Gastroenterology Year in Review

Article Outline

• Copyright

As the AGA Institute's flagship journal, Gastroenterology leads the field of digestive, liver, and pancreatic disease, providing readers with a broad mix of original clinical and basic research, translational reviews, timely perspectives, clinical cases with striking images, and practical analyses of emerging diagnostic and treatment technologies. With a 2008 impact factor of 12.6, Gastroenterology has maintained its position in the top 1% of biomedical literature for over a decade. In fact, Gastroenterology ranks in the top 3 of all internal medicine journals and in the top 10 of all broad-based journals. Additionally, its immediacy index is among the highest in the field. The journal continually strives to offer specialists in gastroenterology and hepatology a unique blend of content that serves both the practicing physician and research scientist.

Last year, Gastroenterology received >2,300 submissions of all types, a record high for the journal. Of those submissions, 85% were original research, representing a strong balance of clinical and basic material. The editors maintained that balance in the journal's published work: 40% of accepted papers were clinical and 60% were basic. There was also a healthy mix of accepted papers in the journal's 2 other major categories: liver, pancreas, biliary (46%), and alimentary tract (54%). The editors also endeavored to better serve the journal's hepatobiliary and pancreatic audience by adding a new section, “Clinical Advances in Liver, Pancreas, Biliary.” The objective of this section is to showcase particularly compelling research related to that system.

The journal also continued to emphasize clinical trials in gastroenterology, hepatology, pancreatology, and endoscopy. The results from such trials are critical to the translation from discovery to clinical practice. The board boasts expertise in clinical trial conduct and appraisal with Associate Editors Bacon, Chung, El-Serag, Lewis, Mayer, and Wallace.

Recognizing that a large segment of Gastroenterology's readers consume the journal's content online, a significant focus of the Board of Editors and Editorial Staff in the past year has been to augment the journal's Web presence. To spearhead this effort, the journal added an online editor to the board, charging this individual with developing an overarching vision for the journal's Web site, evaluating online technology to enhance user experience, and creating online-only content. In late 2008, the journal appointed John F. Kuemmerle, MD, AGAF, from the Medical College of Virginia Campus at the Virginia Commonwealth University, to serve as its first online editor. Dr Kuemmerle also oversees the online presence of Gastroenterology's sister journal Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.

In addition to supporting the journal's existing online features such as complementary article linking between Gastroenterology and Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, email alerts RSS (really simply syndication) feeds, social bookmarking via Del.ic.ious, and, CME activities, and news and announcements, Dr Kuemmerle has also been instrumental in developing the journal's recent podcast program, which features interviews and expert opinion with the journal's authors. Such interviews have covered topics ranging from Crohn's disease to gastrointestinal bleeding. User feedback for the podcasts has been positive and the number of downloads for the first half of 2009 has been impressive.

Also under the guidance of Dr Kuemmerle, the journal launched video abstracts this May. This exciting new dimension of the journal showcases authors discussing how their research discoveries contribute to our overall understanding of the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of digestive disease. Dr Kuemmerle encourages authors of all submissions to include video abstracts for consideration.

An additional critical online development has been the indexing of accepted articles on PubMed. At the beginning of this year, Gastroenterology arranged with the National Library of Medicine to allow for newly accepted manuscripts to be immediately indexed in the PubMed database. This means that within just a few days of acceptance, readers can locate Gastroenterology articles in their literature searches on PubMed. These articles are fully citable. Gastroenterology introduced this policy in an effort to disseminate its research as quickly as possible to maintain pace with the ever-increasing flow of information. This policy also serves well authors who are applying for funding—they can easily include the citations of their accepted manuscripts in their applications sooner than ever before.

In the past year, Gastroenterology continued its mission to serve the international community. The journal's Editorial Board—a collection of experts in the field who routinely review and provide content for the journal—boasts an international spirit with members hailing from countries around the world including Israel, Austria, Japan, Italy, and Scotland—just to name a few. Additionally, >60% of the journals' original research in 2008 was submitted from authors outside of the United States. Nearly half of the published work in Gastroenterology was from abroad. The journal continued its international outreach with its translated content, including editions in Turkish, Japanese, and Spanish. Finally, the board added 4 new Consultants to its team: Jean-Michel Pawlotsky from France, Paul Rutgeerts from Belgium, Antoni Castells from Spain, and Michael Schemman from Germany. These experts bring an international perspective to the journal, offering their unique knowledge to the journal's content.

What can you expect from Gastroenterology in the coming year? We will continue to grow our online presence by redesigning our Web site to maximize user experience, provide content that is exclusive to the online environment, and leverage social media tools. One example of online-only content is themed issues: collections of published content focused on a particular topic such as IBD or Barrett's esophagus. Users will also be able to search the journal's online article collections by topic, making specific content easier to find than ever before. We will also expand our international outreach by posting online translated content from our foreign editions.

The Board of Editors will continue to fulfill the mission of Gastroenterology by providing you with up-to-date and authoritative coverage of both basic and clinical gastroenterology and hepatology. We strongly value our readers and endeavor to provide you with content and online features that suit your unique needs—to that end, we welcome your feedback and encourage you to take part in our 2010 readership survey.