When a year comes to an end, it is the right time to reflect on all that has happened during that year and consider everything that we have achieved in the publishing of Portuguese Journal of Pulmonology. Lucid reflection and a self-critical attitude are necessary attributes for improving our activity and what the journal can accomplish.
Evidence of the interest and visibility of a publication is the quantification of access to its website, the number of pages searched or downloads. There was a significant increase in the number of visitors to PJP website last year, to be precise 37,569 entries, which is more than the triple of 2012 when 11,891 visitors were registered and becomes even more striking when compared with the 6969 visitors in 2011 (Fig. 1). Moreover, for the first time the majority of the visitors (64.5%) came from abroad. Otherwise, in all 148 articles were submitted to PJP. Although the majority of these submissions (56.7%) came from Portugal, in line with other years, the provenance of the submitted manuscripts were very varied, from Brazil (18.2%), Turkey (7.4%) and Spain (4.7%), but also from Italy, Iran, Morocco, Canada, China, Greece, Cuba, Taiwan, Serbia, United Kingdom and India. Although these results seem impressive, an in-depth analysis of the data leads to the conclusion that the PJP does not have the same visibility, recognition and/or attraction in the most prominent of our partners of the European Respiratory Society where PJP is included as the official organ of Pulmonology Portuguese Society. As I have already mentioned in recent editorials, we, as a scientific society, need to discuss and then decide whether we want a journal which only functions as an official organ of a national society, obviously respecting the international recommending standards of peer review and medical publishing or whether besides that, we want to be at the centre of international respiratory research, and be the right kind of journal for the worldwide respiratory community to publish and publicize its research.1 To do that, we must move to becoming a publication with the normal international standards, predominantly in the English language and, without losing our identity as a Pulmonology Portuguese Society organ, turn it into a scientific journal which is representative of worldwide respiratory research. Other national respiratory societies have followed that route and their publications have become not only recognized respiratory journals, but have also provided their associates with increased visibility for their research and scientific publications. There are several means by which we can raise the profile of a medical journal and certainly one of them is to invite international experts to participate in the activities of the publishing process. With this in mind, 1/3 of the 158 reviewers that worked with PJP last year were international and we have also recently increased the number of editorials from international experts with their reflections on some of the relevant papers published in PJP.2,3
At the same time, we must carry on with present format of the publication; it is especially important not to make changes in the number of editions and the papers per edition, since these are crucial for the annual impact factor, which is the main recognition factor for a scientific journal. Since there has been an increase in the number of papers submitted, namely original papers, we have consequently had to be more rigorous and the percentage of rejected papers has risen; 60% of manuscripts submitted were rejected last year. In fact, at this point only about 25% of papers submitted get through to final publication (Fig. 2). However, because original papers are what bring in more readers and citations, we will publish one more original article per number and cut out the publication of one clinical case per edition, which will necessarily restrict acceptance of this type of article even more.
Step by step, through PJP, we intend to increase the visibility and recognition of Portuguese respiratory research and be considered a respected partner in the worldwide respiratory publications. We hope that in a year from now, to have achieved what we need to do to persue these objectives.
