I’m very pleased to see and acknowledge that Annals of Hepatalogy attracts more readers and gains more influence every year. It’s been a strenuous effort to make this possible and I want to express my deepest thanks to everyone involved: the readers themselves, the authors and, specially, the members of the Editorial Board. The fruitfulness of the effort and the support that has come into our journal shows itself in the growth of its impact factor rate from 1.67 in 2010 to 1.86 in 2011. I’m proud and happy to see how our common effort throughout these nine years has attained really extraordinary results.
As the importance of Annals of Hepatology grows, so does the number of quality manuscripts submitted to it. In the last two years these number has been so considerable that it will now be possible to increase the periodicity of our journal, which, starting in 2012, will appear every two months. Already, as many you may have noticed, the number of original articles published with each issue has been steadily growing, so that each of the last two issues of 2011 have included fifteen of them. That’s why we’ll limit the publication of case reports to three. We’ll still be receiving letters to the editor and we’ll also continue to publish one or two concise reviews with each issue.
Starting next year also, we’ll implement a computerized editorial system which will make it far easier for authors to submit their manuscripts, for reviewers and members of the editorial board to evaluate them, and for readers to find the information they need.
We expect that these changes in the periodicity of the journal, in the superior quality of its content and in the friendliness of its editorial and electronic publishing system will make Annals of Hepatology even more attractive to both authors and readers. I thank them again for their support.
