Looking Back; Looking Forward!

ith this issue, Cellular and Molecular GastroenterW ology and Hepatology begins its second year of publication. By any measure, tremendous progress has been made toward establishing Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology and Hepatology as a valuable resource for the broader gastrointestinal research community. By the numbers, our turnaround time from submission to first decision has remained at fewer than 21 days. Examples of when a decision took longer than 28 days were rare, and reflect our editorial philosophy of examining a manuscript more deeply rather than taking the more expedient route of rejecting articles with conflicting external reviews or other complexities. This editorial philosophy generalizes to treating authors as we would like to be treated. Although not all submissions can be accepted for publication, authors are entitled to serious consideration and a fact-based, fair, and rational assessment of their work. We have strived to explain our editorial decisions, particularly if they were negative. Remarkably, this has led to return thank you letters in several cases. Although we never expected such responses, we do genuinely hope that the critiques provided will improve the work when it eventually is published, even if it cannot be in Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology and Hepatology. This is another way in which Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology and Hepatology is expected to contribute to excellence in gastrointestinal research even beyond work that is presented in this journal. Overall, the Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology and Hepatology acceptance rate has been approximately 30%. This value is somewhat inflated because preselection of fasttrack transfers from Gastroenterology has resulted in an artificially increased acceptance rate. The acceptance rate for direct submissions and those transferred from Gastroenterology by the standard (non–fast track) pathway is approximately 20%. The Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology and Hepatology site has had more than 70,000 page views, 25,000 full-text views, and more than 15,000 unique visitors; all of which attest to the high quality of the articles published. All basic and translational science submissions to Gastroenterology may, at the authors’ request, be simply and rapidly transferred to Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology and Hepatology. If a manuscript was reviewed externally at Gastroenterology, the reviews are transferred with the submission by the fast-track process. The Board of Editors releases a decision within 1 week (usually within a few days). If the decision is to invite a revision, the expectations as to which changes are needed are described. When a resubmission is received, it may be sent back to the original external reviewers, new external reviewers, or handled by the Board of Editors without external review, depending on the extent of revision required. Manuscripts transferred from Gastroenterology to Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology and Hepatology after rejection with internal review only are first screened for scope. If they fit within the spectrum of Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology and Hepatology publications, these manuscripts generally then are sent for external review by the standard process. Nevertheless, the authors benefit because the transfer is simple and requires little effort on their part. There is no need for reformatting, re-uploading, or any other work in this process. Finally, many have asked us whether we are indexed in PubMed and when there will be an impact factor. With regard to the former, we are not yet indexed in PubMed. The request for indexing requires a minimum number of issues and articles published. We have now surpassed the threshold for early indexing and submitted our request several months ago. When we are accepted, all articles published in Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology and Hepatology will be indexed back to our first issue. Until then, Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology and Hepatology articles deposited in PubMed Central are available in PubMed. We will not know our first impact factor until June 2018. This is because 3 years of data (2015, 2016, and 2017) are required to calculate an impact factor and there is then a lag until results are calculated and released. Despite our interest in knowing the impact factor, we should make it clear that we do not and will not consider citation impact when evaluating manuscripts. Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology and Hepatology is sharply focused on scientific impact and rigor.