A decade of impact: the Journal of Spine Surgery enters its next phase

The award of the first journal impact factor to the Journal of Spine Surgery (JSS) provides an opportunity not merely to celebrate a number, but to reflect on what a specialist journal should contribute to its field. JSS has now achieved a 2025 CiteScore of 2.6 and its first journal impact factor of 2.3. These milestones confirm the journal’s growing position within the international spine surgery publishing landscape.

Metrics are not the purpose of a scientific journal. They cannot replace methodological quality, clinical relevance, or the responsibility to improve patient care. Nevertheless, they provide evidence that the work published in JSS is being read, discussed, and used by the global spine community.

Publications with lasting influence

The clearest measure of a journal’s contribution lies in the articles that continue to inform practice long after publication. At the time of writing, a citation analysis of the PubMed-indexed JSS corpus identifies three publications as the journal’s most frequently cited.

The foremost is the review of lumbar interbody fusion techniques published in the inaugural issue of JSS in 2015 (1). By comparing posterior lumbar interbody fusion, transforaminal and minimally invasive transforaminal lumbar interbody fusion, oblique and lateral approaches, and anterior lumbar interbody fusion, the article provided surgeons with a practical framework for selecting among an expanding range of operative options. It has subsequently become one of the most highly cited spine surgery publications of the past decade.

The second is the review by Reisener and colleagues examining trends in lumbar spinal fusion (2). This article placed the expanding use of fusion surgery within its broader clinical, epidemiological, and health-system context. Its ongoing citation reflects the importance of understanding not only how we operate, but also why the utilisation of particular procedures changes over time.

The third is the systematic review by Yee and colleagues addressing complications of anterior cervical spine surgery (3). Its detailed synthesis of the incidence, recognition, and management of complications has made it an important reference for surgical planning, informed consent, risk reduction, and the interpretation of clinical outcomes.

These three publications address different aspects of spine care—operative technique, patterns of utilisation, and patient safety—but share a common quality: each provides clinically useful information that helps surgeons make better-informed decisions.

Supporting a change in thinking

The influence of a journal, however, cannot be assessed by citation counts alone. Citations are necessarily retrospective. Editorial leadership must also be prospective, creating space for ideas that may not yet be mainstream but have the potential to reshape practice.

The 2020 JSS special series on full-endoscopic spine surgery was an important example (4). At that time, endoscopy was still regarded by many surgeons as a niche technique primarily suited to selected lumbar disc herniations. The special series presented a broader vision, encompassing uniportal and biportal surgery, lumbar stenosis, cervical and thoracic pathology, infection, metastatic disease, revision surgery, navigation, and emerging fusion techniques.

In doing so, JSS supported an important shift in thinking: endoscopy should not be viewed simply as another method of performing a discectomy, but as a surgical platform capable of changing the relationship between pathology, access-related tissue injury, and recovery.

Six years later, that shift is increasingly apparent. Endoscopic techniques are expanding across anatomical regions and indications, supported by improving instrumentation, imaging, training pathways, and clinical evidence. As I have previously argued, endoscopic surgery can provide a tissue-preserving step between failed conservative treatment and more invasive reconstructive surgery, while maintaining future operative options should they become necessary (5). It is now helping to revolutionise contemporary spine care—not merely through smaller incisions, but by challenging assumptions about how much surgical access is required to treat a particular pathology effectively.

Enthusiasm must, of course, remain balanced by evidence. New techniques require structured training, transparent reporting, comparative trials, and long-term follow-up. The role of JSS is neither to promote innovation uncritically nor to obstruct change, but to provide a rigorous academic forum in which emerging ideas can be tested, refined, and responsibly introduced into practice.

The next phase

From January 2026, JSS transitioned from quarterly to monthly publication. Alongside this change, we have refined our editorial processes to support prompt initial assessment, efficient peer review, and timely publication. Speed must never come at the expense of scientific scrutiny; rather, it should reflect the removal of unnecessary administrative delay.

The journal’s achievements belong to its entire community. I extend my sincere thanks to our authors, reviewers, editorial board members, readers, and publishing team. Their collective contributions have transformed JSS from a new journal into an established international platform for spine surgery scholarship.

As we enter our next phase, our responsibility is clear: to remain clinically relevant, scientifically rigorous, internationally inclusive, and willing to support the ideas that will define the future of spine care.

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