Bax, J.J.

Iskandrian, A.E.

Leiden University Scholary Publications

The role of editorsIskandrian, A.E.; Bax, J.J.CitationIskandrian, A. E., & Bax, J. J. (2021). The role of editors. Journal Of Nuclear Cardiology, 29,1-3. doi:10.1007/s12350-021-02862-w Version: Publisher's VersionLicense: Creative Commons CC BY 4.0 licenseDownloaded from: https://hdl.handle.net/1887/3279736 Note: To cite this publication please use the final published version (if applicable).EDITOR’S PAGEThe Role of EditorsAmi E. Iskandrian, MD,MASNC,a and Jeroen J. Bax, MD, PhDba Professor Emeritus, Division of Cardiovascular Diseases, Department of Medicine, University ofAlabama at Birmingham, Birminghamb Leiden University Medical Centre, Leiden, The NetherlandsReceived Nov 10, 2021; accepted Nov 10, 2021doi:10.1007/s12350-021-02862-wMost scientific journals, including ours, haveguidelines as to the number of words (happily not let-ters!) for submitted manuscripts, although the number ofwords might vary. According to Merriam-Webster dic-tionary, the average number of letters in an English wordis 4.79 but the longest word has 45 letters (Pneu-monoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis)! Onereason is uniformity and another is the cost of printedpapers.There is no reason to believe that long words aremore important than shorter ones and more or bigger isnot a virtue in general. Someone has said, ‘‘It does notmatter how big your house is, how much money youhave, or that you wear expensive cloths. Our graves willbe the same size. Stay humble.’’The peer review process is the best we have but it iscertainly not perfect. The Editor-in Chief (EIC) relies onthe comments of 2 reviewers (usually), the comments ofthe Associate Editor (AE) or Guest Editor (GE) plus his/her own evaluation. We rely heavily on our editorialBoard members but many of our reviewers are not onour Board, and we are indebted to their sacrifices andcontributions. The reviewers are selected based on theirexpertise in the subject under consideration. As can beexpected, some reviewers are more critical than othersand some provide a more thorough assessment thanothers. Also, different reviewers have a different focusand may therefore vary significantly in opinions. In fact,it is rare that 2 reviewers with the same scientificinterest/focus raise the same points/comments in theirreviews.The editors are aware of these many differences,which are factored in when the final decision is made.The final disposition is made by the EIC, and it is indeeda big responsibility.Our team of editors is exemplary in terms of theirdedication, expertise, and fairness and by workingtogether over many years has come to be in synchrony interms of the decision-making process. We also haveamazing and dedicated Board members to whom we allare extremely grateful. We welcome our new members(Table 1).Some manuscripts receive a uniform endorsementfor acceptance or rejection as they progress through thetiered evaluation process, but others receive split deci-sions and in these cases, many factors are consideredReprint requests: Ami E. Iskandrian, MD,MASNC, Professor Emeri-tus, Division of Cardiovascular Diseases, Department of Medicine,University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham;aiskandrian@asnc.orgJ Nucl Cardiol 2022;29:1–3.1071-3581/$34.00Copyright  2021 The Author(s) under exclusive licence to AmericanSociety of Nuclear CardiologyTable 1. New JNC Editorial Members1. Cigdem Akincioglu, MD (Canada)2. Ian Armstrong, PhD (UK)3. Parthi Arumugam, MD (UK)4. Maria João Vidigal Ferreira, MD (Portugal)5. Gabriel Grossman, MD (Brazil)6. Hendrik (Hans) Harms, PhD (Denmark)7. Felix Keng Yung Jih, MD (Singapore)8. Jacek Kwiecinski, MD, PhD (Poland)9. Rafael W Lopes, MD, PhD, (Brazil)10. Teresa Massardo, MD (Chile)11. Leon Menezes, MD (UK)12. Cláudio Tinoco Mesquita, MD (Brazil)13. Jonathan Nye, PhD (USA)14. René R. Sevag Packard, MD, PhD (USA)15. Amalia Peix, MD (Cuba)16. Christopher Rischpler, MD, PhD (Germany)17. Rebecca Schofield, MD (UK)18. Michelle Williams, MD (UK)19. Habib Zaidi, MSc, PhD, PD (Switzerland)1and are unique to each manuscript. In addition, a thirdreviewer is sometimes consulted to obtain an additionalopinion, although that often adds to delay and is notalways helpful and we discourage it at our Journal.We all take the review process very seriouslybecause we, like the authors, are also authors ourselvesand can relate to the impact of the decision. All journalswould prefer publishing manuscripts that provide a newand news-breaking knowledge that have major impactson patient care and well-being; parenthetically ‘‘Newknowledge gained’’ is now a requirement in all acceptedmanuscripts by our Journal–constantly striving forongoing development, improvement, and perfectionism!On the other hand, we believe there is a room and aneed for papers that add confirmatory evidence, espe-cially if the studies are conducted in differentinstitutions, involve different patient populations,instrumentations, analyses, sample size, multi-institu-tional, etc. The notion that a paper should be rejectedbecause a ‘‘similar’’ study was published by anothergroup in a different journal is not a valid reason, in ouropinion. In addition, confirmatory evidence is highlyneeded to gain more confidence in the specific topicbeing discussed.It should also be mentioned here that almost allaccepted manuscripts undergo various degrees of revi-sions and almost always are much improved comparedto the original submission. At times, the science is valid,but the paper is not well packaged, due often to, but notalways, language barriers. We often spend considerabletime editing such papers and our ‘‘Mentoring at Dis-tance Committee’’ (chaired by Frans J.Th. Wackers,MD) has been of tremendous help in working method-ically with the authors, at times for many months. This,however, significantly improves articles and helpsauthors improve their skills.Our Journal is unique in that it is the only journal inthe world that caters specifically to nuclear cardiology.The other imaging journals in the USA and Europe dealwith either multi-modality imaging or multi-systemimaging or both. This fact creates challenges