Greetings from the Editorial Team

Happy New Year, 2023!

I would like to thank all of our readers, reviewers, and potential authors for contributing to Investigative and Clinical Urology (Investig Clin Urol, ICUrology). ICUrology is an international peer-reviewed journal published bimonthly. The journal maintains a platinum open-access policy to solicit high-quality articles from around the world. Since ICUrology received the first impact factor in Journal Citation Reports 2018, we have received manuscript submissions from more than 60 countries worldwide.

The vision of ICUrology is to become your first-choice journal in the field of urology [1]. To pursue this goal, the editorial team has been focusing on the rapid review and publication of high-quality articles. The turnaround time, the mean review period from submission to decision, was 21.3 days in 2022 and the current acceptance rate of the journal is approximately 18.0% because of the limited space for publication. Accepted papers can be published online on the journal’s website (www.icurology.org) before the print format comes out.

A journal’s reviewers are vital to maintaining the quality of journals and peer reviewers work voluntarily for journals. On behalf of the editorial team, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all of our reviewers for their contributions to ICUrology. To recognize the reviewers’ contributions, ICUrology presents awards to our reviewers such as ‘Reviewer of the Month’ and ‘Reviewer of the Year’. In 2022, ‘Reviewer of the Month’ awards were bestowed upon Dr. Young Eun Yoon (Hanyang University College of Medicine, Korea), Dr. Yajun Ruan (Tongji Medical College, China), Dr. Eu Chang Hwang (Chonnam National University Medical School, Korea), Dr. Ohseong Kwon (Hallym University College of Medicine, Korea), and Dr. Jongsoo Lee (Yonsei University College of Medicine, Korea) during the 74th Annual Meeting of the Korean Urological Association on October 6th, 2022. ‘Reviewer of the Year’ was awarded to Dr. Yun-Sok Ha (Kyungpook National University, Korea). In addition, the reviewers can sign up for the Publons service (https://publons.com) to receive recognition.

To encourage high-quality journal article submissions, the ‘Most Cited Article Award’ is given to the ICUrology article with the most citations in Web of Science journals published during the previous year. The ‘Most Cited Article Award 2022’ was presented to two papers. The article titled “Robotic surgical systems in urology: What is currently available?” authored by Koukourikis and Rha [2] was selected in the review article category. The article titled “Gene expression profiling of mouse cavernous endothelial cells for diagnostic targets in diabetes-induced erectile dysfunction” authored by Yin et al. [3] was honored in the original article category.

In 2023, ICUrology will take a big step toward becoming your first-choice journal in urology. There have been several meaningful changes to the structure of the Editorial Board and article types in ICUrology to help improving the quality of the journal. Regarding the Editorial Board, we created new section editor positions to lead the subject sections in the field of urology. The ICUrology article types include original articles, review articles, special articles, innovations in urology, editorials, and letters. The ‘Innovations in Urology’ section will be included in the category of original articles. Additionally, the maximum length of ‘Letters’ submissions will increase to 1,000 words to help facilitate better communication. Please see the ‘Information for Authors’ page on the ICUrololgy website for changes to the detailed article categories and publication types.

ICUrology welcomes high-quality research and innovative studies in both investigative and clinical urology. The Editorial Board will do its best to publish high-quality articles for international scholars and readers. Best wishes,