Throughout this past year, actions have been undertaken to “regenerate” the publishing standards of Annals of Hepatology (AofH). On April 1, 2018, the official inaugural day of our new stage, we announced our renovated Editorial Board comprised of four Co-editors: Drs. Claudio Tiribelli, Norberto Chávez-Tapia, Marco Arrese and Misael Uribe; 20 prominent Associate Editors; a Founding Editor, Dr. Nahum Mendez; and myself. Our goal is to become an international journal of global prestige by publishing cutting-edge scientific research, representative of the American continent, and to provide an option for the international hepatology community [1].
Among other major functions, refreshing the aim and scope of our journal “towards preventing rather than treating end-stage liver diseases” serves as a gateway for author contributions on emerging hepatology topics such as early molecular and clinical diagnosis; strategies for preventing or halting the progression of chronic injury; regionalized and individualized medicine tailored by population; genome-based nutrition; treatment by medication, lifestyle interventions, liver transplantation or gene therapy; and genetic-environmental factor interactions. New items in our Contents include News, Milestones in Hepatology, and Education and Training in Hepatology [2].
After one year of continuous teamwork, several qualitative and quantitative objectives have been reached:
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The integration of 20 prominent Associate Editors distinguished for their contributions in the fields of staple and emerging topics of hepatology; they have been assigned specific functions and are committed to participating more dynamically in journal activities and to ensuring global representativeness;
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A reduction in our processing time from 180 to 49 days – starting with the submission and culminating with the publication of articles;
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Implementation of iThenticate software to prevent plagiarism;
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As many as 20% additional submissions from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Spain and the United States;
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Indexation and abstraction in 21 global databases such as SCOPUS, SIIC, Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), the National Council of Science and Technology in Mexico (CONACYT), the Dietary Supplement (DS) Subset of PubMed, the IE Library, Sciencegate, Web of Science, and the Open Science Directory;
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A new In-Press section containing articles that have been peer-reviewed, accepted and posted online pending publication;
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Achievement of the following citation impact scores according to the 2017 Journal Metrics: 0.651 accorded by Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) 2017; 0.64 by SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) 201; and 1.678 by Journal Citation Reports®;
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Closer contact with our affiliated associations (AMH, ALEH and CASL) and promotion of AoH at national and international congresses;
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Improvements in the AoH web page redounding in enhanced visibility; and
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Inclusion of a declaration of financial and other competing interests in our published articles [3].
In pursuit of an in-depth renovation, the members of the core Editorial Board have engaged in extensive reflections and tough decisions regarding our impact factor. First and foremost, as members of our affiliated associations, we have prioritized the need to submit increasingly higher-quality material to AoH as a sine qua non for achieving increased citations. Furthermore, with the aim of concluding the unresolved publication of works and minimizing response times for new authors, we decided to release articles dating from 2017 [4,5] in our last issue, this at the risk of hindering our future impact factor. Finally, as we approach the first anniversary of our new stage, we are proud to announce that AoH has entered into a partnership with Elsevier. This alliance will substantially upgrade all our publishing phases, from the submission and processing of articles to the marketing and advertising operations of our journal. The new developments will be launched progressively as of April 2019.
Our regrowth would have been impossible without nearly 20 years of uninterrupted funding from the Clinica Medica Sur Foundation, the financial and administrative expertise of Drs. Eduardo Gonzalez Pier and Giota Panopoulou, and the subtle, timely and professional editorial management achieved by Varinia Barberena Chacon. We extend our appreciation to the Associate Editors who handle manuscripts concertedly with our outstanding team of peer-reviewers. Last but not least, Annals of Hepatology acknowledges with gratitude its national and international contributors and readers who position us as one of the best Latin American journals in the field of Hepatology. It is our commitment to continue fulfilling this mission and in fact surpassing – their expectations.
