As customary, in the present Editor's Page, the editorial team appraise the previous year of Revista Española de Cardiología (Rev Esp Cardiol), reporting its overall situation and its future direction. The highlight for 2016 was the excellent impact factor results. With a record high of 4.596, this impact factor places our journal in the first quartile of cardiovascular journals. Although excellent news, the increase in impact factor should be interpreted with caution, because bibliometric indices are in constant flux. Nonetheless, the new impact factor provides a clear opportunity to consolidate our position as the leading Spanish-language and bilingual cardiovascular journal. These pages also serve to thank and congratulate both the authors of all of the work published in the journal and the previous editorial teams, who undoubtedly deserve the credit for this bibliometric success.

As is already well known by readers, Rev Esp Cardiol publishes a monthly issue and a variable number of annual supplements; the standard articles include “Original Articles”, “Editorials”, “Scientific Letters”, “Letters to the Editor”, and “Special Articles”, as well as other article types such as “ECG Contest” and “Images in Cardiology”.

The total numbers of articles published by Rev Esp Cardiol in recent years are shown in Figure 1. Compared with the previous year, the number of articles published in 2016 increased by more than 10%. This increase is unsurprising because the total number of manuscripts received rose by 20% vs 2015 (Figure 2), representing the largest increase of the last 10 years. This increment also affected original articles, with 10% more articles being submitted in 2016 than in 2015. The final acceptance rate for 2016 is expected to be around 15%-17%, with a number of manuscripts still pending decision at the time of publishing this article (Figure 3).

Figure 1.

Year-on-year comparison of the total number of manuscripts published.

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Figure 2.

Year-on-year comparison of the total number of manuscripts received.

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Figure 3.

Number of original manuscripts received and published and the acceptance rate from 2010 to 2016. *At the time of publishing this article, there were 18 original articles received in 2016 pending acceptance or rejection.

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Two types of review articles were published until 2016: 4 to 5 review articles based around a certain topic, belonging to the “Focus” series, and 7 to 10 articles reviewing a specific knowledge area, belonging to the “Update” series. Thus, in 2016, 8 articles were published in the “Update: Cardiac Imaging” series.1–8 For the coming and subsequent years, the new editorial team has decided to replace the “Update” series with a similar number of reviews on diverse topics deemed of interest to our readers. Some of these reviews will be individual, whereas others will be grouped around a specific topic; this format will thus be similar to that of the “Focus” series. We believe that this strategy has 2 benefits. First, it allows for greater flexibility in the selection of topics of interest and expert authors. Second, it will broaden the range of review topics available, which will probably appeal to a wider variety of readers. A drawback is that we will lose the accredited course of the “Update” series. However, because we believe that the range of courses offered by the Spanish Society of Cardiology (SEC) is quite wide and varied, the previously undeniable added teaching value of the “Update” series has diminished in recent years.

Another change in the format of the publications affects the “Topical Issues” series. Coordinated by different scientific sections of the SEC, these publications summarize and highlight the most important developments of the previous year in each specialty area. Although the series has clear educational value, its publication in the form of special articles reduces the space available for other article types, such as original articles and reviews.

For example, 6 articles were published in the 2016 series.9–14 Due to the limited space in Rev Esp Cardiol and the continual and growing demand for the publication of original articles, we believe that they should take precedence over the publication of “Topical Issues” in the form of special articles. However, we are aware of the usefulness and value of the continued publication by Rev Esp Cardiol of news on the scientific developments in each area. To try to reconcile these 2 aspects—to both increase the space available for original articles and maintain the information of the “Topical Issues”—, from 2017, these articles will be published in the form of scientific letters, a format that we believe to be more suitable for the aims of the series and, possibly, easier to read.

