European Heart Journal – Acute Cardiovascular Care moving onwards and upwards

I feel honoured to have been chosen to become Editor-in-Chief of European Heart Journal-Acute Cardiovascular Care (EHJ-ACVC). I realise that I have been charged with piloting an ACVC (Association for Acute CardioVascular Care)-charged super engine along the acute cardiovascular care highway that plunges through the medical publishing galaxy. The ambition for EHJ-ACVC is to best represent our community and to foster and disseminate our research. Despite being the official journal of the ESC-ACVC association, EHJ-ACVC indisputably needs to become truly global. The ESC-ACVC association has grown in size, scientific diversity, and cultural wealth. So must the EHJ-ACVC! The numbers of accessed and downloaded articles need to increase further, as do the citations. EHJ-ACVC needs to compete on impact factor in the intensive care and cardiology arenas. Over the last decade, EHJ-ACVC profoundly improved its profile and metrics. However, EHJ-ACVC has not yet fulfilled its full potential. The journal must therefore continue onwards and upwards. Our success can only be built on a foundation of brilliant authors striving to address relevant clinical questions by applying appropriate methods, skilled reviewers intent on guiding authors towards improving their work, and gifted editors dedicating their valuable time to share their hard-earned wisdom. Quality editors attract quality papers! One obvious area for improvement is identification of the best work among the many excellent submissions via initial manuscript selection, peer review, and internal discussion. Another task consists in offering editing and rewriting of accepted manuscripts by professionals with expertise in science, the English language, and EHJ-ACVC style. We target both substance and form! Speed of the review and publication process should become our hallmark for all articles, not only those designated for 10-day profile submissions. Decisions are needed within 3 days when manuscripts are not sent out for review, within 3 weeks overall for 85% of submissions and within 7 days on average for 10-day profile submissions. Key performance indicators for the peer review process (i.e. time from submission to reviewer assignment or initial rejection, time to first review, and time to publication) will be featured online on the journal website. We will ask for extraordinary efforts from editors and reviewers to shorten the submission turnover time. A speedy review process relies heavily on high quality reviewers. EHJ-ACVC will acknowledge its ten top-ranking reviewers in the journal and on the website. These reviewers will also receive a certificate from the journal to recognize review effort. Medical journals are often perceived as working behind closed doors to apply enigmatic procedures that they have no wish to disclose. The Editor-in-Chief is thus seen as holding the keys to the mystery of how to get published. This should be different for EHJ-ACVC: the goals developed by the editorial board must be broadcast clearly and regularly to ensure a harmonious channelling of energies. The editorial line defined in the last few years by the Editorial Board will be refined, but the principles in place will remain. As indicated , the journal should breathe the ESC-ACVC association, and reflect current and future trends in the field of intensive and acute cardiovascular care. EHJ-ACVC aims for high quality original papers that include critically ill cardiovascular patients with clear messages for all physicians working in the field. Manuscripts providing new findings from large interventional studies can be submitted as 10-day profile publications, allowing important data to be rapidly available in the public domain. The methodology and the content of original articles, review articles, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses will be evaluated closely for application of high-level methodological standards. EHJ-ACVC welcomes transfers from other journals and will consider manuscripts in their original format for quality and content, but only when the remarks of the initial reviewers are addressed. Only upon acceptance ('as it is', or 'minor review') will we ask the authors to reformat the manuscript according to our journal instructions for authors. It goes without saying, de novo submissions should comply with the instructions to authors issued by our journal. We endorse the concept of visual learning. A central illustration or visual abstract will be required for all original investigations, editorials , and state-of-the art reviews. The editors and editorial staff of EHJ-ACVC want to help authors disseminate their important findings worldwide to as many people as possible via our website and Published on behalf of the

Publication year:2021

Accessibility:Open