Great start predicts bright future for JVS-Vascular Science

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

—Marie Curie

As 2021 comes to an end, we are pleased to report that JVS-Vascular Science (JVS-VS), the “green journal” of the JVS portfolio, has grown well beyond expectations. Recognizing the high scientific and editorial standards of this on-line, open access journal, in its second year of publication, the U.S. National Library of Medicine has accepted JVS-VS into PubMed Central, and all articles will be indexed retroactively starting with volume 1, 2020. An exceptional achievement for a young journal, bringing it closer to achieving its goal to become the premier international journal dedicated to publishing the best of "bench-to-bedside" translational research, underlying modern medical, endovascular, and surgical investigation and the management of vascular diseases.

JVS-VS, the official publication of the Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) is the fourth member of the JVS portfolio (Table).1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 2021 has been a year of growth and transformation for all the journals of the JVS family. The Journal of Vascular Surgery (JVS) earned an all-time-high impact factor of 4.268, the Journal of Vascular Surgery: Venous and Lymphatic Disorders (JVS-VL) reinforced its position as the leading publication in the international venous and lymphatic field with an impact factor of 2.859, and the Journal of Vascular Surgery Cases, Innovations and Techniques substantially increased the content and number of its open access, on-line publications. This welcome evolution of the JVS journals occurred in parallel with major transformations of our editorial policies, educational programs, leadership, and boards. The diversity of each journal’s editorial board significantly improved and now includes ≥25% women and underrepresented minorities. The editorial team of JVS-VS reassured their contributors and readers about their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.¹¹

Table.

Top 10 most viewed JVS-VS articles published in 2020

Publication Year	Title	Authors	Volume No.	Issue No.	All time views, No.
2020	Machine deep learning accurately detects endoleak after endovascular abdominal aortic aneurysm repair	Sage Hahn, BA, Mark Perry, MD, Christopher S. Morris, MD, Safwan Wshah, PhD, Daniel J. Bertges, MD	1	1	16
2020	Circulating exosomes from patients with peripheral artery disease influence vascular cell migration and contain distinct microRNA cargo	Thomas A. Sorrentino, MD, Phat Duong, BS, Laura Bouchareychas, PhD, Mian Chen, MD, Allen Chung, BS, Melinda S. Schaller, MD, Adam Oskowitz, MD, PhD, Robert L. Raffai, PhD, Michael S. Conte, MD	1	1	13
2020	Transcriptomic profiling of experimental arterial injury reveals new mechanisms and temporal dynamics in vascular healing response	Samuel Röhl, MD, PhD, Urszula Rykaczewska, MSc, Till Seime, MSc, Bianca E. Suur, MSc, Maria Gonzalez Diez, PhD, Jesper R. Gådin, PhD, Anastasiia Gainullina, MSc, Alexey A. Sergushichev, PhD, Robert Wirka, MD, PhD, Mariette Lengquist, MSc, Malin Kronqvist, MSc, Otto Bergman, PhD, Jacob Odeberg, MD, PhD, Jan H. N. Lindeman, MD, PhD, Thomas Quertermous, MD, PhD, Anders Hamsten, MD, PhD, Per Eriksson, MSc, PhD, Ulf Hedin, MD, PhD, Anton Razuvaev, MD, PhD, Ljubica Perisic Matic, MSc, PhD	1	1	9
2020	Distinct subsets of T cells and macrophages impact venous remodeling during arteriovenous fistula maturation	Yutaka Matsubara, MD, PhD, Gathe Kiwan, MS, Arash Fereydooni, MD, John Langford, MD, Alan Dardik, MD, PhD	1	1	8
2020	Altered hemodynamics during arteriovenous fistula remodeling leads to reduced fistula patency in female mice	Tambudzai Kudze, MD, MHS, Shun Ono, MD, Arash Fereydooni, MS, Luis Gonzalez, BS, Toshihiko Isaji, MD, PhD, Haidi Hu, MD, PhD, Bogdan Yatsula, PhD, Ryosuke Taniguchi, MD, PhD, Jun Koizumi, MD, PhD, Toshiya Nishibe, MD, PhD, Alan Dardik, MD, PhD	1	1	7
2020	GSK2593074A blocks progression of existing abdominal aortic dilation	Mitri K. Khoury, MD, Ting Zhou, PhD, Huan Yang, PhD, Samantha R. Prince, BS, Kartik Gupta, MS, Amelia R. Stranz, BS, Qiwei Wang, PhD, Bo Liu, PhD	1	1	5
2020	Corrugated nanofiber tissue-engineered vascular graft to prevent kinking for arteriovenous shunts in an ovine model	Hiroshi Matsushita, MD, Takahiro Inoue, MD, PhD, Sara Abdollahi, PhD, Enoch Yeung, MBBS, Chin Siang Ong, MBBS, PhD, Cecillia Lui, MD, Isaree Pitaktong, BS, Kevin Nelson, PhD, Jed Johnson, PhD, Narutoshi Hibino, MD, PhD	1	1	5
2020	A mouse model of stenosis distal to an arteriovenous fistula recapitulates human central venous stenosis	Ryosuke Taniguchi, MD, PhD, Shun Ono, MD, Toshihiko Isaji, MD, PhD, Jolanta Gorecka, MD, Shin-Rong Lee, MD, PhD, Yutaka Matsubara, MD, PhD, Bogdan Yatsula, PhD, Jun Koizumi, MD, PhD, Toshiya Nishibe, MD, PhD, Katsuyuki Hoshina, MD, PhD, Alan Dardik, MD, PhD	1	1	3
2020	Increased matrix metalloproteinase 9 activity correlates with flow-mediated intraluminal thrombus deposition and wall degeneration in human abdominal aortic aneurysm	Annie A. Ducas, MD, MSc, David C. S. Kuhn, PhD, Lauren C. Bath, BSc Med, Richard J. Lozowy, PhD, April J. Boyd, MD, PhD	1	1	3
2020	Synchrotron radiation-based X-ray phase-contrast imaging of the aortic walls in acute aortic dissection	Koki Yokawa, MD, Masato Hoshino, PhD, Naoto Yagi, PhD, Yutaka Nakashima, MD, PhD, Kazunori Nakagawa, PhD, Yutaka Okita, MD, PhD, Kenji Okada, MD, PhD, Takuro Tsukube, MD, PhD	1	1	3

