Thank you, indeed!

Abstract

With this issue of Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine (CCLM) we are pleased to announce the very good news that the recent release by Thomson Reuters of the 2010 impact factor (IF) showed a remarkable increase of our journal impact factor (IF) to 2.069. Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine, for the first time since its foundation, has overcome the psychological ‘‘boundary’’ of 2.0. This is a milestone and we would like to build on it the future progress and developments for the journal and even more importantly, improvements of its usefulness and value for readers. Now, this is not the end and it is not even the beginning of the end, but it is certainly the beginning of a highway towards an even brighter future. Although one can discuss the pros and cons of the IF system, as we have done tirelessly in the pages of this journal (1–4), it cannot be denied that the increase of the IF is a major event, in particular if it is such a significant increase. This important thought is mirrored by the kinetics of our IF as compared with that of the median IF of the Thomson Reuters subspeciality ‘‘Medical and Laboratory Technology’’, where Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine is included along with all the other laboratory medicine journals. As clearly depicted in Figure 1, our IF has been consistently above the median IF of our subspeciality since 2003 (i.e., when the median IF of ‘‘Medical and Laboratory Technology’’ journals was first released) and, even more interestingly, the incremental gain of the journal in the past five years seems even more prominent, since the gap with the median IF of our subspeciality has substantially increased from 0.104 in 2006 to 0.716 in 2010. According to a famous quotation by Lord Kelvin ‘‘If you can not measure it, you can not improve it’’, the IF is a measure, and as any measure, it carries inherent limitations, but no other measure has been found to be more effective to compare the value of scientific journals and, even more interestingly, to evaluate the behaviour of each journal over time (5–7). Other indicators also confirm that Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine is in very good health. The number of manuscript submissions is continuously increasing, several submissions come from