JCRS 2011: Looking back, looking ahead

Article Outline

• Copyright

As 2012 begins, we reflect on a year of progress at the Journal of Cataract & Refractive Surgery and look ahead with excitement to the coming year. Every issue of JCRS is a product of innumerable hours of effort, and we wish to take this opportunity to thank all those who make JCRS the leading peer-reviewed anterior segment surgery journal. Each of us is a reader, and among these readers we also find authors, reviewers, editorial board members, office staff, advertisers, and publishers. Every person who touches the journal in one or another way has contributed something to its success, and to the efforts of each of these people, the journal is indebted.

We each judge the success of JCRS in different ways: readers on the relevance, quality, and diversity of the content; authors on the accessibility and quality of the peer review process; and publishers on sales and advertising activity, among other things. In addition to our individual operating definitions of success, 2011 was a banner year in terms of impact on the field. JCRS reached a new summit by posting its highest-ever impact factor. The journal is now ranked 8th out of 55 ophthalmology journals and 1st in our subspecialty. Since 2008, our impact factor climbed 5 positions in a field of publications that added 7 new journals to its ranks over the same period of time. Also of note, JCRS is now ranked 27 out of 187 titles in the much broader surgery category by the Institute for Scientific Information. Like financial markets, impact factors can rise and fall. While we are pleased to see an 8th consecutive year of gains, we recognize that impact is a long-term investment and will continue to work toward making the journal ever more useful to its readers. Such achievements are ultimately a tribute to the everyday efforts of authors and reviewers, who generate and refine the content that we have the privilege of sharing every month.

We were very fortunate this past year to welcome Terry Kim, MD, to the post of co-editor of the Review/Update section. Last year was marked by a significant expansion of high-quality review articles, and we are grateful to Oliver Findl, MD, for his ongoing advocacy of this journal initiative. We also wish to thank J. Bradley Randleman, MD, for his efforts in the position for the past 2 years, and we wish him the best in his new role as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Refractive Surgery.

JCRS continued the tradition of organizing and sponsoring 2 topical symposia in 2011: “Femtosecond Laser Applications in Anterior Segment Surgery” at ASCRS in March and “Controversies in Cataract and Refractive Surgery” at ESCRS in Vienna. Both symposia were well attended and featured lively debates on some of the field’s most challenging and exciting issues. The 2012 JCRS-sponsored symposium at ASCRS in Chicago will feature the evolving debate on the pros and cons of femtosecond cataract surgery, the role of the Ectasia Risk Scoring System, and other topics of high interest to practicing cataract and refractive surgeons. JCRS is eager to serve as the platform for the clinical, scientific, and economic debates surrounding femtosecond cataract surgery and other rapidly evolving high-impact technologies, and we encourage you to submit your papers. Past JCRS symposia are now available for viewing at your convenience at our redesigned website (www.jcrsjournal.org), along with special collections, technique videos, in-press articles, and our popular consultation feature. If you haven’t visited recently, please take a look.

With record numbers of submissions to the journal, we owe a significant debt to our editorial board and increasingly busy reviewers, upon whose shoulders the true work of a high-quality journal rests. We wish to thank our dedicated editorial staff across 2 continents—Christine Ford, Wendy Pacheco, Lou Dragon, Reva Hurtes, Birgit Scherff, and Louise Brennan, and we solicit your continued feedback on how to make JCRS better in the coming years.

Best wishes in 2012, and thank you for your support of JCRS.