Impact Factor of the European Journal of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery increased to 2.674

Abstract

As revealed in the recently published Journal Citation Report 2012 [1], the impact factor (IF) of EJCTS has again increased, from 2.550 in 2011, to 2.674 in 2012, continuing the trend observed over the last eight years (Fig. 1). This underscores the great development of EJCTS since the first issue was published in 1987 [2]. Another welcome piece of news is the first award of an IF (1.112) to Interactive CardioVascular and Thoracic Surgery (ICVTS), sister journal to EJCTS. [3]. The journal “family” of the European Association for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery (EACTS) EJCTS, ICVTS, and MMCTS (the Multimedia Manual of Cardio-Thoracic Surgery, a premier online manual of cardiovascular and thoracic surgical procedures, with Marko Turina as Editor-in-Chief [4]) therefore continues to consolidate its powerful position in the field of cardiothoracic scientific publishing. The impact factor was devised by Eugene Garfield, who founded the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) in 1960. Since 1975, IFs for Journals indexed in the Journal Citation Report ( JCR) have been calculated once a year; the ISI Web of Knowledge has indexed more than 11000 scientific Journals. The ISI was acquired by Thomson Scientific and Healthcare in 1992 (Thomson ISI) and now belongs to the Healthcare and Science business of Thomson Reuters. The IF measures the average number of citations to articles in a scientific journal from the previous two years. It is calculated (e.g. for the year 2012) according to the following formula: