Radiol med (2013) 118:1257–1258 DOI 10.1007/s11547-013-0970-7
EDITORIAL EDITORIALE
La Radiologia Medica Progress Report Andrea Giovagnoni © Springer-Verlag 2013
Dear Colleagues, On October 14, 1913, the Executive Board of the Italian Society of Medical Radiology (SIRM) unanimously accepted the proposal of Prof. Felice Perussia to establish the official journal of the Society, called La Radiologia Medica. The first issue was published in January 1914 and for a hundred years the journal has continuously represented the most important tool for the scientific and educational updating of Italian radiologists. After a century of history, at a time of great vitality of Italian radiology La Radiologia Medica, while continuing in its role as the official organ of SIRM, captures the new and advanced needs of members and prepares for a new challenge. As recently reported [1], it is my great pleasure to confirm that the first 2014 issue of La Radiologia Medica, now a monthly journal, will be published only in the English language and online: SIRM has decided to increase its scientific contribution to radiology through an official Englishlanguage journal. At the same time, SIRM has created a new Italian-language journal, Il Giornale Italiano di Radiologia Medica, which will be published bimonthly and distributed in paper format, to complement the online La Radiologia Medica in the task of providing professional updating and education to members. Electronic publishing compared with print-only articles has many advantages: rapid turnover time from submission to publication, lower costs related to printing, ease of archiving and retrieval, instantaneous retrieval of references, and the possibility to publish larger documents with colour and movies economically [2]. La Radiologia Medica has always published high-quality radiological research papers, maintaining its positioning as a multidisciplinary journal covering all clinical and technical aspects of diagnostic imaging, radiotherapy, medical physics and radiobiology. The multidisciplinary approach of the journal La Radiologia Medica allows readers to keep up-to-date with developments in their own fields and related areas. At least two special issues with
Guest Editors will be considered each year in order to make the journal an effective tool for scientific and professional updates on fields of particular relevance. Our table of contents will include high-quality original research and focused review articles (generally commissioned) in each issue. Editorials (usually solicited), short communications and letters to the editor are also potentially considered for publication. La Radiologia Medica, as many other radiological journals, uses a workflow solution called Editorial Manager (EM) to manage all the peer review process: the EM software contains a number of handy tools for streamlining the editorial and review workflow, including a feature that automatically suggests appropriate reviewers on the basis of their field of interest. The hard work of reviewing is performed by numerous referees including the members of the full Scientific Editorial Board: the journal will be attractive to authors if the review turnaround time is short, and electronic publication is rapid. A peer-reviewed journal cannot function without reviewers: skilled manuscript reviewers from many countries outside of Italy will be added to our team. Of course, high-level peer review performance should be considered crucial to maintain high-quality standards and avoid publishing manuscripts of low quality. I encourage our reviewers to accept articles that discuss procedures and advances that could have an impact on the practice of radiology. A good journal raises consciousness and, indeed, sometimes raises eyebrows [3]. The peer review process can also produce possible errors, plagiarism, and exaggeration to the attention of the editor and readers of the journal [3]. In particular, the primary responsibility for avoiding plagiarism lies with the authors. It is the duty of the authors to produce work that is solely their own and to correctly attribute material taken from other sources [4]. The issue of appropriate authorship will also be focused on by the editors and reviewers of La Radiologia Medica. Authorship credit should be based on: (1) substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation
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of data; (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and (3) final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3 [5]. In addition, the problems associated with conflicts of interest in biomedical research and scientific publications will be strongly considered. Every scientific journal is challenged by the need to know how well it is satisfying its purposes. Measures of success include the international ranking of the journal, the productivity of scientists who publish in the journal, the frequency of article downloads, the number of manuscripts submitted to the journal, and the rate at which articles are accepted or rejected [6]. The Impact Factor (IF) plays a role in the evaluation of a journal’s impact, but the role is limited and should not prevail over common sense. The Impact Factor is most often used to measure the scientific quality of bio-
medical journals. The 2-year IF of La Radiologia Medica is now 1.461, as reported by the Journal Citation Report 2012 published by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). Based upon the 2-year IF, the journal is ranked 67 of 120 imaging journals. We intend to continue to provide our readers with essential, up-to-date material; our journal must enhance current and future radiology practice and serve as a constant reminder that the health of the patient comes first. A new challenge awaits us in the coming years. The hope is that manuscript submissions to La Radiologia Medica from outside of Italy will continue to increase, facilitated by the online process and by the English-only publication. As for Italian authors, we hope that the new editorial policy will ensure to all of them the international exposure their work deserves.
