We aim as part of our editorial policy to write two editorials per year which will report the most important issues covered by the Portuguese Journal of Pulmonology (PJP). We will publish an editorial around the 5th edition of the PJP, which is related essentially with impact factor, and in addition, at the beginning of each year, we intend to provide and discuss information relating to aspects of the PJP.
We can measure the interest in and the visibility of a publication by website access i.e. downloads or number of pages searched for. In 2013, PJP had a significant increase in the number of visitors to the PJP website, to be precise 37,569 entries, which was more than the triple of 2012 when 11,891 visitors were registered and became even more striking when compared with the 6969 visitors in 2011.1 In line with this growth, in 2014, PJP website was accessed by 195,274 visitors and 310.088 pages were consulted, more than the fourfould of the previous year (Fig. 1). Our best expectations were clearly exceeded by these results, which are not only very important for PJP visibility but also constitute a clear sign to support the editorial policies and direction taken jointly by the PJP editorial board and Portuguese Pulmonology Society (SPP) in the last few years.2, 3 As per last year, the majority of website visitors are from abroad, accounting for 68.9% to be precise, mostly represented by Brazil. However a significant increase from European Union countries and United States, which are essential for the PJP impact, has become visible. There has been a relatively low visitor count from Spanish-speaking Latin American countries, which we hope will be overcome as a result of the recent collaborative effort with Archivos de Bronconeumologia. In fact, one of the main successes of the collaboration between Archivos de Bronconeumologia and Jornal Brasileiro de Pneumologia last year were the links between the two journals on the websites of each organ. 4, 5
Fig. 1. Evolution of visits and pages consulted in the PJP webpage over the past three years.
Regarding manuscript submissions, during 2014, we had a similar number of articles submitted (as compared to 2013), 149 to be precise, of which 55% from Portugal, of the remainder, Brazil was the single largest contributing country accounting for 20% of total submissions.
As previously discussed, as an impact factor medical journal, it is absolutely essential to have an editorial policy in accordance with the usual procedures adopted by the most relevant medical journals. Using English as an official language is a vital step to increase the visibility and impact of the journal since English is the international scientific language. With that, we are not by any means devaluing our origins or our country, on the contrary, we are increasing significantly the impact and visibility of the Portuguese respiratory research.
The next step of this process would be the creation of an international editorial board. In fact, since the end of 2014, the editors and the editorial council members have contacted some of the most recognized international specialists to ask their consent to be members of the PJP international board and we are hoping to formalize this new board in the near future. Moreover, we now have all the issues of PJP on the Elsevier site, while previously we only had the first years published on the SPP website, and this facilitates a rapid search for any article published in PJP.
So we start this year encouraged by our progress, having achieved our set targets. We are nevertheless aware of the increased difficulty and complexity of our further ambitions.