The second year of the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic, which has claimed >700,000 lives in the United States, has had a sustained effect on all scientific publications, including the JVS journals. The submission rates for all categories of articles remained extremely high, with an estimated 2859 new submissions in 2021, 31% more than before the pandemic and just slightly lower than in 2020. In addition, in 2021, we published ∼70 articles on COVID-19 and vascular disease, and our online collection includes 152 articles (available at: www.jvascsurg.org).

Social media has continued to be an important tool for JVS journal editors, authors, and readers. JVS journals have 4513 Facebook, 7037 Twitter, and 16,861 LinkedIn followers. We are pleased to see that JVS-VS content usage has continued to increase, with an estimated 7019 full-text downloads and 477 average monthly visits in 2021 to our website, www.JVSVS.org. We hope the progress in the journal quality metrics and the increasing social media presence will translate into a better understanding of vascular disease by vascular specialists and into better care and outcomes for vascular patients, which is our ultimate goal.

2021 was the year of major transformations in our educational programs. The JVS Journal Club, now held monthly and spearheaded by Paul DiMuzio and Misty Humphries, has had dedicated followers since its inception, with 100 to 150 trainees and practicing vascular surgeons registered for each event. The quality has been exceptional, the discussions have been lively and engaging, and we anticipate it will continue to prosper.

JVS-VS organized three popular webinars, allowing authors of accepted papers to help disseminate their science. In addition, each webinar had one or two invited speakers to showcase the theme of each webinar, and we thank Drs Sherene Shalhub, Jose Diaz, April Boyd, and Kathleen Martin for providing their expertise to complement the authors’ presentations.

Ulka Sachdev-Ost, our new Associate Editor, with a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion, developed the JVS internship to teach residents and fellows about the process of reviewing vascular papers. Our goal with this educational program was both training the next generation of reviewers and improving their clinical and basic research skills. We have seven interns, and each has a mentor who works with them closely in reviewing papers and making suggestions for improvement. The interns also attend monthly presentations given by the JVS faculty. These sessions will be available online in the new SVS learning system.

The progress that JVS journals has made has resulted from the outstanding reports our authors have submitted from around the world, and we are grateful for these contributions. Success, however, would not have been achieved without the hard work and expertise of an exceptional JVS-VS team. We greatly appreciate the contributions of our Associate Editors, Drs John A. Curci, Ulf Hedin, Gale Tang, and Jose Antonio Diaz and our senior consulting editors, Peter K. Henke and Louis M. Messina. We also express our deepest gratitude to the dedicated members of our JVS-VS editorial board and our many reviewers, listed below, who have read, reviewed, and reviewed again an increasing number of submissions.

