Abstract
We thank our readers and contributors for braving the COVID era with us. With COVID hopefully in the rear-view mirror, we hope we can count on your continued support and contributions. Although devastating in so many ways, COVID did provide us with time to pause to re-evaluate what is important in our personal and work lives. In collaboration with our innovative publisher, Mary Ann Liebert, we also took COVID as an opportunity to make changes and improvements to the Journal of Endourology and Videourology.
Our implementation of well-defined stone-free criteria has resulted in a growing body of stone literature with unprecedented consistency and reliability. This will hopefully allow the endourology community to better understand and compare future innovations for their true value. We continue to seek ways to be at the forefront of consistent and reliable outcomes reporting in the realm of minimally invasive urology. We look to you as our authors, reviewers, and readers to help identify future opportunities and bring them to our attention. We are listening!
With listening as the theme, we have taken the time to carefully review the recent articles which you, our readers, and the endourologic community, have found to hold the most value. We have increased our editorial focus on clinically important articles and will focus on bringing only the highest quality in vitro and basic science articles to light. We hope that this will bring even more value to you.
Another change we have implemented is a re-fresh of the journal cover. Yes, the wrapper is important and as the leading journal for urologic technology and innovation, we wanted our face to reflect our forward-looking perspective. We have recruited the formidable skills of Dr. Mon Oo Yee who has managed to beautifully unite her artistic skills with the themes and feel of the field of endourology. Please do take some time to marvel at her magnificent work, and we do hope you enjoy the unique nature of our covers each month.
We are now seeing the impact of our hard work. The journal is the premier publication in minimally invasive urologic surgery with over 135,000 downloads in 2022, with a very competitive acceptance rate of 23%, consistent with the most prestigious journals in the world. We remain so very grateful to the many authors who elect to send their high-quality articles to the Journal of Endourology for consideration! Of note Videourology has published videos from over 25 countries, many with close to 5000 downloads, since the journal first started publishing videos in February 2010. All of this hard work has resulted in a further increase of our impact factor that is now a rising 2.7 with a CiteScore of 4.3.
In staying up to date with changes from the endourology community, we will increase our focus on machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) that is clearly one of the most important aspects of endourology in the future. In the next year we will publish two special issues on AI's impact on endourology and we welcome your submissions. We are blessed to have recruited esteemed guest editors, Drs. Glenn Preminger and Roger Sur, for the upcoming special journal editions on AI related to endourology, stone disease, and benign prostatic hyperplasia, and Drs. Prokar Dasgupta and Ashok Hemal for AI related to robotic surgery and oncology.
In addition, the next issue of the Atlas of Videourology to be published in 2024 will add to the modules published in the past four issues of the Atlas. We will also be working on revision of the editorial board with the inclusion of new and diverse talent.
As always, we wish to offer our most sincere thanks to so many. Drs. Arthur Smith and Ralph Clayman created the broad shoulders on which we currently stand tall. MaryAnn Liebert, Marianne Russell, and their dynamic publishing team, especially Jessica Downey, remain strong partners willing to take risks with the intrinsic innovative nature of endourologist. You, the reader, are our raison d'etre, and source of feedback and innovation. Our amazing authors continue to provide increasingly brilliant and innovative content.
The remarkable team of Ms. Debra Caridi and Ms. Michele Paoli work tirelessly to assure our operations. Finally, but certainly not least, our kind reviewers who without fanfare or expectation of reward ensure that only the highest quality articles reach the pages of the journal. To all of you who work so hard to assure the journal's success—thank you.
Please continue to hold our feet to the fire for high expectations in quality and innovation.
Warm regards.
—Jaime Landman, MD, FRCS (Glas)
Professor of Urology and Radiology
Chair, Department of Urology
Director of Minimally Invasive Surgery
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA
USA
—Chandru Sundaram, MD, MBA, FRCS (Eng)
Dr. Norbert Welch and Louise Welch Professor of Urology
Program Director and Director of Minimally Invasive Urologic Surgery
Department of Urology
Indiana University School of Medicine
Indianapolis, IN
USA
—Mantu Gupta, MD, FRCS (Glas)
Professor of Urology
Chair, Mount Sinai West and Morningside Hospitals
Director, Mount Sinai Kidney Stone Center
Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
New York, NY
USA