Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology , 2003

Abstract

When our editorship began in the spring of 1999, we summarized our goals: to publish high-quality papers, to provide timely review and publication, and to publish papers that would be of special interest to our readers. In this report, we will summarize progress toward these goals. In addition, we will summarize some new initiatives and thank several people for their help. The Editors rely greatly on reviewers to advise us about the scientific validity of conclusions in manuscripts. Novelty and importance of papers is very difficult to judge, and the editors also rely heavily on the advice of expert reviewers and the Editorial Board. One measure of importance in quality of papers is the impact factor. The latest available data (for 2001) indicate that the impact factor for Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology ( ATVB ) has increased substantially during the past year (from 5.1 to 5.8), and has increased from 3.9 to 5.8 during the three years of our editorship (Figure 1). In comparison with other journals in this area of research, ATVB continues to be extremely competitive. Figure 1. Impact factor. Recently, we have begun to track the “immediacy index,” which refers to the frequency of references to articles within the first year. The immediacy index has increased during the past several years (Figure 2). Figure 2. Immediacy index. One of our major goals is to provide expert, rapid reviews of manuscripts that are submitted to ATVB . The average time from receipt of new manuscripts to …