In addition, 2 new sections have been introduced. In the first, called “Atrium”, the Editor-in-chief will summarize the contents and highlight the salient message and main strengths and weaknesses of the original articles published in the issue. We believe that these articles will be of interest to readers wanting an overview of the contents of each issue and will help them to select the most interesting items. The second section, called “Viaje al corazón de las palabras” (Into the heart of terminology), made its debut in January of this year and comes from the hand of Fernando A. Navarro, a member of the Advisory Board of Rev Esp Cardiol. These Spanish language-only articles, taking the form of brief and light-hearted notes, shed light on the etymology and distinguishing features of medical language and offer help on frequent doubts and hard-to-translate terms.

Two editorial changes have been made to original articles. First, the limit on the number of authors has been removed because multicenter studies with multiple authors meeting the authorship criteria15 are now more common. Second, these articles now include a “Key points” box, which permits authors to summarize what is already known about the topic and, more importantly, what their work adds. We consider these key points, already adopted by numerous biomedical journals, to be a useful exercise benefiting both the readers and the authors themselves.

Finally, changes have been made to the processing of the consensus documents that are periodically prepared by working groups from different fields of knowledge: the main characteristics of the documents now need to be presented to the Executive Committee of the SEC so that it can evaluate their priority as it pertains to the society. Because Rev Esp Cardiol is the official journal of the SEC, we believe that the Executive Committee should play an important role in setting the organizational priority of these documents. Once this has been decided by the Executive Committee, the document will follow the standard editorial process.

Regarding the digital version of the journal and social media, the strategy during 2016 has been to strive for a greater presence and increased proactivity. Thus, it was considered prudent to enlist the technical advice and work of a professional expert in the area, Dr José Juan Gómez de Diego, who was recruited at the start of 2016. On the one hand, our strategy has been to augment the elements of the digital version of our journal, such as the website, in particular, the blog, and the “ECG Contest”. The results have been highly positive, as shown by the increased number of visitors to our website: from 2014 to April 2016 onward, average monthly visits to the Rev Esp Cardiol blog rose from 1800 to more than 7000. This trend has been repeated for the presence of Rev Esp Cardiol in social media, where a marked increase was seen vs the previous year (Figure 4). Among the most significant changes, in January 2016 the “ECG Contest” ceased to be a closed section that only accepted invited articles and was opened to the public to allow unsolicited contributions. The format was also modified to include a question with 4 possible answers that readers can select in the electronic version of the article. Another novelty is the launch of a Facebook page for Rev Esp Cardiol. Curiously, Facebook had already helped to funnel traffic to our website before Rev Esp Cardiol even had an official account on the network (Figure 4). As expected, the official Facebook page, launched in March 2016, has notably increased the dissemination of our contents.

Figure 4.

Number of sessions on www.revespcardiol.org, overall and via social media, in 2015 and 2016.

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The trend in editorial processing times from manuscript receipt to the final decision is shown in Figure 5. In the last year, the average processing time slightly increased–by 2.5 days–specifically in the first 2 phases. There were 2 reasons for this increase. First, the entirely expected and necessary learning curve of the new editorial team members, who have had to adapt to a somewhat complicated process. Second, the continued increase in the number of submitted manuscripts (Figure 1), which has led to a certain work overload. Given this increased workload, the number of staff in the editorial office was increased midway through the year, principally to lighten the load related to manuscript processing tasks. Although we hope that the 2017 times will approach those of 2014 and 2015, the general mean editorial processing time of Rev Esp Cardiol is nonetheless still one of the best among journals in its field (14.5 days), according to what is stated on their websites. What has not changed from previous years is the excellent work performed by our tireless reviewers (Figure 6). We would like to sincerely thank here reviewers who collaborate with us even though they are not part of our Editorial Committee (Table 1). In addition, the elite reviewers of 2016 also deserve special mention (Table 2).

Figure 5.

Mean manuscript processing time for original articles between 2009 and 2016.

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Figure 6.

Response time for Rev Esp Cardiol reviewers for first drafts of original articles (data from the first 6 months of each year).

