Swiss Medical Weekly: 2011 – time to consolidate and confirm

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4414/smw.2011.13151

Dear Readers,

Figure 1

Impact factor.

Looking back on 2010, we can say we have a highly successful year behind us. We did even better than the year before, and that was a really challenging one!

The rejection rate – 50% by the editorial board, another 25% after reviewing – documents a strong but fair selection. Our reviewing process has made substantial advances, the average time to “first decision” being shortened from 46 to 24 days. Here we would like to thank the reviewers and statisticians, who did a splendid job in improving papers accepted later and offering useful advice for rejected ones. For the referee list please visit the SMW website.

The journal’s impact factor has risen again as projected in our forward vision of last year. In the middle of the year we switched to a monthly print version with 4–6 reviews and 6–8 extended abstracts of original papers. Experience and reader response over the first 6 months were highly encouraging, but a real evaluation will be possible only at the end of the coming year.

Also encouraging is the news for authors submitting their work to the SMW. We have been able to halve the time to the first decision, and expect to keep it under 20 days by the end of the year. Furthermore, manuscripts are published online with their definitive citation only a few days after acceptance. Finally, we are an open access journal, in line with the wishes of the academic community, but still do not charge the authors a page fee.

There is one person to whom we would like to express our special gratitude: Professor Andreas Schaffner, who left the editorial board at the end of the year after serving the Swiss Medical Weekly for 13 years. Andreas was editor in chief from 2001 to 2008, presiding over the switch from a German/French to an English-language journal and achieving the first increase in the impact factor (figure 1). He has earned our deep gratitude for his total commitment to the journal and for the perceptive and logical thinking he always brought to the editorial board.

My best wishes to our readers, our reviewers and sponsors for an excellent start to the New Year.

André P. Perruchoud, Editor in chief Swiss Medical Weekly