The Covid-19 pandemic has led to many changes to the way we all live and work, and it has also had unexpected consequences for the running of the Society’s journal Radiography.
Interest in the journal from researchers around the world has been steadily increasing over the past 10 years yet in 2020, with the backdrop of the pandemic, we have received a record number of papers - roughly double those received in 2019.
This increase is in part due to the surge of papers submitted by researchers seeking to share the latest knowledge and best practice on the impacts of Covid-19 but also includes a large increase in non-Covid-19 submissions.
We would like to extend our special thanks to our editors and reviewers for working hard this year to review and publish these important papers as quickly as possible. Despite the enormous increase in submissions, the processing times for all of our papers has decreased this year.
Indeed the Radiography journal has a very rapid average turnaround time from submission of a manuscript to the author receiving their first decision. All of the Covid-19 papers we published have been made freely available and can be found on the journal’s website.
Published once a year, the CiteScore measures how many times papers we publish are cited elsewhere over a four-year period. We were delighted to learn in June 2020 that the journal’s CiteScore had increased again from 1.7 in 2018 to 2.0 in 2019 (see figures 1, below left, and 2, below right).
You may have noticed some changes to our Editorial Board this year and we welcomed two new editors to the team. Dr Nick Courtier, senior lecturer in Radiotherapy and Oncology at Cardiff University School of Healthcare Sciences, joined as our new Associate Editor for Radiotherapy.
More recently Ruth Reeve, a Clinical Academic Researcher and Sonographer at Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust and the University of Southampton, joined the team in the important new role of Social Media and Engagement Editor. To further support our aim of publishing the best research from around the world, we have also introduced a new International Advisory Group with a number of new members from Africa, Europe, North America and Asia.
Electronic access to Radiography is available for all SoR members via the member area of the Society of Radiographers website at www.sor.org. We have created a new format for the homepage and introduced mobile-responsive article pages, making it easier for readers to access journal content on the move from a phone or tablet.
Since January 2021, Radiography has been a fully digital publication. This has benefits for our authors and readers including the flexibility to publish even more research, much quicker acceptance and publication times, and with a reduction in our print output a significant lessening of our environmental impact.
Those of you who are active in research and publishing will be familiar with the concept of Open Access publishing and may have requirements from your funding bodies or institutions to choose an Open Access route for the publication of your articles. Radiography is a hybrid journal which means we offer our authors both subscription and Open Access routes to publication.
We are delighted to announce that in 2021 we will introduce a discount on the journal’s article processing charge for Open Access publication for all Society of Radiographers members in good standing for papers on which they are the lead author.
As Radiography is now fully digital, we are exploring new ways to keep you up to date with the latest research and news from the Journal. All Society of Radiography members will continue to receive regular table-of-contents email alerts for the journal each time we publish an issue. We will also be compiling a single print highlights edition towards the end of each year to showcase the very best work published in the previous 12 months.
We would also like to encourage members to follow us on Twitter @RadiographyJour and LinkedIn. We are also planning to launch a new podcast series for the journal to take an in-depth look at some of the papers we publish and to provide insights directly from our authors.
Thank you once again to our editors, authors, reviewers, board members and readers, for contributing to the continuing success of Radiography journal, and we wish you all a productive and rewarding 2021.