How many years can a mountain exist Before it's washed to the sea? Yes, 'n' how many years can some people exist Before they're allowed to be free? Yes, 'n' how many times can a man turn his head Pretending he just doesn't see? The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind The answer is blowin' in the wind Bob Dylan, 1962
As forecasted in a previous editorial, 1 during the year of 2010 the Portuguese Journal of Pulmonology (PJP) received a record number of 148 articles! In December 2010, the “new” PJP was made known to 27.800 authors of the most prestigious respiratory journals, via a personalized e-mail sent through our Elsevier office. As a result in just the first two months of 2011 we received 27 manuscripts, from Portugal and other countries like Iran, UK, China, USA, Czech Republic, Morocco, Turkey, Spain! If this rate of submission continues, we will certainly break another record this year. Although the number of manuscripts submitted is a good measure of performance for a medical journal we are also hoping to attract articles that readers like and which take forward our specialty. Another way of assessing the performance of PJP is to analyze the online peer-review process. Since the activation of the Elsevier Editorial System, the PJP has had 109 reviewers (76 % from Portugal), with an average review time of 23.8 days. The rejection rate was 45.1 % and the average completion time was 57.8 days. Out of a total of 62 manuscripts received, 22 were original articles and 28 case reports.
The PJP impact factorThe impact factor (IF) of a journal should not be seen as its major goal. In fact there are a number of people (like the International Respiratory Journal Editors) who consider it an imperfect tool.2 However it is used by a lot of agencies to support scientific grants and by universities to evaluate their PhD students.
Our first IF is obtained by dividing the citations received in 2010 by the citable papers published in the two preceding years. Our calculations for 2010 put the IF of the PJP at over 0.4, and it is in 42th place out of 44 respiratory journals. Readers and authors of the PJP should not expect IF to grow fast or that it will reach the IF of major respiratory journals!
For the PJP, obtaining an IF is an important step towards recognition and expansion of our specialty abroad. It is an honor to belong to the restricted group of publications that have got to this point. The PJP will be the first Portuguese respiratory journal on the list and only the second from all the medical journals in Portugal. Achieving an IF is not an end in itself but part of a broader objective of attracting new authors and increasing the scientific level of the manuscripts.
We have also to congratulate the previous editors of the PJP but especially all the authors and reviewers that have made this moment possible. With them we still count to increase the quality of the research and improve the IF during the next years.
New features of the websiteWe mentioned in our previous editorial 3 that we soon wish to include in our journal website educational videos about interesting or innovative techniques of pulmonology accompanied by an explanatory text. So we ask all of our readers to produce their videos and to contact the Editorial Board before submitting them. The videos published will be listed in the print version of the PJP (as electronic page numbers -e.g. e1) and will be indexed in the Medline as “Case reports”.
In this issueIn this issue Bugalho de Almeida writes a provocative editorial4 illustrating the article of Pegas et al5 on the risk factors of asthma and rhinitis in children. We continue the “Thematic review” series entitled “To publish or perish” with guest editors André Moreira and Tari Haahtela,6 writing an exciting and creative review about “How to write a scientific paper -and win the game scientists play”. Closing this number we include an impressive photo by Ted Witek,7 a creative American photographer with very close links to the respiratory medical community in Portugal.
We hope the whole of the Portuguese respiratory community will unite around the PJP to increase its presence in the lusophone medical world and also move closer to the anglophile scientific arena. As the Bob Dylan song we think that the “answer is blowing in the wind…”.