References/Bibliografia 1. Giovagnoni A (2012) La radiologia medica: looking to future challenges in full awareness of a prestigious past. Radiol med 117:1273–1274 2. Collins J (2005) The future of academic publishing: what is open access? J Am Coll Radiol 2: 321–326
3. Stanley RJ (2005) To peer review or not to peer review: that seems to be the question. AJR 185:1101 4. Strouse PJ, Slovis TL, Sebag G (2011) Concerning plagiarism. Pediatr Radiol 41: 407–408
5. Stanley RJ (2005) Authorship in the AJR. AJR 185:1–2 6. Hendee W, Bernstein MA, Levine D (2012) Scientific journals and impact factors. Skeletal Radiol 41:127–128
Prof. Andrea Giovagnoni Editor-in-Chief
EDITORIAL EDITORIALE
La Radiologia Medica Progress Report Andrea Giovagnoni © Springer-Verlag 2013
Dear Colleagues, On October 14, 1913, the Executive Board of the Italian Society of Medical Radiology (SIRM) unanimously accepted the proposal of Prof. Felice Perussia to establish the official journal of the Society, called La Radiologia Medica. The first issue was published in January 1914 and for a hundred years the journal has continuously represented the most important tool for the scientific and educational updating of Italian radiologists. After a century of history, at a time of great vitality of Italian radiology La Radiologia Medica, while continuing in its role as the official organ of SIRM, captures the new and advanced needs of members and prepares for a new challenge. As recently reported [1], it is my great pleasure to confirm that the first 2014 issue of La Radiologia Medica, now a monthly journal, will be published only in the English language and online: SIRM has decided to increase its scientific contribution to radiology through an official Englishlanguage journal. At the same time, SIRM has created a new Italian-language journal, Il Giornale Italiano di Radiologia Medica, which will be published bimonthly and distributed in paper format, to complement the online La Radiologia Medica in the task of providing professional updating and education to members. Electronic publishing compared with print-only articles has many advantages: rapid turnover time from submission to publication, lower costs related to printing, ease of archiving and retrieval, instantaneous retrieval of references, and the possibility to publish larger documents with colour and movies economically [2]. La Radiologia Medica has always published high-quality radiological research papers, maintaining its positioning as a multidisciplinary journal covering all clinical and technical aspects of diagnostic imaging, radiotherapy, medical physics and radiobiology. The multidisciplinary approach of the journal La Radiologia Medica allows readers to keep up-to-date with developments in their own fields and related areas. At least two special issues with
Guest Editors will be considered each year in order to make the journal an effective tool for scientific and professional updates on fields of particular relevance. Our table of contents will include high-quality original research and focused review articles (generally commissioned) in each issue. Editorials (usually solicited), short communications and letters to the editor are also potentially considered for publication. La Radiologia Medica, as many other radiological journals, uses a workflow solution called Editorial Manager (EM) to manage all the peer review process: the EM software contains a number of handy tools for streamlining the editorial and review workflow, including a feature that automatically suggests appropriate reviewers on the basis of their field of interest. The hard work of reviewing is performed by numerous referees including the members of the full Scientific Editorial Board: the journal will be attractive to authors if the review turnaround time is short, and electronic publication is rapid. A peer-reviewed journal cannot function without reviewers: skilled manuscript reviewers from many countries outside of Italy will be added to our team. Of course, high-level peer review performance should be considered crucial to maintain high-quality standards and avoid publishing manuscripts of low quality. I encourage our reviewers to accept articles that discuss procedures and advances that could have an impact on the practice of radiology. A good journal raises consciousness and, indeed, sometimes raises eyebrows [3]. The peer review process can also produce possible errors, plagiarism, and exaggeration to the attention of the editor and readers of the journal [3]. In particular, the primary responsibility for avoiding plagiarism lies with the authors. It is the duty of the authors to produce work that is solely their own and to correctly attribute material taken from other sources [4]. The issue of appropriate authorship will also be focused on by the editors and reviewers of La Radiologia Medica. Authorship credit should be based on: (1) substantial contributions to conception and design, or acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation
1258
Radiol med (2013) 118:1257–1258
of data; (2) drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and (3) final approval of the version to be published. Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, and 3 [5]. In addition, the problems associated with conflicts of interest in biomedical research and scientific publications will be strongly considered. Every scientific journal is challenged by the need to know how well it is satisfying its purposes. Measures of success include the international ranking of the journal, the productivity of scientists who publish in the journal, the frequency of article downloads, the number of manuscripts submitted to the journal, and the rate at which articles are accepted or rejected [6]. The Impact Factor (IF) plays a role in the evaluation of a journal’s impact, but the role is limited and should not prevail over common sense. The Impact Factor is most often used to measure the scientific quality of bio-
medical journals. The 2-year IF of La Radiologia Medica is now 1.461, as reported by the Journal Citation Report 2012 published by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI). Based upon the 2-year IF, the journal is ranked 67 of 120 imaging journals. We intend to continue to provide our readers with essential, up-to-date material; our journal must enhance current and future radiology practice and serve as a constant reminder that the health of the patient comes first. A new challenge awaits us in the coming years. The hope is that manuscript submissions to La Radiologia Medica from outside of Italy will continue to increase, facilitated by the online process and by the English-only publication. As for Italian authors, we hope that the new editorial policy will ensure to all of them the international exposure their work deserves.
References/Bibliografia 1. Giovagnoni A (2012) La radiologia medica: looking to future challenges in full awareness of a prestigious past. Radiol med 117:1273–1274 2. Collins J (2005) The future of academic publishing: what is open access? J Am Coll Radiol 2: 321–326
3. Stanley RJ (2005) To peer review or not to peer review: that seems to be the question. AJR 185:1101 4. Strouse PJ, Slovis TL, Sebag G (2011) Concerning plagiarism. Pediatr Radiol 41: 407–408
5. Stanley RJ (2005) Authorship in the AJR. AJR 185:1–2 6. Hendee W, Bernstein MA, Levine D (2012) Scientific journals and impact factors. Skeletal Radiol 41:127–128
Prof. Andrea Giovagnoni Editor-in-Chief
