2022 JTT Statistics and Acknowledgements

The ongoing adoption of telehealth and associated research continues to strengthen through the COVID-19 pandemic, but in retrospect, the Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare (JTT) has maintained a key role in sharing knowledge and expertise in telehealth and digital healthcare for almost three decades. Established in 1994 by founding Editor Emeritus Professor Richard Wootton, the JTT continues to be a leading source of scientific evidence reports, formal reviews, perspectives, and instructional advice on telehealth. ¹ The recent pandemic might have had a pivotal role in generating public awareness of telehealth (albeit in the form of telephone and video consultations), but the ongoing need for evidence to support ‘telehealth-enabled’ models of care remain just as important as ever before. ² There is no doubt that telehealth is contributing to the transformation of our health system. The drivers for change remain: how do we make our health services more clinically and economically efficient, more accessible, and more patient centric?

From an editor's perspective, we can gauge telehealth advancement by the number, diversity and quality of manuscripts being submitted to the journal. Since the onset of the pandemic, the total number of manuscripts being submitted to the journal doubled, and this trend remains unchanged. In the last 12 months, a total of 1041 manuscripts were submitted to the JTT. Of these, about 25% were sent out for peer-review after editorial consultation, and about the same proportion were referred to alternative journals (such as discipline-specific publications).

Appraisal of manuscripts in a timely manner is always a challenge, although we still believe that the JTT turn-around time for the first decision (within a month) is exceptionally good compared to other Q1 scientific journals. We appreciate that there are perceived delays in handling manuscripts, but the timeframes do depend on workload, editorial review processes, reviewer availability and response times, and the return of author revisions. We appreciate that every submission made to the JTT is important, and we are doing our best to ensure a speedy response.

The Impact Factor of 6.344 is the highest ever score to date for the JTT. In terms of ranking, the JTT is the leading journal in its field and is in the top 15% of all journals in the category of Health Care Sciences and Services. These achievements reflect the efforts of the JTT editorial and production teams, authors, peer-reviewers, and our international readers.

Publication statistics

Publication statistics are of interest (for different reasons) to author, subscriber and publisher alike. They also allow the identification of long-term trends relating to the JTT. During 2022, the average length of time from submission to the first decision was 21 days. The average length of time between the submission of a manuscript and a final decision was 23 days. In 2022, the average days from acceptance to publication online are 26 days. The proportion of submitted papers accepted for publication in the JTT remains at around 10%.

Bibliometric statistics

Bibliometric statistics are compiled each year by Clarivate Analytics. The JTT is included in the ‘Health Care Sciences and Services’ category which covers 109 journals in the Journal Citation Reports. The ratio between the number of citations and the number of articles published gives the impact factor. The JTT published 221 citable articles and received 1402 citations. The JTT's impact factor was 6.344 and the journal ranked 12th out of 109 and is in the first quartile in this category.

Box 1

Key facts

The JTT is a peer-reviewed specialist journal which:

Covers all aspects of telemedicine and telecare, including e-health and digital healthcare

Is published 10 times per year

Has an impact factor of 6.344

Has a five-year impact factor of 6.338

The JTT is an international publication and:

Over 270,000 copies of papers are downloaded from the online journal each year

The majority of papers published are from Western Europe, North America or Australia.

During 2022:

The acceptance rate for papers was 9.6%

The average time for refereeing research papers was 21 days

The average time from submission to providing a final decision was 23 days

The average time between acceptance and publication online was 26 days.

Electronic access

All subscribers are entitled to access the full-text electronic version of the Journal at no extra cost (see https://journals-sagepub-com-s.web.bisu.edu.cn/home/jtt). Online issues dating back to Volume 1 (1995) are available. Free online access for subscribers will continue in 2023. Online access is becoming increasingly popular with subscribers and access to abstracts and full-text downloading continues to grow. Usage figures for 2022 are summarised in Table 1.

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Table 1.

Online usage.

	2020	2021	2022
Full-text downloads	258,631	290,448	273,589
Abstract views	501,423	531,072	409,123
Table of contents views	35,221	41,633	20,121

Professor Anthony Smith Editor-in-Chief Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare Professor Gary Doolittle Co-Editor Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare