Acta Radiologica Short Reports to be renamed Acta Radiologica Open

Abstract

In 2006 Acta Radiologica performed a reader survey to evaluate what the readers of the journal read and what they preferred to read in a scientific journal (1). Ninety-five percent of the responders answered that review articles were the most important type of articles in a journal, followed by original articles. Surprisingly enough, 63% of the responders answered that case reports were important for radiologists, as radiology to a large degree depends upon recognition of what you see in an image. Knowledge of the imaging signs of rare diseases and uncommon signs of common diseases was recognized as very valuable. Sixty-four percent valued short reports and communications in the same way. It is, however, well-known that most scientific journals today no longer accept case reports, partly because the number of submissions of original articles now is so high that editors do not give priority to case reports. Another fact, not often mentioned, is that case reports are said to ruin the impact factor of a journal as such articles are much less cited compared to original articles. For the same reason Acta Radiologica has, for the last couple of years, rejected case reports. This was the reason for the founding of the new journal Acta Radiologica Short Reports in 2011. The need for such a journal, mainly devoted to case reports and short reports, has obviously been present as the number of submitted manuscripts has increased by 20% each year since its launch in early 2012. It was decided that Acta Radiologica Short Reports would be an open-access, online-only journal, in order to publish accepted articles within a very short time frame. However, what we see now is that it is not only case reports that are submitted; there have been an increased number of submissions of other types of articles as original research, original articles, review articles, and pictorial essays even though case reports are still the main type of articles. The editorial board has therefore found that the name Short Reports can be somewhat misleading as other submissions mentioned above are seen more and more. As a result, we have now decided to change the name of the journal to Acta Radiologica Open to underline that all types of manuscripts are welcome and that all accepted articles will be published within a very short time frame and receive an official indexing in PubMed/ISI. As the journal is an open-access journal a broader audience can be reached as a subscription is no longer necessary. Acta Radiologica Open has exactly the same editorial board as the main journal Acta Radiologica, and all manuscripts will undergo a peer review in the same way. We welcome you as an author and a reader of Acta Radiologica Open.