The current year 2024 brings new initiatives and hopes. We have modified the name of our journal from Kardiologia Polska to Polish Heart Journal (Pol Heart J), with a subsequently updated logo. We hope that our readers will like the new look of the journal’s cover as much as we do. A small change, but its significance is second to none since after more than 60 years, just on the 70th anniversary of the Polish Cardiac Society’s foundation, our journal has joined (as one of the latest) the large family of national cardiology journals affiliated with the European Society of Cardiology. Based on previous bibliometric reports, it is likely that the English name will enhance our visibility and boost the Impact Factor in a longer perspective. At the very beginning spreading the message on to properly cite articles from our journal and regularly monitoring the citation count at Clarivate is of paramount importance.
A major change in 2023 was the adoption a new format of our website on July 5, which we hope you all appreciate. We felt that the unaltered website of the journal no longer reflected our aspirations for being at the forefront of clinical research in heart diseases. We are all happy with the end result supported by the Polish Cardiac Society, which as we have noticed, has been implemented in other titles of our publisher within recent weeks.
In October 2023, we said farewell to Ms. Anna Młynarczyk, our dedicated managing editor, who showed her professionalism in the hardest time in mid-2021 at our return to the former publisher, Via Medica. This was a real loss for our editorial team. Since more than two months Ms. Aleksandra Markowska took over. We hope that the editorial process will go smoothly after the transition period. Another sad information at the end of 2023 was resignation of Mr. Mateusz Meisner from his position at Via Medica. He made efforts to enhance the standing of our journal for almost 2 years through strengthening support of our publisher and developing new strategies for Educational Issues that contain materials including guidelines, expert opinions and statements generated by working groups and associations of the Polish Cardiac Society, all valuable for everyday clinical practice beyond cardiologists. Since 2024 all Educational Issues will be available online, without issues in print. Hopefully in 2024, with no delay in access of the physicians to the latest guidelines.
Some numbers to summarize the year 2023 at the editorial office. After implementation of article processing charges in March 2022 (unaltered till the beginning of 2024) and the expected drop in submissions observed in the following months, the rate of manuscript submissions, including high-quality observational studies, has become rather stable at the level 607 by the end of December 2023 compared with 685 at the same time in 2022. This has been accompanied by a high rejection rate — now running at 72%.
Based on the recent estimation, our predicted 2024 two-year Impact Factor should be equal to our record value achieved in 2021, i.e., 3.7 or more. This will be a huge success given everyday difficulties and a highly competitive scholarly publishing market with a rising number of cardiology journals. It has not been feasible without the hard work of the Associate Editors who strive to help authors improve the quality of content and data presentation, in particular statistical analysis, via constructive reviewers’ comments, suggestions for revision and robust adjudication. With more papers comes the need for more reviewers, especially those who can support our efforts to reduce the time from submission to publication. I would like once more to encourage potential reviewers to accept invitations to review, and to provide comments in a timely fashion,as well as to express my gratitude to all who represent this team of key importance in the publication process.
We look forward to further growth and development for Pol Heart J in the months ahead, and we wish a successful and scientifically inspiring 2024 to all our authors, reviewers, and, of course, our readers.
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Conflict of interest: None declared.
Funding: None.
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