andopportunities. Our readers have different needs from ourauthors. Much of our constituency are eager forknowledge that improves their health care delivery totheir patients. Our authors are interested in that too butalso in career development, promotions, and recogni-tions. These different needs, however, make the journala unique vehicle for the community dedicated to thefield of nuclear cardiology.Here comes the metrics that are used to evaluate ajournal’s performance. There are many of these metrics,but for sake of discussion we will address the impactfactor (IF) and number of downloads. We should make itclear that the Journal’s impact is not the same as the IFof the journal and that a single specialty journal like oursis different from general journals. It should also beindicated that specialty journals as ours will not publishthe large randomized controlled trials as published in,for example, the New England Journal of Medicine andare therefore not comparable in terms of IFs.In any case, we are pleased to note that the IF of ourJournal for the year 2020 has been the highest in the 27-year history of the Journal. The credit goes to the teamefforts of editors, reviewers, authors, readers, managingeditors, and the support of ASNC, as the Journal is theofficial publication of the Society.The downloads have also increased. The numbersfor the last 5 years are shown in Figure 1. The number ofFigure 1. The number of download of articles printed in the Journal of Nuclear Cardiology (JNC)over the past 5 years.2 Iskandrian and Bax Journal of Nuclear CardiologyThe Role of Editors January/February 2022downloads has its own limitations as not everyonedownloads all papers or any paper, he/she reads (we donot!). Accordingly, this marker of success should also becarefully interpreted.Some published papers (often after many years)become the basis for awarding Nobel prizes. Nobelprizes are awarded in Medicine/Physiology, Physics,Chemistry, Literature, Peace, and Economics. Table 2shows the winners in Medicine/Physiology and Physicsover the past 5 years. One of the 2021 winners is 90years old.Nobel prizes are awarded for ‘discoveries’’ and notfor a single paper, the number of words in a paper, thenumber of papers published by an author, the institution,or the country of residence. Some prizes are awarded tomore than one person working in different institutions orcounties.It is very unlikely that winning the Nobel Prize wasthe driving force for these authors when they publishedtheir initial work but rather their passion and devotion totheir areas of expertise. The manuscripts of NobelLaureates very likely underwent a rigorous review pro-cess as did other manuscripts received by the journals.The truth is that it is very difficult in advance to knowwhich paper or which discovery will one day be con-sidered worthy of a Nobel Award. I doubt that anyjournal has a category that marks the paper as ‘‘NobelAward potential’’ when accepting it, and this highlightsthe difficulty of predicting the importance of all articles.Humility, fairness, responsiveness, and timelinessare principles that must guide all of us who are involvedin the decision-making process.The rejection/acceptance rates and ratios are lessimportant and are artificial and could be manipulated;therefore, the emphasis should be on the merits of thepapers. It is very easy to reject any paper just to increasethe rejection rate and even worse rejecting worthypapers simply to decrease a backlog. The backlog andcosts of publishing and mailing are among the reasonswhy some journals adopted publishing online only. OurJournal publishes accepted papers online but also inprint based on the preference of our readers. The onlineversion appears approximately 2 weeks after the paper isaccepted and can be cited.Madam Marie Curie was the first women to receivethe Nobel Prize in Physics and the only person to receivea second Nobel Prize. Hopefully, it is time for one of ourcontributors to receive such an Award, but if the past isany indication for predicting the future, we may haveunderestimated the relevance of such a seminal work!That will be a forgivable mistake!DISCLOSURESThere are no conflict of interestPublisher’s Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard tojurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.Table 2. The Nobel Prize in physics and medicine and physiology 2016-2020Physics2021: Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann for the physical modeling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability,and reliably predicting global warming and to Giorgio Parisi for the discovery of the interplay of disorder andfluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales2020: Roger Penrose for the discovery that black hole formation and Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez for thediscovery of a supermassive compact object at the center of our galaxy.2019: James Peebles for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology and to Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz forthe discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star.2018: Arthur Ashkin for the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems and to Gérard Mourou andDonna Strickland for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses.2017: Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and theobservation of gravitational waves.Physiology or medicine2021: David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch.2020: Harvey J. Alter, Michael Houghton, and Charles M. Rice for their discovery of Hepatitis C virus.2019: William G. Kaelin Jr, Sir Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza for their discoveries of how cells sense andadapt to oxygen availability.2018: James P. Allison and Tasuku Honjo for their discovery of cancer therapy by inhibition of negative immuneregulation.2017: Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young for their discoveries of molecular mechanismscontrolling the circadian rhythm.Journal of Nuclear Cardiology Iskandrian and Bax 3Volume 29, Number 1;1–3 The Role of Editors

The role of editors

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