Effective from 1 July 2017, I have the privilege and honour of taking the position of Editor-in-Chief of the Europace journal. Over the past decade, the journal has tremendously developed under the leadership of John Camm as the Editor-in-Chief. The impact factor of the journal has reached an all-time high of 4.5, and the journal has been established as a top journal in the field. Indeed, John Camm and his editorial board have taken the right strategic decisions for the journal: a focus on clinical science and education with a direct impact on the practice of arrhythmia diagnosis and treatment. The number of new manuscripts submitted will also reach an all-time high in 2017, with more than 1300 manuscripts expected. In principle, I intend to follow the same successful path. Together with the editorial board, we will concentrate on manuscripts from clinical trials with guideline relevance, continue to publish EHRA and ESC consensus documents and position papers, and the highest-quality, state-of-the-art review articles written by key opinion leaders in the field. In addition, the important fields of e-health and m-health will gain more visibility in the journal.
The most important element to be attractive for authors with ‘hot messages’ is certainly a solid and fair review process, the speed of manuscript handling and decision-making, and finally, of course, rapid publication. We can and will improve the speed of manuscript handling, and we will supplement this with the option of Europace Fast Track Publication for highly-relevant and important messages. For this segment, we are aiming for a time window of 6 weeks from submission to publication. Moreover, we will intensify the online visibility of the journal and provide supplement material, slides, commentaries and podcasts from the major articles published.
Our alliance with Arrhythmia Electrophysiology Review is a fruitful and successful one. Arrhythmia Electrophysiology Review supplements the spectrum of publications with high-quality review articles, mainly with important clinical messages, that also reach out to cardiologists and general practitioners with particular interest in arrhythmias. All this has one focus: you! To meet your interests, scientific and educational expectations better, we encourage you to enrich our strategies with your ideas and suggestions that we highly appreciate.