Abstract
Last October in these pages [1], Surgical Infections announced that the journal had been accepted by Thomson Reuters for listing in Science Citation Index Expanded (also known as SciSearch®), Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition, and Current Contents/Clinical Medicine, and would be assigned its first impact factor (for 2010). Notification was received in late September that the first impact factor is 1.651. The journal thus ranks in the top 35% of surgical journals (67/188). Not bad. Needs to be higher. There is work to be done.
The impact factor for 2010 is based on the 844 citations of the journal in 2010 of papers published in 2008 or 2009. Now comes the task of continuing to improve the journal. That the journal has an impact factor will attract more, better-quality submissions worthy of citation by the scientific and medical communities, which in turn will increase the impact factor further.
The journal needs high-quality content (that will be worthy of citation by others). Please support the journal by submitting your best work. If you are writing for submission here or elsewhere, and it would be appropriate to cite Surgical Infections, please do so. Review articles are of particular importance, as they tend to be well cited; as an example, publication of review articles based on symposium presentations at the Surgical Infection Society (SIS) annual meetings is now an annual event [2–10]. The SIS guidelines are an important source of timely citations. Publication of new guidelines [11,12] and updating of existing ones is a major work product of the society, and a benefit to SIS members and the surgical community overall.
Work is proceeding editorially to increase the journal's prestige. Beginning in December, an editorial commentary authored by Donald E. Fry [13] will be published to accompany an original article [14]. Others will be solicited; if you are invited to contribute, please avail yourself of the opportunity, recognizing that the timeline for completion will of necessity be short. Meeting abstracts for 2011 were published as a supplement to the journal [15]; it is hoped to do so going forward. This preserves visibility for authors and presenters, and provides cost savings to SIS (by reducing the cost of printing a program book), but does not have an adverse effect on the calculation of the impact factor, Case reports are being de-emphasized; they consume editorial pages and are cited seldom, which is to the detriment of the impact factor calculation. Although a moratorium has not been declared (recognizing that occasional reports may have value), the backlog of accepted case reports will be published by mid-2012, after which they will be accepted only if especially noteworthy.