The attribution of an official impact factor (IF) is a sign that a journal has reached maturity. The Portuguese Journal of Pulmonology will rank in the Top 95% of international respiratory journals which is far from being a leading position. However, the calculated IF of other journals in our «league» like the Archivos de Bronconeumologia was 0.119 in 2000,1 and the first official IF in 2003 was 0.885.2 In 1982 the first IF of JAMA was in the range of 3-4 and in 1999 increased to the range of 10-11.3 So we believe that, looking at other bibliometric indicators like Scimago Cites per doc (Fig. 1) the PJP has also potential for growth…Moreover we feel that more than just the IF we aim for the readers impact factor and like the Editor in chief of JAMA3 once said «…man (and academia) should not live by numbers alone».

Figure 1.

SJR -orange line- measures the scientific influence of the average article in a journal. Cites per Doc (2y) -blue line- measures the scientific impact of an average article published in the journal. For the PJP it was 0.119 in 2007, increasing to 0.189 in 2008 and reaching 0.23 in 2009.

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In this issue Joan Escarrabil et al write a creative article about social networks illustrating the emerging role of Internet in Medicine.4 We continue the Thematic Review series entitled «To Publish or Perish» with guest editors Tiago Jacinto, António Morais and João Fonseca,5 writing a useful review about «How to write a scientific paper - Searching and Managing Biomedical Information». Closing this number we include a beautiful photo by Luis Barbosa,6 an amateur photographer with a part time job at a non-government health organization.

We encourage all the authors to keep on sending us their best research to increase the number of papers cited so that in the coming years the PJP will be even more highly regarded in the respiratory field. Like the Bob Dylan song we feel that we maybe «knockin’ at heaven's door…».