When I took over as editor-in-chief of the Annals from John Lumley, I posed the question ‘What makes the Annals fit for purpose?’. My concern was to ensure that the Annals provided a wide spectrum of surgical endeavour, concentrating on clinical and technical activities. Objective assessment of success can be difficult but I have considered the traditional markers:
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The impact factor (Fig. 1). This has increased significantly and indeed nearly doubled since 2002.
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Online usage (Fig. 2). This has shown a huge increase in activity and now reaches 16,000 ‘hits’ per month.
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Manuscript submission. This has increased by 10% year-on-year and we received over 750 papers in 2005.
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Correspondence. I encourage readers to comment on the format and content of the Annals. Correspondence received so far has been favourable. Any form of feedback is greatly appreciated.
Figure 1.
Annals impact factor
Figure 2.
Overview of online usage
I am extremely grateful to David Atkins (Annals manager) and Hannah Chinery (publishing assistant) for their unstintingassistance and hard work. Gill and Bruce Haddock (production editors) provide an outstanding service with consistent high standards.
My thanks to the entire editorial board, with particular mention to Colin Johnson (review editor), who recently joined the editorial team and has acquired an outstanding collection of review articles.
Now is probably an appropriate time to remind readers about how and why you should use the DOI (digital object identifier) appearing at the head of each article in the Annals. The DOI is a permanent, unique identifier that underlies the seamless linking from reference lists to abstracts on the web between journals hosted by different publishers. It is this permanence that is the key; it no longer matters if a journal changes publisher and/or the web address changes, the DOI remains the same and offers the easiest option for identifying and locating a specific article on the internet.
Whenever citing your Annals, or for that matter Bulletin, articles, whether the print or online versions, you should always include the DOI as this will allow the reader to access, at the very least, the abstract of your paper.
Finally, my sincere thanks once again to our dedicated team of reviewers, without whose help the journal would flounder.
Signatures
On behalf of the editorial team, I wish our readers a happy, healthy and successful New Year!