Download PDF
Appl Clin Inform 2021; 12(02): 417-424
DOI: 10.1055/s-0041-1729958
Editorial

To Applied Clinical Informatics Authors and Reviewers: Thank You for All Your Help!

Christoph U. Lehmann
1   Clinical Informatics Center, UT Southwestern, Dallas, Texas, United States
,
Jenna S. Lehmann
2   Applied Clinical Informatics Editorial Office, Nashville, Tennessee, United States
,
Carolyn Petersen
3   Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, Rochester, Minnesota, United States
,
Dean F. Sittig
4   School of Biomedical Informatics, University of Texas Health Sciences Center at Houston, Houston, Texas, United States
› Author Affiliations
› Further Information
Also available at
   Permissions and Reprints

It is a fair bet that the year 2020 will remain in all our memories for a long time. Between the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), worries about family and friends' health, world-wide lockdowns and resulting work from home, the added work, stress, and even post-traumatic stress disorder for those of us taking care of COVID patients, the long wait for vaccines and “zoom” fatigue, 2020 has been quite a year for everyone. But life, work, and publishing go on.

And speaking of publishing, 2020 was an outstanding year for Applied Clinical Informatics (ACI) thanks to its international slate of authors and reviewers. During the past year, ACI received 278 original manuscripts, completed 755 reviews by individuals from around the world, and published 99 manuscripts (acceptance rate 37.8%). On average, the time from submission to first decision was 21 days and the time to final decision 41 days. In 2020, your papers were downloaded more than 200,000 times from the Thieme website, which does not include downloads from PubMed. On social media, we had 1,195 Twitter followers and 1,545 followers on Facebook. The mean Altmetric score for your publications was 6.43.

The scientific world has responded to the COVID pandemic with an unanticipated research fervor. In the first 6 months of 2020, more than 23,000 unique research papers were published on COVID-19.[1] And ACI was no exception. Since the start of the pandemic, 11 manuscripts published in ACI reported on use of health information and communication technologies to address various aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic response from tracking patients in the hospital, use of messaging for COVID guidance to employees, establishing telehealth services, and remote patient monitoring.[2]

In 2020, Carolyn Petersen became the Associate Editor for Social Media at ACI. One of her responsibilities is keeping ACI's Twitter feed interesting, relevant, and informational. If you are not yet following us on social media, we encourage you to follow ACI on Twitter @ACI_Journal (https://twitter.com/ACI_Journal) or on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ACIJournal). We will continue posting the new ACI papers on several American Medical Informatics Association listservs and would love your feedback on these emails. In addition, if you know of additional applied clinical informatics listservs that are interested in receiving these updates, contact Chris Lehmann ([email protected]).

And 2021 is already off to a tremendous start, with a record number of submissions. In the first 3 months, we received more than 100 manuscripts. Clearly, the pandemic has not stopped our authors from conducting research, implementing systems, exploring new tools in health IT, and writing about it.

The success of ACI is only possible with the incredible dedication, hard work, scholarship, and keen insight of both the authors and reviewers of these manuscripts. Without you, there would be no journal. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. Your hard work helped increase the journal's impact factor from 1.24 in 2017 to 2.15 in 2019. We sincerely thank the 742 reviewers, who completed at least one manuscript review for ACI in 2020. If you are not a reviewer yet, please go to https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/acij and create an account—we want your knowledge and expertise.

Here's to 2021, may you all stay healthy and well!

Protection of Human and Animal Subjects

Not applicable.




Publication History

Received: 16 April 2021

Accepted: 16 April 2021

Article published online:
12 May 2021

© 2021. Thieme. All rights reserved.

Georg Thieme Verlag KG
Rüdigerstraße 14, 70469 Stuttgart, Germany