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The situation is different for the time from manuscript acceptance to online publication. This interval, which depends directly on our publisher, was an average of 120 to 140 days in 2015 and the first half of 2016, representing a significantly longer delay than that reported by other cardiovascular journals with similar impact factors. Bilingual publication of Rev Esp Cardiol complicates the editing process, delaying publication and possibly even diminishing the scientific visibility of the journal. Thus, during 2016, a special effort was made to reduce this interval via the implementation of a new process. This new process represents a paradigm shift because, instead of the parallel processing of the 2 versions (Spanish and English), the version in the original submission language is rapidly edited and published, becoming available ahead of print in 7 to 8 weeks and thus being included in the main bibliographic databases (eg, ScienceDirect). If the original submission language is English, the article additionally becomes available as soon as possible on PubMed. The translated version is published with an additional delay of 8 to 10 weeks. We believe that this strategy will improve the visibility of Rev Esp Cardiol and of authors publishing in our journal.

Finally, as already indicated,16 the first course for Rev Esp Cardiol reviewers took place in February 2017. Aimed at professionals who act as peer reviewers for our journal, its objective was to minimize inter reviewer variability.

As already mentioned, one of the most positive developments of 2016 was the highly significant increase in the impact factor for 2015, which now places Rev Esp Cardiol in the first quartile of journals in the field of cardiovascular medicine. As is already widely known, the higher the number of citations achieved by a journal and the fewer the number of citable articles—basically original articles and reviews—published in the previous 2 years, the higher the impact factor. Figure 7 shows the bibliometric trend of Rev Esp Cardiol, which was placed in the first quartile of cardiovascular journals in the 2015 edition of the Journal Citation Reports, ranking 22 out of a total of 124 journals (Figure 8).

Figure 7.

Changes in the impact factor of Rev Esp Cardiol over time since 1999.

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Figure 8.

Changes in the ranking of Rev Esp Cardiol among other journals in the field of cardiovascular medicine according to their impact factors.

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An interesting exercise is to determine what types of publications have had the highest scientific dissemination and visibility in recent years. The publications of 2013 and 2014 influenced the impact factor for 2015 while those published in 2014 and 2015 will influence the impact factor for 2016; in addition, those published in 2016 affect the immediacy index, a reflection of the speed of the scientific visibility of a publication because it depends on the citations received in the same year as its publication. This information is shown in Table 3, extracted from the Web of Science of the Institute for Scientific Information56 at the start of 2017. The articles generating the most citations in 2016 have been selected according to the following criteria: from 2013, articles with more than 6 citations; from 2014, those with more than 5; from 2015, those with more than 4; and from 2016, those with 3 or more.

The most common type of publication is the original article, although also represented are reviews and scientific letters. We would like to warmly congratulate all the authors of these articles. Finally, we would also like to mention and congratulate the authors of the publications that received awards from the SEC for their scientific impact and quality (Table 4). As already discussed at the beginning of this article, original articles are a priority for this editorial team. The value of this strategy is confirmed by the excellent results in terms of scientific visibility and analysis of the type of article most contributing to this visibility.

Finally, we are hugely pleased to dedicate some words to congratulate the Editorial Director of Rev Esp Cardiol, Iria del Río, for her recent appointment to the council of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).57 As our readers probably know, this institution is a prestigious international forum of editors and publishers of academic journals that addresses and discusses all aspects related to ethical matters affecting publications. Its mission is to promote integrity in the field of academic publication. To help readers to properly gauge the importance of this appointment, suffice to say that, of the more than 11 000 members of COPE, only 27 are current council members. The decision was preceded by an exhaustive selection process and we are enormously proud that Rev Esp Cardiol has managed to achieve the first Spanish representative on the Council. We send our thanks and congratulations to Iria del Río for this excellent news, which will undoubtedly help to guide the development of Rev Esp Cardiol and inform its policies.

Rev Esp Cardiol is the official scientific publication of the SEC and its medium of institutional expression. During the previous year, the most important development has been a major change in the editorial process, which has significantly reduced publication times. Other changes include a modification in the format of some publications and the review article series, the introduction of 2 new sections, and new support for the digital version and social media dissemination. Rev Esp Cardiol has achieved a growing impact in terms of scientific visibility and is currently placed in the first quartile of its specialty, leading us to look to the future with optimism.

None declared.