[Ann Emerg Med. 2009;54:317-318.]
Once a year, we report our performance as a journal, along with important changes and achievements. We report here those data for calendar year 2008.
Annals continues to be the largest-circulation peer-review journal in emergency medicine (more than 28,000 subscribers, several times that of its nearest competitor). It is also one of the most accessible to nonsubscribing readers because 5,365 institutions include Annals in their online licenses for ScienceDirect (the world's largest electronic collection of science, technology, and medicine full-text and bibliographic information). ScienceDirect was used to access Annals full-text articles approximately 562,000 times last year, a 24% increase from the previous year. Annals is also available on the Web (with full text of all articles dating back to its inception), where it received an average of 55,000 page views per month. More than 145,000 reprints were ordered last year.
Annals is the emergency medicine journal most frequently cited by authors and has the highest impact factor of all 12 journals in the emergency medicine category of the Science Citation Index. The impact factor (the average number of citations per published article) is the commonest measure of journal influence; the 2008 impact factor for Annals is 3.755, representing 8,227 citations (a 15% increase from the previous year). Among the more than 6,000 science and medical journals in the Science Citation Index, Annals ranked in the top 11% by citation frequency and the top 11% by impact factor. In the past 5 years, 1,224 journals in the ISI science journal database cited an article in Annals, and in a typical year, Annals articles are cited by more than 400 scientific journals, most of them from a broad range of specialties outside of emergency medicine.
Annals articles also generate considerable interest in the lay media. From October 2007 through September 2008, there were more than 1,250 hits in print and television. Radio coverage grew from 8,000 hits to 13,092 hits. Major outlets included the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, National Public Radio, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Newsweek, Reuters, Associated Press, and CNN, as well as many trade publications.
Annals is an international journal; half of the full-text articles accessed through ScienceDirect were downloaded by readers in 79 countries outside the United States. Our contributors are also international in scope; in 2008, submissions came to us from 39 countries, with 36% of submissions originating outside the United States and 19% originating outside North America and Western Europe. The largest volume other than from the United States was submitted from Taiwan, Turkey, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, Korea, Netherlands, and Australia, in descending order. But the list also includes Brazil, Thailand, Mexico, Tunisia, Georgia, Finland, and Bulgaria.
We strongly believe we have an obligation to make our journal available to international audiences regardless of their financial resources and therefore have participated for many years in the HINARI initiative, sponsored by large journal publishers (available online at http://www.healthinternetwork.org/src/eligibility.php), which makes Annals available free or at greatly reduced cost in low-income countries.
In 2009, Annals was designated one of the 100 most influential scientific journals of the past 100 years by the Special Libraries Association (available online at http://www.sla.org). The Special Libraries Association is one of the most respected and largest (11,000 members) library organizations. The entire list is available online at http://www.sla.org/content/Events/centennial/dbio100.cfm. Some of the high-profile medical journals on the list were Cell, Circulation, JAMA, The Lancet, Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, and Science. Annals is flattered to have received this recognition, which is testimony to the hard work, talent, and dedication of its editorial board, its staff, and all the authors who contribute to it.
2008 was our seventh year of a completely Web-based system of submissions, peer review, and editorial management (available online at http://www.editorialmanager.com/annemergmed). A total of 1,490 submissions were received in 2008 (an 81% increase since 2002), and thanks to our compulsive editors and our Web-based peer-review system, we had another year of very timely performance. To speed decisions for authors, our editors reject some articles without sending them out for additional review (such as articles with topics not targeted to our readership). Such decisions were reached in a mean of 6 days from the submission of the articles. For all original scientific studies submitted to the journal, including those sent out for full peer review, the mean time to initial decision was 22 days. (Correspondence, departments and columns, book reviews, Images in Emergency Medicine, and similar material are not included in this calculation; results for these excluded categories are similar or better.) The mean time to initial decision for all articles sent out for full external review (mostly original research) was 29 days. This performance is among the very best of any medical scientific journals. It ensures a shorter duration of suffering for authors and more rapid dissemination of new science to our readers. The quality (as well as the timeliness) of our reviews continues to be outstanding, as reported previously (Green SM, Callaham ML. Current status of peer review at Annals of Emergency Medicine. Ann Emerg Med. 2006;48:304-308). We continue to thank our peer reviewers in various ways, listing the best of the very best on our masthead every month.
As you might expect from the statistics above, authors submitting their articles to Annals feel very satisfied with the experience. All submitting authors receive a survey to complete after they receive their decision (including those whose articles are not accepted for publication). One hundred twenty-nine authors completed a survey last year. They rated Annals' promptness and responsiveness better or much better than that of other scientific journals 88% of the time. Fifty-two percent thought our review process improved their article a moderate or large amount. Seventy-four percent found the communications and reviews more courteous and knowledgeable than those of other journals, whereas 14% found them equivalent. Eighty-four percent would recommend Annals to other researchers very strongly. For every question, 5 (the best score) was the most common choice, usually by a large margin.
We continually seek our readers' assessment of how we are doing. In 2007, we added a feedback feature on the Web site that allows instantaneous feedback from our readers about each article as they read it (see Article Feedback button in left-hand gray navigation column on screen for each issue at http://www.annemergmed.com). The brief survey takes just seconds to complete, allowing readers to comment specifically only on the articles they wish to, and provides open-text fields for comments and suggestions from readers. We encourage readers to share their views with us so we can optimize the journal for their needs.
We continue to introduce and improve new content for our readers. In December 2008, we launched a monthly podcast to provide a conversational look at each month's Annals issue, including the latest research, news articles, and other highlights. The podcasts can be downloaded at http://www.annemergmed.com/content/podcast. In January 2009, we published the ACEP 2009 National Report Card on the State of Emergency Medicine. In addition, we continue to expand our special-topics article collections on the Web, including our constantly growing Patient Safety collection (under Special Topics in the gray sidebar column), a wealth of evidence-based emergency medicine articles and tools, and access to all the ABEM LLSA articles published in Annals. Another useful feature is our list on our home page of the top 25 most popular Annals downloads in the most recent 3 months from ScienceDirect.
Every year, there are transitions on the editorial board. Those who stepped down (usually because of competing obligations) include Stephen Thom, Jonathan Teich, and Brian Rowe. We were very saddened by the passing of Michael Shannon.
A number of editors took on larger responsibilities (as the article volume steadily grows) and were promoted. Deborah Diercks was promoted to associate editor, and Michael Brown, Alan Jones, Kelly Young, Robert Welch, and Teri Reynolds were promoted to the editorial board.
In summary, Annals had another very successful year and continued to represent our specialty by increasing in quality and rank among scientific journals. We thank our talented and hard-working editors, staff, reviewers, and authors who make it all possible.
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