Polish Archives of Internal Medicine celebrates its highest impact factor

In June of 2020, the latest journal impact factors (JIF) were released for 2019 and we are very pleased to report another increase for the JIF of Polish Archives of Internal Medicine (Pol Arch Intern Med). This represents the highest ever JIF for the journal and the first time that it has achieved a metric above 3.000. The Editors are satisfied and proud of our achievements, year by year, which have led us to a gradual improvement of the standing of our journal in the face of increased number of publications and growing competition among scientific journals (Figure 1). The number of the manuscripts submitted to Pol Arch Intern Med has risen significantly during the last years (Figure 2), which is mirrored by an increase in published papers and their citations (Figure 3) as well as an increase in views of our website (Figure 4). The number of citations might not be impressive if compared with the highest ranked journals, but it has grown substantially over the recent years. Therefore, Pol Arch Intern Med is constantly ranked as the best Polish journal in clinical medicine (Table 1).

Table 1. Impact factors of top Polish biomedical journals based on 2019 Journal Citation Reports, Clarivate

Journal	Journal impact factor 2019
Archivum Immunologiae et Therapiae Experimentalis	3.200
Polish Archives of Internal Medicine	3.007
Archives of Medical Science	2.807
Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology	2.644
Advances in Medical Sciences	2.570
Hereditary Cancer in Clinical Practice	2.237
Kardiologia Polska	1.874
Cardiology Journal	1.669
Journal of Contemporary Brachytherapy	1.627

The concept of JIF was developed by Eugene Garfield of the Institute of Scientific Information in United States in 1960s. It is calculated by counting the number of citations to articles published in a journal in the last 2 years.¹ Despite some criticisms that JIF has attracted over the last years and its drawbacks, it is still considered to be the best available metric to assess the standard of an academic journal. It is still of major importance not only for the science community but also for academic institutions and funding agencies. Clarivate, the company behind the JIF, maintains the integrity of the scientific records and closely monitors anomalous citation patterns. Recently, Clarivate took steps to fight the distortion of the JIF, suppressing 33 journals from their indexing service and subjecting 15 more to expressions of concern, including JACC: Cardiovascular Imaging, which has an Impact Factor above 10, ranking it in the top 10 journals in the field.² Alternatives to the JIF have been proposed, as the SCImago Journal & Country Rank, the Source Normalized Impact per Paper and the Eigenfactor Score, among others. However, all the metrics proposed so far are also associated with their own limitations. Now JIF remains the most popular metric used to assess the journal’s quality.

Pol Arch Intern Med would never achieve the success that we are celebrating this year without receiving contributions from a diverse array of specialists seeking to publish their work in the area of internal medicine. We take this opportunity here to thank you all for that valuable support. As we do annually, the most cited papers from our journal, published in the years 2017 or 2018, that contributed to our 2019 JIF are listed in Table 2. Each of those publications was cited 7 or more times in indexed journals in 2019.

Table 2. Most cited papers from 2017 and 2018 contributing to journal impact factor 2019 based on Web of Science Core Collection, Clarivate

No.	Paper	Citation count in 2019
1	Ząbczyk M, Undas A. Plasma fibrin clot structure and thromboembolism: clinical implications. Pol Arch Intern Med. 2017; 127: 873-881.	19
2	Wypasek E, Musiał J, Undas A, et al. Genetic characterization of antithrombin, protein C, and protein S deficiencies in Polish patients. Pol Arch Intern Med. 2017; 127: 512-523.	10
3	Polakowska M, Tykarski A, Zdrojewski T, et al. Tobacco smoking in Poland in the years from 2003 to 2014 Multi-centre National Population Health Examination Survey (WOBASZ). Pol Arch Intern Med. 2017; 127: 91-99.	8
4	Tripodi A, Braham S, Scimeca B, et al. How and when to measure anticoagulant effects of direct oral anticoagulants? Practical issues. Pol Arch Intern Med. 2018; 128: 379-385.	8
5	Miethe S, Guarino M, Alhamdan F, et al. Effects of obesity on asthma: immunometabolic links. Pol Arch Intern Med. 2018; 128: 469-477.	8
6	Pruszczyk P, Windyga J, Kobayashi A, et al. Management of bleeding or urgent interventions in patients treated with direct oral anticoagulants: 2017 recommendations for Poland. Pol Arch Intern Med. 2017; 127: 343-351.	7
7	Krzanowski M, Krzanowska K, Gajda M, et al. Pentraxin 3 as a new indicator of cardiovascular-related death in patients with advanced chronic kidney disease. Pol Arch Intern Med. 2017; 127: 170-177.	7
8	Hojan K, Kwiatkowska-Borowczyk E, Leporowska E, Milecki P. Inflammation, cardiometabolic markers, and functional changes in men with prostate cancer A randomized controlled trial of a 12-month exercise program. Pol Arch Intern Med. 2017; 127: 25-35.	7

We would like to greatly acknowledge the hard work of our reviewers. Their role is crucial in selecting the high-quality papers for publication. Currently, 24% of our reviewers have foreign affiliation. The most active reviewers in 2019 are listed in Table 3. The introduction of rigorous statistical reviews of all papers considered for publication has improved the quality of our journal. We thank for the strong commitment of our Statistical Consultant Agnieszka Pac, PhD. We would have never been able to achieve the success of the journal without the authors whose citations contributed significantly to our JIF (Table 4). We encourage all authors and readers to cite the articles from Pol Arch Intern Med whenever relevant.

Table 3. Most active reviewers in 2019 based on Editorial Manager

Daniel P. Potaczek
Artur Dziewierz
Tomasz Stompór
Ewelina Szczepanek-Parulska
Krzysztof Gutkowski
Piotr Zaborowski
Michal Chmielewski
Piotr Eder
Bartosz Hudzik
Paweł T. Matusik
Maciej T. Wybraniec

Table 4. Authors with greatest contribution to the 2019 journal impact factor based on Web of Science Core Collection

Anetta Undas
Michał Ząbczyk
Grzegorz Gajos
Grzegorz Kopeć
Joanna Natorska
Jadwiga Nessler
Grzegorz Opolski
Ewa Wypasek
Piotr Podolec
Marek Ruchała

Recently, we introduced new activities and functionalities in our journal. Our Facebook profile, edited by Zbigniew Heleniak, MD, PhD, is constantly updated with news, offers clinical case challenges, and has tripled the number of followers during the last year to more than 1500. Moreover, we continue to develop our new tools: article-level metrics by Altmetric (Table 5) as well as Reviewer Connect and Reviewer Recognition by Publons.

Table 5. Top Altmetric scores in 2020

No.	Paper	Current Altmetric score
1	Lippi G, Wong J, Henry BM. Hypertension in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): a pooled analysis. Pol Arch Intern Med. 2020; 130: 304-309.	61
2	Mammen MJ, Aryal K, Alhazzani W, Alexander PE. Corticosteroids for patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized trials. Pol Arch Intern Med. 2020; 130: 276-286.	31
3	Sierpiński R, Pinkas J, Jankowski M, et al. Sex differences in the frequency of gastrointestinal symptoms and olfactory or taste disorders in 1942 nonhospitalized patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Pol Arch Intern Med. 2020; 130: 501-505.	25
4	Zeng F, Li L, Zeng J, et al. Can we predict the severity of coronavirus disease 2019 with a routine blood test? Pol Arch Intern Med. 2020; 130: 400-406.	22

We also take this opportunity to once again thank the journal production team at Medycyna Praktyczna for their high production standards. In particular, we would like to thank Maria Piasecka, PhD, the managing editor, for her support.