American Journal of Hematology, getting ready for the 40th birthday in 2016.

Abstract

This is the 80th volume of the American Journal of Hematology, which was first published in 1976. I am happy to provide here an update on the state of the journal while we prepare to celebrate its 40th birthday a year from now in 2016. We are welcoming several new Editorial Advisory Board Members for the term starting in 2015. Coming on board are Natasha Archer, Pablo Bartolucci, Elisa Boscolo, Paola Guglielmelli, Virginia M. Klimek, Martha Lacy, Jane Hankins, Ann Mullally, Enrico Novelli, Valentina Nardi, Maureen Okam, Amy Sobota, Martha Sola-Visner, Venee Tubman, Celalettin Ustun, Olga Weinberg, and Connie Westhoff. We thank the outgoing members David Lyden, Eric Russel, and David Steensma for their services. With these changes, the AJH Editorial Advisory board now comprises an equal number of women and men. Of the 118 members, 85 are from the United States and 33 are based outside of the United States. The downloading of full text articles has increased from 202,000 in 2008 to 522,000 in 2013. For 2014, 507,000 articles have been downloaded in the first 9 months of the year. We are currently publishing a new version for each of our Annual Updates in Hematological Malignancies every 21 months. We will begin in 2015, a new feature, named Updates in Current Clinical Trials for Hematological diseases, with sickle cell anemia and myelodysplastic syndromes already under preparations. For 2015, the journal will have an increased number of pages: the number of printed pages will increase from 1104 to 1200 and an additional 240 pages will be available for e-only publication. We have launched in 2014, our new format, which includes a new manuscript style and the introduction of color in all articles. The number of submissions has increased from 1065 in 2010 to 1392 in 2013. For the first 10 months of 2014, 1252 articles have been submitted. The overall acceptance rate has decreased from 32% in 2011 to 23% in 2012 and 2013, and is currently 21% for 2014. When corrected for commissioned/invited work, the acceptance rate was 20% in 2013, and is currently 19.4% for 2014. The average time from submission to first decision decreased from 13 days in 2011 to 8 days in 2014. 2012 and 2013 have seen a decrease in our Impact Factor (IF) from the 4.671 value of 2011 (Fig. 1). These changes are the result of the decision by Thomson Reuters™ to include in their count of full articles, the Letters we published in 2012 and 2013, thus increasing our denominator for the IF from 307 in 2012 to 452 in 2013 and 426 in 2014. As we had no control over this retroactive change, we were forced to discontinue the publication of Letters. The number of citations for papers published in the prior 2 years (the numerator for the IF determination) has shown substantial increases in 2012 and 2013, as shown in Fig. 1. Based on this trend and the reduction in denominator for the IF beginning in 2014, we expect our IF to return to the previous higher values beginning with 2014. AJH ranks 15th out of 123 hematology journals for the SCImago Journal Rank Indicator, which takes into account both the scientific productivity and the scientific impact of a journal. (http://www.scimagojr.com/journalrank.php?area=2700&category=2720&country=all&year=2013&order=sjr&min=0&min_type=cd) IF (top panel) and citations (bottom panel) for the American Journal of Hematology. Data from InCites™ journal citation reports, Thomson Reuters™. [Color figure can be viewed in the online issue, which is available at wileyonlinelibrary.com.] We would like to thank our Associate Editors and our reviewers (see the list of reviewers at the end of this issue) who have consistently upheld the highest standards and spent considerable time in assessing manuscripts. We wish to thank our Editorial Manager, Hillary Bixby, and our Journal Manager and Production editor at Cenveo Publisher Services, Thomas Manbeck, for their excellent work and dedication.