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EDITORIAL
State of the Journal Levon N. Nazarian, MD Editor-in-Chief
O
ne of my responsibilities as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine (JUM) is to keep readership informed about the state of the journal. It has now been more than 3 years since I took the reins from the incomparable Beryl R. Benacerraf, MD, so I think it is time to summarize our accomplishments and challenges. The journal has experienced healthy growth in the past 3 years. New manuscript submissions have increased steadily from 690 in 2011 to 906 in 2013, an increase of 31%. To keep the quality of the journal high and to keep its size manageable, the acceptance rate has dropped to only 28%. On average, more than 400 new author accounts have been created each year. New author and reviewer accounts are created daily. It is refreshing to see the constant variety of authors, institutions, and countries represented in the journal. Approximately one-third of our submissions are from North America, and two-thirds are from abroad. This ratio has stayed constant over the past decade. Authors from more than 50 countries submitted papers to the JUM in 2013, with the United States at 245 papers and China at 214 papers leading the way. Rounding out the top 5 were South Korea at 74, Turkey at 64, and Italy at 37. The journal continues to mirror the multispecialty nature of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine (AIUM), with submissions on a huge variety of topics in 16 categories. Obstetric ultrasound accounts for 21.6% of submissions, followed by general ultrasound at 13.2%, musculoskeletal ultrasound at 10.7%, vascular ultrasound at 8.4%, and basic science at 6.3%. Most papers are in the Original Research category, which accounts for 66% of submissions. The number and quality of original research studies are encouraging, since it is by advancing the science of ultrasound that the field will continue to grow. Of course, to best serve our readership, the JUM will continue to publish other popular categories such as Review Articles and Case Series. Full-issue journal subscriptions to the journal have grown 25% over the past 3 years to almost 10,000. This growth has been fueled by several factors, including the record high membership numbers of the AIUM and a 15% increase in online institutional subscriptions. One of the greatest challenges of any peer-reviewed journal is finding reviewers who are willing to donate their time, effort, and expertise. During the past 3 years, we have added 744 new reviewers to our roster. In addition to earning our sincere gratitude for a job well done, reviewers can claim up to 3 hours of CME credit per review. In 2013 alone, we awarded CME credits to 518 reviewers. Timeliness of reviews is an important component of author satisfaction, and the diligence of our reviewers has enabled us to keep the average time from manuscript submission to first decision under 25 days. During the past 3 years, we have instituted many initiatives to provide better service to our readers, authors, reviewers, and the ultrasound community as a whole. Highlights of these initiatives are as follows: • Open Access—Content published in the JUM is now freely available on our website after 1 year. After we instituted this policy, the traffic to our website increased substantially. For example, in the 2013 calendar year, the JUM website received 4.1 million hits compared to 3.7 million hits in 2012 and 1.7 million in 2011. It is difficult to tell how much of the increased traffic is due to the open-access articles versus greater Internet readership by our subscribers, but I am sure that both factors contribute. Papers from
“During the past 3 years, we have instituted many initiatives to provide better service to our readers, authors, reviewers, and the ultrasound community as a whole.”
doi:10.7863/ultra.33.9.1531
©2014 by the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine | J Ultrasound Med 2014; 33:1531–1532 | 0278-4297 | www.aium.org
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Nazarian—State of the Journal
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the JUM are also featured on the SonoWorld and Global Outreach Radiology (GO RAD) websites. Reviewer Education—Understanding that high-quality reviews sustain our journal, we created a set of comprehensive instructions on how to review a manuscript for the JUM. I also hosted a webinar on how to be an effective JUM reviewer, and I plan to give yearly reviewing seminars at the AIUM Annual Convention. The AIUM staff created a reviewer newsletter, JUM News, to keep our reviewers informed on relevant topics. Author Education—Deputy Editor Mark Lockhart, MD, MPH, posted 2 informative webinars, entitled Conducting Ultrasound Research and Getting It Published and The Research is Done. Now, How Do I Write and Submit the Manuscript? Dr Lockhart has also given popular seminars on these topics at the AIUM Annual Convention. Conflict of Interest Disclosures—To standardize the reporting of conflicts of interest by authors, we have instituted disclosure forms based on the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Plagiarism Detection—To protect our readers from plagiarized material while still being fair to our authors, we implemented the work flow guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics. More recently, we have instituted software called CrossCheck powered by iThenticate that checks submitted articles against millions of published research papers and billions of items of Web content to look for redundant passages. The system reports a “similarity score” which, if above a threshold level, gets flagged and generates a summary report that lets the editor decide whether the repeated passages constitute plagiarism. Sound Judgment Series—Mirroring the Ultrasound First initiative, the AIUM created a committee that was charged with coming up with topics for which ultrasound imaging should be considered the first, and in some cases only, technique for diagnosis and/or treatment guidance. These Sound Judgment articles have been extremely popular, and we have already published 29 such articles. We are always open to ideas from our membership about subjects that would be appropriate additions to this series. Society of Ultrasound in Medical Education (SUSME) Collaboration—The AIUM entered into an agreement with SUSME to have the JUM be the primary journal for publication of ultrasound education articles. We anticipate that the numbers of such articles will grow over the coming years as ultrasound curricula are becoming more integrated into medical education.
