Since its foundation in 1982, the Portuguese Journal of Cardiology has matured into a widely admired scientific journal. Over the years, the standards and quality of the Journal have consistently improved, presenting to the world the best of Portuguese cardiology, past and present.

It is therefore with particular satisfaction that I can inform our readers that in 2016, for the first time in the Journal's history, its official impact factor was above 1 (1.195). Even excluding the few self-citations in 2016, our impact factor is still over 1 (1.038). This excellent result continues the marked increase in our impact factor that began in 2015, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1.

Developments in the Portuguese Journal of Cardiology's impact factor.

(0.04MB).

It should, however, be noted that this is not the only good news; there are other positive signs that the Journal continues to improve and that we are on the right track. For example, the Journal's immediacy index, a measure of how quickly articles are cited, has also risen over the years, almost doubling between 2015 (0.276) and 2016 (0.489). Furthermore, although the Journal is still in the fourth quartile of the impact factor, we are in the top 17% of that quartile and approaching the line that separates us from the third quartile.

Another important objective indicator of the Journal's international profile is where it is being cited. Figure 2, which is derived from data provided by the 2016 Journal Citation Reports®, Science Edition (Clarivate Analytics, 2017), shows the main journals citing the Journal, which include some of the most prestigious publications in the field of cardiovascular medicine. In the figure, the colors denote the journals citing us and the width of the bar corresponds to the number of citations in that journal. The graph shows that our journal was cited most often in 2016 by the International Journal of Cardiology, followed by the American Journal of Cardiology. It should be noted that the self-citation rate of the Portuguese Journal of Cardiology was low (13%). According to Clarivate Analytics (formerly part of Thomson Reuters), the company that produces Journal Citation Reports, in which the impact factors of scientific journals worldwide are published, self-citation rates of 17-30% are acceptable.

Figure 2.

The main journals in which articles from the Portuguese Journal of Cardiology were cited in 2016 (based on data provided by the 2016 Journal Citation Reports®, Science Edition [Clarivate Analytics, 2017]).

(0.13MB).

Another measure of success is the increase in numbers of articles submitted for publication to the Journal, which has risen from 312 in 2014, to 380 in 2015 and 387 in 2016. In the first six months of 2017 alone, 260 articles have already been submitted, even before word of the Journal's excellent performance in 2016 had spread. It is to be expected that the number of articles submitted will increase even more in the future, which will enable rigorous selection of only the best articles, and this in turn will stimulate Portuguese cardiology to become ever more competitive.

The Journal's internet visibility in 2016 was very good, with a total of 227136 views, of which 90925 were in Brazil, 63892 in Portugal, 19991 in the USA and 4716 in the UK. Moreover, the number of downloads of published articles (which according to experts is usually for readers to use their content in clinical practice) was also the highest ever, 85066.

Many of the objectives set out in the editorial published in the January 2016 issue of the Journal have been or are on the way to being accomplished by the editorial team that now run the journal.1 There are, however, still some challenges to be overcome. We need to improve our performance in terms of reducing the time taken for editorial review and publication ahead of print. The Portuguese Society of Cardiology is soon to launch an exclusively online journal for publication of case reports and images, in order to accommodate the increasing number of such articles that are submitted but for which there is no room in the Portuguese Journal of Cardiology. Finally, besides the already available online summary, an app will soon be released for use on portable electronic devices, and a more interactive version of the Recommended Article of the Month will include a video interview.

All these successes are, of course, the result of the teamwork of the Journal's Deputy Editors, Associate Editors, the Supplements, Statistics and Ethics editors, Editorial and Bibliographic Consultant, Editorial Board and peer reviewers. Special thanks are due to the Journal's secretariat for their outstanding work. I would like to thank all for their commitment and dedication to the Portuguese Journal of Cardiology, the Portuguese Society of Cardiology, and Portuguese cardiology in general. None of this would have been possible without the unstinting support of the Board of the Society and the work of those who came before us and who laid the groundwork for our current success, among whom Prof. Fausto Pinto deserves a special mention. There is still room for improvement, which we must try to achieve. More and greater challenges undoubtedly lie ahead, and we count on the collaboration of all to overcome them.