Old Co-worker Leaves, New Ones Come and the Journal’s Impact Factor Continues to Rise

Ever since I took over as Editor of Acta Dermato-Venereologica in 1999, Professor Kristian Thestrup-Pedersen has been acting as a Section Editor, specialised in Atopy, Immune-mediated skin diseases and Lymphomas. With his great expertise in dermatology and his many international contacts, combined with an admirable working capacity, he has been of tremendous value for our journal. After 14 years my dear friend has now asked me to relieve him of his duties. As his successor, Professor Regina Fölster-Holst has luckily accepted to take on this assignment. Dr Fölster-Holst is Senior Physician at the Department of Dermatology, Christian-Albrechts-Universität, Kiel, Germany. Her research interests are Paediatric dermatology, Allergic diseases, Atopic dermatitis, and Parasitoses.

Another new co-worker is Hanna Norsted who studied at St Andrews University, UK and received a PhD degree in Molecular Virology. She has since issue 5, 2013 acted as a medical writer at Acta Dermato-Venereologica. Both these new co-workers are warmly welcomed to our Editorial Office and Board.

Acta Dermato-Venereologica is thriving in terms of number of submissions (about 500 annually) and its ranking position among dermatologic journals. Fig. 1 shows the increase in impact factor (IF) over the last 8 years. Judged by the IF, Acta Dermato-Venereologica is now number 2 among the European journals and among the top 9 in the world. There are many factors that can explain the rise in IF. Many readers of our journal say that they are in favour of our succinct way of presenting the papers, avoiding redundant information and too detailed tables and figures in the pdfs, which may instead be referred to as e-supplements. Many of the case reports and pilot studies are eventually published in a much abbreviated form as Letter to the Editor. However, a potential drawback for the authors is that Letters may not count as original reports in the university’s bibliometric analysis. In common with some other journals we have therefore recently changed our terminology so that these types of Letters are now called Short Communications (containing original observations). This change, which is explained in more detail on our website (http://www.medicaljournals.se/acta), will hopefully help the authors to argue that all papers in Acta Dermato-Venereologica should be counted in the bibliometry. From now on Letters to the Editor will only include personal opinions, objections to, or comments on previously published papers.

Anders Vahlquist

Editor-in-Chief