On June 17th this year, Thomson Reuters-ISI Web of Knowledge published the impact factors for all the medical journals included in its listing and have attributed the Portuguese Journal of Pulmonology (PJP) an impact factor (IF) of 1,16. 1 This is the fifth consecutive year that has been awarded an impact factor to PJP and for the third consecutive year that it has increased (Fig. 1). 2,3 This is the result of 98 citations in 2014, to be exact, 55 citations from articles published in 2013 and 43 from articles published in 2012, based on a total of 84 articles published in PJP in those 2 years. Besides the significant improvement, it is also a historic moment, since it is the first time that a national medical journal has achieved an IF of 1. Moreover, for the second consecutive year, PJP is the national medical journal with the highest IF. In line with recent years, PJP had 273 citations related to all the editions, which means that the increase in the number of citations is sustainable. 2,3
At this moment, I want to express my deep gratitude to the past editor-in-chief, Dr. Renato Sotto-Mayor, during his mandate PJP was indexed in Medline and applied for IF, and to previous editor-in-chief Prof. João Carlos Winck who started this new chapter by joining with the Elsevier platform and altering the PJP structure to that of a proper international IF medical journal. This was only possible by close and involved cooperation with the Board of the Pulmonology Portuguese Society (SPP); in name of its former President Prof. Segorbe Luís and its current President Prof. Carlos Robalo Cordeiro I want to thank the Board for all the support given during these last few years. I also want of course to express my gratitude to the associate editors, Prof. Venceslau Hespanhol, Dra. Fátima Rodrigues, Prof. Melo Cristino and Dra. Jessica Jones for their hard work and cooperation and to all the editorial council members for their expert advice. Our deep appreciation is also due to all the reviewers for their time and effort, which has led to higher scientific quality of the published data, and to the authors who trusted that PJP was a suitable medium for promulgating their scientific work. Many thanks, of course, to all the Elsevier staff, whose hard work has not only ensured that the PJP has kept to schedules but also maintained the high quality of the editions.
Following the goals previously planned, step by step we are building a respiratory journal with more influence and visibility and therefore with higher impact for national respiratory research.4–6 In this present edition we have placed another significant brick in the wall having managed to put in place an international editorial board which previously was only an ideal.7 It is our great good fortune to have the participation of some of the leading researchers in respiratory disorders for which we are honoured and grateful. During the next month we hope to also have the PJP content available in ePUB format so it can be used on iPHONE and iPAD, another search tool worldwide.
However this new IF must be the opportunity for a big step forward. At the moment we feel that with the present configuration of the journal we have now gone as far as we can. If we want to find a way to increase visibility and impact, we must alter the presentation and image of the journal from a national one to something that is more open and appealing to international researchers. This, in my opinion, requires changing of the present designation of Revista Portuguesa de Pneumologia. After some discussion within the PJP editorial board and the SPP we will propose the new designation of Review of Respiratory Disorders to the SPP associates. Some will argue that we are forgetting our roots and our background, but on the contrary we feel that with a journal which has increased international visibility and influence that the research of Portuguese origin will have more readers, more citations and therefore more impact. If the change of title is approved, we think the statutes of the journal must state that Review of Respiratory Disorders is the official organ of the SPP and that the editor-chief will always be a dependent of the SPP directory. The change, however, is not without problems. In fact the IF of the first year after the new designation will be allocated to the previous title of PJP, in the second year it will be divided between the two designations and only in the third year will the IF be properly related to the new title of Review of Respiratory Disorders. In our opinion, however, it is a difficult but worthwhile route. The present IF of 1.16 is obviously a great moment of joy for all of us, but at the same time this new position implies inevitably an increase of labor and responsibility to make this evolution sustainable and to search for opportunities to move forward.