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Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Numbers—Each JUM article is now assigned a DOI number. This number is unique to each article and allows it to be tracked by different archival and research programs on the internet. PubMed Hotlinks—Each JUM article can now be accessed from its PubMed listing by clicking on the journal icon. Social Media—The JUM now has a Twitter account, and regular tweets are posted by the AIUM staff. Follow us @jultrasoundmed!
Have the changes that we made improved the journal? Each person will have his or her subjective answer to this question. A recently completed survey of more than 600 JUM readers showed that most of them are satisfied with the quality, relevance, and timeliness of material published in the journal. Objectifying the quality of journals requires metrics, and one of the most frequently cited metrics is the journal impact factor. The impact factor is imperfect at best but is still a parameter that is used by promotion committees, especially outside the United States. The impact factor is calculated by counting the number of times articles from the journal were cited in a given period (generally 2 years) and “A recently completed dividing this number by the total survey of more than 600 number of papers published in the journal over that period. The JUM readers showed most recent (2013) impact factor that most of them are is 1.532, which increased from satisfied with the quality, 1.402 in 2012 and 1.245 in 2011. relevance, and timeliness One can argue about the merits of this number, but it is definitely of material published in better for the journal’s reputation the journal.” for it to be higher rather than lower. In summary, the state of the journal is strong! I am indebted to the hard work of everybody listed on the masthead, including our deputy editors, editors emeriti, and Editorial Board. I would like to thank the enormously talented and dedicated AIUM staff for making this an extremely enjoyable 3 years. Last but not least, I would like to thank all of our reviewers and readers. I look forward to continuing the journey together to make the JUM the best it can be.
J Ultrasound Med 2014; 33:1531–1532
EDITORIAL
State of the Journal Levon N. Nazarian, MD Editor-in-Chief
O
ne of my responsibilities as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Ultrasound in Medicine (JUM) is to keep readership informed about the state of the journal. It has now been more than 3 years since I took the reins from the incomparable Beryl R. Benacerraf, MD, so I think it is time to summarize our accomplishments and challenges. The journal has experienced healthy growth in the past 3 years. New manuscript submissions have increased steadily from 690 in 2011 to 906 in 2013, an increase of 31%. To keep the quality of the journal high and to keep its size manageable, the acceptance rate has dropped to only 28%. On average, more than 400 new author accounts have been created each year. New author and reviewer accounts are created daily. It is refreshing to see the constant variety of authors, institutions, and countries represented in the journal. Approximately one-third of our submissions are from North America, and two-thirds are from abroad. This ratio has stayed constant over the past decade. Authors from more than 50 countries submitted papers to the JUM in 2013, with the United States at 245 papers and China at 214 papers leading the way. Rounding out the top 5 were South Korea at 74, Turkey at 64, and Italy at 37. The journal continues to mirror the multispecialty nature of the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine (AIUM), with submissions on a huge variety of topics in 16 categories. Obstetric ultrasound accounts for 21.6% of submissions, followed by general ultrasound at 13.2%, musculoskeletal ultrasound at 10.7%, vascular ultrasound at 8.4%, and basic science at 6.3%. Most papers are in the Original Research category, which accounts for 66% of submissions. The number and quality of original research studies are encouraging, since it is by advancing the science of ultrasound that the field will continue to grow. Of course, to best serve our readership, the JUM will continue to publish other popular categories such as Review Articles and Case Series. Full-issue journal subscriptions to the journal have grown 25% over the past 3 years to almost 10,000. This growth has been fueled by several factors, including the record high membership numbers of the AIUM and a 15% increase in online institutional subscriptions. One of the greatest challenges of any peer-reviewed journal is finding reviewers who are willing to donate their time, effort, and expertise. During the past 3 years, we have added 744 new reviewers to our roster. In addition to earning our sincere gratitude for a job well done, reviewers can claim up to 3 hours of CME credit per review. In 2013 alone, we awarded CME credits to 518 reviewers. Timeliness of reviews is an important component of author satisfaction, and the diligence of our reviewers has enabled us to keep the average time from manuscript submission to first decision under 25 days. During the past 3 years, we have instituted many initiatives to provide better service to our readers, authors, reviewers, and the ultrasound community as a whole. Highlights of these initiatives are as follows: • Open Access—Content published in the JUM is now freely available on our website after 1 year. After we instituted this policy, the traffic to our website increased substantially. For example, in the 2013 calendar year, the JUM website received 4.1 million hits compared to 3.7 million hits in 2012 and 1.7 million in 2011. It is difficult to tell how much of the increased traffic is due to the open-access articles versus greater Internet readership by our subscribers, but I am sure that both factors contribute. Papers from
“During the past 3 years, we have instituted many initiatives to provide better service to our readers, authors, reviewers, and the ultrasound community as a whole.”
