The Fifth Year of HemaSphere

We proudly present this new issue of HemaSphere, the journal of the European Hematology Association (EHA). HemaSphere is now in its fifth year, publishing a new issue every month with different article types including original articles, letters, case reports as well as guidelines, controversies, and review articles. In the HemaTopics part of the journal, our scientific editors discuss selected important articles that were published in other international journals. In addition, this is also the section where you can find editorials, policy papers, and information on the activities of EHA.

For the first time, this June issue is different and completely dedicated to the exciting scientific content of the 2021 EHA annual congress. We offer a preview for the award winners who will be celebrated at the congress, and a collection of review and perspective articles written by selected speakers from the congress. This creates a series of articles on important topics in the hematology field, which can be read either separately or complimentary to the EHA2021 lectures.

In each new issue of HemaSphere, we aim to publish strong review articles, discussing recent advances in the field, or controversy articles¹ for those areas with less clear available data. In 2019, we had a successful review series on CAR-T cell therapy with highly cited articles.^2,3 We are currently publishing review articles related to the growing field of gene therapy in hematology, and in the next year, we will focus on the recent changes in our understanding of hematopoiesis.

HemaSphere is becoming a leading journal in the field publishing highly relevant basic, translational and clinical original research in hematology. This year, we have already published 18 original articles, 9 letters, and 11 case reports. As previous EHA board members, we have witnessed EHA’s dedicated support to research in hematology. The EHA board directly supports research through the Fellowships and Grants program and by providing awards to those who made important contributions to the field of hematology and hematology research. In addition, EHA is also directly involved in several EU-funded projects such as HARMONY Alliance. In line with EHA’s vision to support hematology research, HemaSphere was launched as an open access journal to guarantee that the results of research are available for everyone. Moreover, with low publication costs and many other advantages (Table 1), we provide a constructive and scientific environment for publishing. In this way, HemaSphere is ready for the implementation of Plan S.⁴

Table 1.

Advantages of Publishing in HemaSphere

Open access	Manuscripts can be read and cited by everyone, without restrictions
Authors retain copyright	Authors are free to reuse their own figures, tables, and all the data
No submission fee	No restriction to submit your manuscript
Low publication fees	Minimal publication costs, with discounts for EHA members. Research funding should not be used to pay high publication costs
Double-blind review	Reviewers do not see the names of the authors and are less biased
Easy submission	We are flexible at the first submission: no need to reformat your manuscript at this stage
Fast review process	We aim to provide rapid feedback, typically in less than 3 weeks
Academic editors	The editors are experts in the field

With 355 citations in 2020 connected to articles published in 2018 and 2019, HemaSphere is clearly making an impact and is on its way to earning a strong impact factor (Figure 1). For some institutes and granting bodies, the impact factor is important and journals without an impact factor are not considered. Moreover, many authors use the impact factor to determine which journal they consider for submitting their manuscript. As a consequence, HemaSphere has sometimes faced the difficult task of competing for submissions with more established journals in the field. We should, however, not overestimate the importance of the impact factor as there are many other characteristics of a strong journal and other article/journal metrics that can be taken into account.

Figure 1.

Citations to manuscripts published in HemaSphere (source: Web of Science, Clarivate).

Our continued mission is to publish high-quality, influential articles as one of the leading journals in the field. We welcome your manuscript submissions and dedicated readership for years to come.

Disclosures

The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.