean time to initial decision for all articles sent out for full external review (mostly original research) was 26 days. This performance is among the very best of any medical scientific journal. It ensures a shorter duration of suspense for authors and more rapid dissemination of new science to our readers. The quality (as well as the timeliness) of our reviews continues to be outstanding.1 We continue to thank our peer reviewers in various ways, listing the best of the very best on our masthead every month. As you might expect from the statistics above, authors submitting their articles to Annals feel very positive about the experience. All submitting authors receive a survey to complete after they receive their decision (including those whose articles are not accepted for publication). One hundred authors completed a survey last year. In comparing the promptness and responsiveness of other scientific journals, they rated ours better or much better 90% of the time. Sixty-one percent thought our review process improved their article a moderate or large amount. Sixty-four percent found the communications and reviews more courteous and knowledgeable than those of other journals. Ninety percent would recommend Annals to other researchers very strongly. For every question, 5 (the best score) was the most common choice, usually by a large margin. Annals has always had a comprehensive policy on publication ethics and conflict of interest and continues to update it as standards change (http://journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/ ymem/article/PIIS0196064402849654/fulltext). The potential conflicts of interest of our editorial board are all listed at http:// www.annemergmed.com, reviewers must report any conflict of interest with each review, and authors are asked about a specific list of potential conflicts, which was expanded this year; each article reports their response to this query. Reviewers and editors (including the editor in chief) who have any potential conflicts of interest are required to report them before proceeding to manage any article, and if senior editors deem there is a potential conflict of interest, they are recused from any and all involvement. For the most recent year, instances of potential conflict of interest included 17 editorrelated issues, 35 reviewer-related, and 3 author-related. Of the first 2 categories, all were self-referred (in other words, the party with the potential conflict of interest reported it) and were handled by our usual recusal process. Author-related conflicts of
224 Annals of Emergency Medicine
interest were resolved by further queries to the authors. No issues were identified of actual biased behavior. In addition to obtaining feedback from authors, reviewers, and readers, we have a number of permanent quality improvement measures in place. All editors and reviewers are monitored for timeliness of decisionmaking; outliers are given feedback annually. Senior editors routinely (in addition to decision editors) provide additional review of randomly selected articles that meet certain conditions, such as those rejected without external review, articles requiring more than 1 revision, and (less frequently) any rejected original research and also international submissions. The goal is to be sure that the decisions of the editors managing the article are reasonable and equitable and the communications with the author are constructive and clear. All figures are reviewed by a senior editor with special expertise in graphics for clarity and accuracy. We routinely proctor all new editors for at least their first 12 articles, with an experienced decision editor who can help them learn Annals’ priorities and culture. Finally, each year at our annual editors’ retreat we discuss as a group several articles carefully selected for the difficult editorial issues they raise, an important part of our collective education and process improvement. Every year there are transitions on the editorial board. Those who stepped down (usually because of competing obligations) included Roger Lewis, Carlos Camargo, and Steve Dronen. A number of editors took on larger responsibilities (as the article volume steadily increases) and were promoted. Melissa McCarthy was promoted to the editorial board. Brendan Carr, Timothy Platts-Mills, and John Sarko joined as consulting editors. Jason Heiner joined as a department editor. Annals has also had a long practice of selecting residents from applicants throughout the United States and Canada for a 1year editorial fellowship; the success of that program (which has resulted in a number of its graduates joining our editorial board) is detailed elsewhere.2 In summary, Annals had another successful year and continued to represent our specialty by improving its quality among scientific journals. We thank our talented and hardworking editors, staff, reviewers, and authors who make it all possible. REFERENCES 1. Green SM, Callaham ML. Implementation of a journal peer reviewer stratification system based on quality and reliability. Ann Emerg Med. 2010;57:149-152. 2. Reynolds TA, Callaham ML. A survey of past participants in the Annals of Emergency Medicine Editorial Board fellowship program. Ann Emerg Med. 2010:57;161-164.
Volume , . : September