Finally, we are especially thankful to our dedicated JVS staff, Senior Managing Editor Jessica McEwan, JVS-VS Managing Editor Tyler Cosgrove, JVS-VL Managing Editor Alexandria Sese, Senior Editorial Assistant Carlee Green, and Editorial Assistant Emily Sachs. We are also grateful to the SVS and our sponsoring societies who support our journal and enable us to publish great articles from their annual meetings. As we welcome a new year in 2022, we continue to be thankful for the honor and the opportunity to serve you as editors of the great family of JVS journals.

Acknowledgement of associate and senior consulting editors

We are thankful for the enthusiastic work of the JVS-VS Editor, Alan Dardik. We are also blessed to have excellent Associate and Assistant Editors who helped us in 2021 to manage the increasing number of submissions, without compromising the high quality of the articles published in the JVS-VS. Drs John A. Curci, Ulf Hedin, Gale Tang, and Jose Antonio Diaz served as Associate Editors. We are also thankful to our senior consultation editors, Drs Peter K. Henke and Louis M. Messina.

We give special thanks to Dr Paul J. DiMuzio, Editor for Social Media, director of the JVS journal clubs and author of JVS Press Releases, and Dr Daniel Han, who has become a master editor producing Visual Abstracts and has helped us tremendously to increase our social media presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and other platforms.

Acknowledgement of the editorial board

We are thankful for the valuable contributions made by our excellent Editorial Board in 2021. In addition to the review and repeated review of a large number of original articles, our editorial board members frequently contributed to JVS-VL with commentaries and editorials. Members of the Editorial Board performed an average of one review each year, and, during 2021, this accounted for 42% of all the reviews performed.

The Editors would like to recognize all the board members who will who continue their assignments in 2022.

Board members

Scott A. Berceli

April J. Boyd

Luke P. Brewster

Elliot L. Chaikof

Nabil Chakfé

Michael S. Conte

Alan Daugherty

Gert Jan de Borst

Vanessa Diaz

Katherine Ann Gallagher

Michael Gaunt

Peter J. Gruber

Raul J. Guzman

Karen J. Ho

Kathryn L. Howe

Haidi Hu

Ngan Huang

Melina R. Kibbe

Kimihiro Komori

Brajesh K. Lal

Jeffrey H. Lawson

Bo Liu

Xiaochun Long

Xinwu Lu

Kathleen Ann Martin

Tetsuro Miyata

Deidra Hopkins Mountain

Toshiya Nishibe

Richard J. Powell

Paul H. A. Quax

Joseph D. Raffetto

Michel Reijnen

Nirvana Sadaghianloo

Rajabrata Sarkar

Salvatore Scali

Thomas Schmitz-Rixen

Lewis B. Schwartz

William Sessa

Sherene Shalhub

Bryan Tillman

Phil Tsao

Janice Tsui

Edith Tzeng

Gilbert R. Upchurch

Omaida C. Velazquez

David A. Vorp

Thomas W. Wakefield

Jun Yu

Mohamed Adel Zayed

Wei Zhou

Reviewers

The Editors are grateful to the many clinicians and scientists who performed at least one review for the Journal during 2021. This group includes several new reviewers. These reviewers performed 51% of all reviews and contributed greatly to our peer-review process. We would like to express our gratitude to them and look forward to working with them and with many more new reviewers in 2022.

John Blebea

Elise Patricia DeRoo

Hong Jin

David Marlevi

Trissa Babrowski

John Stephen Byrne

Jayer Chung

Mark G. Davies

Arjun Jayaraj

Thomas F. Lindsay

Shirling Tsai

Craig J. Goergen

Lian-Wang Guo

M. Eline Kooi

Lars Maegdefessel

Ryan Michael McEnaney

Joy Roy

Jason MacTaggart

Dick Wågsäter

Joseph Patrick Archie

Darwin Eton

Benjamin M. Jackson

Ted R. Kohler

C. Keith Ozaki

Lakshmikumar Pillai

Jeries Abu-Hanna

Albert Busch

Margreet de Vries

Christian Gasser

David S. Kauvar

Eric K. Peden

Guriy Popov

Clay Quint

Peter Schneider

Toshiharu Shinoka

Jessica P. Simons

Karin Tran-Lundmark

Chung Lim

Statistical reviewers

The Editors also thank our statistical reviewers in 2021.

Richard Amdur

William Scott Harmsen

Jay Mandrekar

Edward Joseph Mascha

Charles Miller

JVS interns

Finally, we also would like to recognize our JVS-VS Interns, who have already contributed to our journals with numerous excellent reviews. They are our future ambassadors, reviewers, and editors. We are thankful for their interest in JVS-VS and for their hard work as our reviewers. We have listed them, together with their JVS-VS mentors.

Intern	Mentor
Christopher Audu	Alan Dardik
Elizabeth L. Chou	Gale Tang