doi:10.7863/ultra.33.9.1531
©2014 by the American Institute of Ultrasound in Medicine | J Ultrasound Med 2014; 33:1531–1532 | 0278-4297 | www.aium.org
3309jum1531-1668online_Layout 1 8/21/14 8:33 AM Page 1532
Nazarian—State of the Journal
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•
•
•
1532
the JUM are also featured on the SonoWorld and Global Outreach Radiology (GO RAD) websites. Reviewer Education—Understanding that high-quality reviews sustain our journal, we created a set of comprehensive instructions on how to review a manuscript for the JUM. I also hosted a webinar on how to be an effective JUM reviewer, and I plan to give yearly reviewing seminars at the AIUM Annual Convention. The AIUM staff created a reviewer newsletter, JUM News, to keep our reviewers informed on relevant topics. Author Education—Deputy Editor Mark Lockhart, MD, MPH, posted 2 informative webinars, entitled Conducting Ultrasound Research and Getting It Published and The Research is Done. Now, How Do I Write and Submit the Manuscript? Dr Lockhart has also given popular seminars on these topics at the AIUM Annual Convention. Conflict of Interest Disclosures—To standardize the reporting of conflicts of interest by authors, we have instituted disclosure forms based on the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Plagiarism Detection—To protect our readers from plagiarized material while still being fair to our authors, we implemented the work flow guidelines of the Committee on Publication Ethics. More recently, we have instituted software called CrossCheck powered by iThenticate that checks submitted articles against millions of published research papers and billions of items of Web content to look for redundant passages. The system reports a “similarity score” which, if above a threshold level, gets flagged and generates a summary report that lets the editor decide whether the repeated passages constitute plagiarism. Sound Judgment Series—Mirroring the Ultrasound First initiative, the AIUM created a committee that was charged with coming up with topics for which ultrasound imaging should be considered the first, and in some cases only, technique for diagnosis and/or treatment guidance. These Sound Judgment articles have been extremely popular, and we have already published 29 such articles. We are always open to ideas from our membership about subjects that would be appropriate additions to this series. Society of Ultrasound in Medical Education (SUSME) Collaboration—The AIUM entered into an agreement with SUSME to have the JUM be the primary journal for publication of ultrasound education articles. We anticipate that the numbers of such articles will grow over the coming years as ultrasound curricula are becoming more integrated into medical education.
•
• •
Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Numbers—Each JUM article is now assigned a DOI number. This number is unique to each article and allows it to be tracked by different archival and research programs on the internet. PubMed Hotlinks—Each JUM article can now be accessed from its PubMed listing by clicking on the journal icon. Social Media—The JUM now has a Twitter account, and regular tweets are posted by the AIUM staff. Follow us @jultrasoundmed!
Have the changes that we made improved the journal? Each person will have his or her subjective answer to this question. A recently completed survey of more than 600 JUM readers showed that most of them are satisfied with the quality, relevance, and timeliness of material published in the journal. Objectifying the quality of journals requires metrics, and one of the most frequently cited metrics is the journal impact factor. The impact factor is imperfect at best but is still a parameter that is used by promotion committees, especially outside the United States. The impact factor is calculated by counting the number of times articles from the journal were cited in a given period (generally 2 years) and “A recently completed dividing this number by the total survey of more than 600 number of papers published in the journal over that period. The JUM readers showed most recent (2013) impact factor that most of them are is 1.532, which increased from satisfied with the quality, 1.402 in 2012 and 1.245 in 2011. relevance, and timeliness One can argue about the merits of this number, but it is definitely of material published in better for the journal’s reputation the journal.” for it to be higher rather than lower. In summary, the state of the journal is strong! I am indebted to the hard work of everybody listed on the masthead, including our deputy editors, editors emeriti, and Editorial Board. I would like to thank the enormously talented and dedicated AIUM staff for making this an extremely enjoyable 3 years. Last but not least, I would like to thank all of our reviewers and readers. I look forward to continuing the journey together to make the JUM the best it can be.
J Ultrasound Med 2014; 33:1531–1532
