Impact factor 2022 of Polish Archives of Internal Medicine

The 2023 update to the annual Journal Citation Reports (JCR) containing the list of journals that received an impact factor (IF), along with the IF values, was released by Clarivate Analytics on June 28, 2023. The IF, a widely recognized (though also heavily criticized for many years) metric reflecting the importance of a journal in its category, is calculated by dividing the number of times a paper published in a given journal in the 2 previous years was cited during the past year (for the calculation of 2022 IF, the citations made in 2022 were evaluated) by the total number of citable items (ie, original articles and reviews) published within this 2-year period. The most recent IF of Polish Archives of Internal Medicine (Pol Arch Intern Med) is 4.8 (since this year, the IF is presented with 1 decimal place, and not 3, as in the past). The current IF has experienced a slight decrease from our record value received for 2021, that is, 5.218. Nevertheless, this value should be considered a success. The journal is in the second quartile in its category but close to the first quartile, because several journals experienced substantial reductions in their IF, as compared with the values for 2021. Pol Arch Intern Med is still the best Polish medical journal, and we are very proud of it. This confirms the potential of clinical research in internal medicine and its subspecialties in Poland and other countries. The list of 15 Polish journals with the highest IF values is presented in Table 1. We are aware of the fact that the IF of each journal should be compared within the subject category, and we offer congratulations to our colleagues from other disciplines.

Table 1. Top 15 Polish journals based on the 2023 Journal Citation Reports by Clarivate Analytics

Journal	2022 impact factor
Oeconomia Copernicana	8.5
Nonlinear Engineering - Modeling and Application	8.3
Cellular & Molecular Biology Letters	8.3
Biocybernetics and Biomedical Engineering	6.4
Equilibrium - Quarterly Journal of Economics and Economic Policy	5.7
Biology of Sport	5.6
Polish Archives of Internal Medicine	4.8
Archives of Civil and Mechanical Engineering	4.4
Pharmacological Reports	4.4
Entrepreneurial Business and Economics Review	3.8
Archives of Medical Science	3.8
Paediatrics and Family Medicine	3.6
Reviews on Advanced Materials Science	3.6
Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching	3.4
Kardiologia Polska	3.3

The number of journals listed in the 2023 JCR has increased, with more than 21 000 journals receiving the IF, including over 9000 journals that obtained the metric for the first time. The 2022 IF list is full of surprises in our category of general medicine. The Lancet has become the top journal, with the 2022 IF of 202 driven by 3 papers concerning COVID-19, which were among the 10 most cited articles in biomedicine in the last year. The long-standing leader (since the publication of first-ever IF values in 1975), that is, the New England Journal of Medicine, has obtained the 2022 IF of 158.5 (a decrease as compared with the 2021 IF of 176). As can be seen, even such prestigious journals are sensitive to the COVID-19–related effect on journal metrics. However, the trends are more important than relatively small variations in the calculated values. Nevertheless, the current IF values provide additional evidence for the strong impact of COVID-19 on scholarly publishing worldwide, particularly in the fields of immunology, critical care, and infectious diseases. Even though a large number of journals have experienced a slight decrease in their metrics, the proportion of citations related to this disease is still substantial. In Pol Arch Intern Med, the papers on COVID-19 published in 2020 and 2021 were our top-cited articles (Table 2). Special thanks are due to Professor Giuseppe Lippi, whose paper published in April 2020 is the first on this list, similarly to the previous year. The contribution of various types of articles published in 2020 and 2021 is depicted in Figure 1, showing that Research Letters (now up to 2500 words) and Clinical Images matter more and more each year.

Table 2. Top 5 most cited articles published in Polish Archives of Internal Medicine in 2022 according to the 2023 Journal Citation Reports by Clarivate Analytics

Title	Authors	Citation	Times cited
Hypertension in patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): a pooled analysis	Giuseppe Lippi, Johnny Wong, Brandon M. Henry	Pol Arch Intern Med. 2020; 130: 304-309.	161
Management of SARS-CoV-2 infection: recommendations of the Polish Association of Epidemiologists and Infectiologists as of March 31, 2020	Robert Flisiak, Andrzej Horban, Jerzy Jaroszewicz, Dorota Kozielewicz, Małgorzata Pawłowska, Miłosz Parczewski, Anna Piekarska, Krzysztof Simon, Krzysztof Tomasiewicz, Dorota Zarębska-Michaluk	Pol Arch Intern Med. 2020; 130: 352-357.	24
Can we predict the severity of coronavirus disease 2019 with a routine blood test?	Furong Zeng, Linfeng Li, Jiling Zeng, Yuhao Deng, Huining Huang, Bin Chen, Guangtong Deng	Pol Arch Intern Med. 2020; 130: 400-406.	22
Clostridioides difficile infection in coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): an underestimated problem?	Konrad Lewandowski, Mariusz Rosołowski, Magdalena Kaniewska, Piotr Kucha, Anna Meler, Waldemar Wierzba, Grażyna Rydzewska	Pol Arch Intern Med. 2021; 131: 121-127.	18
Management of SARS-CoV-2 infection: recommendations of the Polish Association of Epidemiologists and Infectiologists as of April 26, 2021	Robert Flisiak, Andrzej Horban, Jerzy Jaroszewicz, Dorota Kozielewicz, Agnieszka Mastalerz-Migas, Radosław Owczuk, Miłosz Parczewski, Małgorzata Pawłowska, Anna Piekarska, Krzysztof Simon, Krzysztof Tomasiewicz, Dorota Zarębska-Michaluk	Pol Arch Intern Med. 2021; 131: 487-496.	17

The landscape of scholarly publishing has been evolving in recent years. The artificial intelligence–assisted publications have raised much concerns. Preprints published without peer review, popular during the COVID-19 pandemic to disseminate the most recent clinically relevant observations, with the support of the Plan S strategy and open science initiatives, have been increasingly common also in medicine, despite doubts on the true value of such reports. The research publication market has become more challenging due to a growing number of open-access journals with the IF (approximately 6500 listed in the 2022 JCR) and high article processing charges for which it is hard to receive grants from research agencies or other funds in lower-income countries, including Poland, but offering a relatively short time from submission to publication. Given the financial constraints of our publishing house, new solutions, including targeted promotion among potential authors, are needed to boost our standing.

A tough task is ahead of us in the second half of the present year, if the IF above 4.0 is to be maintained. The next IF of our journal, no longer including some well-cited papers on COVID-19 from 2020, is likely to be lower than the current one. We encourage all our supporters, authors, and reviewers, especially those from Poland, to cite the articles published in Pol Arch Intern Med in 2021 or 2022.

On behalf of the Polish Society of Internal Medicine, the owner of the title, and the whole editorial team, I would like to express my gratitude to all who contributed to the high standing of our journal. We look forward to receiving your best clinical research, including individual observations and preliminary data.