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This current issue of the Journal brings us back to a normal mix of articles with a variety of cryopreservation and biobanking themes. In looking through the contents, I was particularly impressed with the geographic mix. Ten countries are represented among the authors of the 14 Original Articles, Review Articles, and Brief Reports: Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, France, Norway, Poland, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States. Five articles are from authors in China. I was recently in China and visited a number of medical centers and companies with biobanking facilities, in Changsha, Hangzhou, and Shanghai. There is a tremendous interest in ISBER, best practices, sustainability, and emerging issues in biobanking and biopreservation in China. Several major conferences have occurred or will be occurring in China this year: the recent BBCMBA conference in Chengdu; the upcoming Society of Cryobiology conference in Hefei, where ISBER will be a major participant; and the Annual Biobank China meeting in Changsha in December. We hope to continue to see a significant number of submissions to the Journal from China and to follow the exciting developments there.
As part of this update, I also want to report on the Journal's role in the ISBER annual meeting in Toronto. We held an Editorial Board meeting in Toronto, with participation by 15 Board members. We discussed ideas for upcoming themes, and I provided an update on recent Journal statistics. I provided a similar update at the annual ISBER business meeting in Toronto. Continuing on the theme of geographic diversity, during 2016, we received submissions from 30 countries, from A to Z, Australia to Zimbabwe! A total of 119 articles were submitted to Biopreservation and Biobanking during 2016. As we continue to experience a strong rate of submissions, we are able to be more selective in the articles we accept. Over time, this translates into increased readership and full-text downloads, and an increased impact factor, which as noted previously increased by 35% in 2016. During 2016, the Journal's full-text content was downloaded 30,000 times, an increase of 30% over 2015. It was also noteworthy that we received 30 review articles during 2016. Reviews are not only good sources of information and references for our readers, but also they are among the most cited articles.
Continuing the Journal's leadership in addressing the critical topic of sustainability in biobanking, the entire February issue was devoted to this theme. Thanks to Daniel Simeon-Dubach, Marianne Henderson, and Kirstin Goldring for their continuing efforts to organize sustainability sessions at ISBER meetings and compile and edit articles for Journal special sections and issues. Otherwise, in addition to the special section on H3Africa in the April issue, additional highlights from the past year include a two-part review on biobank design and engineering from Baird and Gunter; a special issue on ethical, legal, and social issues coordinated by Tasse and Bledsoe; and excellent review articles that addressed controversial issues, such as the effects of cold ischemia on gene expression, by Grizzle et al. We expect to publish additional special sections and issues over the coming year, and I welcome ideas to address emerging themes in biopreservation and biobanking, especially, topics not addressed by other journals. We are committed to publishing high-quality articles online as soon as possible, in advance of the print version. Thanks to the efforts of our editors and reviewers, our average turnaround time from submission to initial decision is about 26 days.
As always, many thanks to our authors, deputy editors, reviewers, and the publisher's office for their support of the Journal. Our success continues to depend on their efforts. Thanks again!