Thoughts from an outgoing Editor-in-Chief (2009)

After 5 years as Editor-in-Chief of the European Journal of Heart Failure, it is my pleasure to hand over this responsibility to my successor Dirk J. van Veldhuisen. This period has been extremely interesting and valuable in my professional life. When I succeeded John Cleland and took over all of the initiatives he had started, I was not fully aware what this role would entail. Our Journal had then been in operation for 5 full years and was established in the area of heart failure. Due to the increasing popularity of the Journal with a rapidly increasing impact factor (IF), it was difficult to keep pace with submissions and published manuscripts. A major problem was therefore the long publication time, with more than 1 year from submission to a printed manuscript if accepted. In 2004, there were close to 400 submissions creating about 550 citations in 2003–04, which generated an IF of 2.8. In 2006, we managed to get approval to increase the number of volumes from 6 to 8 annual issues; we subsequently became a monthly journal publishing 12 issues per year. This expansion put major pressure on our figures. When the volume of published papers increases, the corresponding citations must do so as well in order to maintain the IF. After a peak of 3.5 followed by a slight drop, our present IF for 2008 is 3.4, based on around 1000 citations in 2006–07. Our current annual submission rate is around 650 and steady. We have a short publication time and papers can be published on-line 3–4 weeks after acceptance and in print 1–2 months later. We are proud of this achievement. I have been fortunate to work with a number of devoted colleagues on the Editorial Committee and we have had many interesting discussions. Their input has been most important and I want to express my gratitude to them as our Committee has now completed its term of office. In addition, the dedication from the Editorial Office in Hull has been fundamental with Gillie Porter keeping a hand on every submission with the help of Melanie Fletcher. Alison Coletta manages manuscripts once they are accepted in order to make them ready to publish. I have been very dependent on all of them and I am grateful for what they have done. In 2009, we changed Publisher to Oxford University Press (OUP). The collaboration with OUP has been very effective and it has stimulated more collaboration within the ESC family of journals. We now operate a system offering authors of manuscripts rejected by the European Heart Journal, the opportunity to transfer them directly to us. So far, the experience has been very positive. Some experiences have been less rewarding. In a small number of submitted manuscripts, we have detected results which we are convinced have been fabricated. In a couple of situations, the same research groups had published papers from the same data set in other Journals. We are so far not aware of any data falsifications among our published papers and we certainly hope we will not find any. One paper was a clear case of plagiarism regarding an Instrument for assessment of physical activity. All of these situations increase the burden on an Editor, as we have no resources to assist in handling these issues. However, as is stated in our Instructions for Authors, we collaborate in the HEART network where these problems are discussed among Editors. In the HEART network, we are ‘alert to discovering scientific fraud and data falsification, redundant or duplicate publication, and plagiarism’. The best way to counteract fraud is prevention and I encourage everyone to highlight fraud in your institutions and to discuss the prevention of it. It is something from which we all lose, including trust from the general public. The HEART network has now released a web-site to which all participating journals are linked: http//:heartgroupjournals.org, where up-to-date news from all of these journals will be presented. Finally, I am convinced that the European Journal of Heart Failure will continue to develop successfully under the new Editorial Team. I wish them all the best and I will continue to follow the Journal closely, as I have agreed to remain as a Consulting Editor.