With this issue of the Journal, we are completing the fourth year of our publication life. As of today, we can proudly say that IDCM has greatly improved considering every aspect of a successful scientific periodical. First, in order to respond to fast increasing submission rate, we changed our publishing frequency from three times a year to quarterly. The number of original articles we published this year increased by 81% compared to 2021 (Please see the Figure 1). The rejection rate rose from 21.9% to 39% (a 79% increase).
Figure 1. Number of articles published per year since the inauguration of IDCM.
The last three years of the Journal’s life overlapped with the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, obviously, a great share of the articles during this period was related to SARS-CoV-2 infection, including epidemiology, treatment, and immunity. The second most frequent topic that our authors submitted was bacterial infections. However, the subject portfolio of published articles covered a wide range of topics, even including history and medical education. Please check the “Topics” heading on the main page if you would like to see the actual number of articles we have published so far, and you can find a detailed distribution of the published papers classified according to the subjects. Now, considering the speed of the pandemic is easing, we expect that the diversity of the submitted articles will increase in 2023.
One of the current difficulties of medical publishing is finding qualified peer-reviewers to evaluate submitted articles and to give feedback to the Editors of the Journal so that we will maintain the scientific quality. This has become a widespread problem even in the most prestigious scientific publications worldwide. Since peer review is a bona fide and free-of-charge service provided by qualified scientists in the busy world of academia, this causes a heavy burden for the peer reviewers. We are grateful to those who helped us to evaluate the submitted articles properly. Their invaluable support is highly appreciated. Please see a list of our reviewers for 2022 on the back pages of this issue.
I wish all of you a healthy, scientifically prosperous, and successful New Year.