News from Stroke: An AHA-ASA Journal
- So welcome to the International Stroke Conference. We're here in sunny San Diego at the International Stroke Conference. My name is Ralph Sacco, former president of the American Heart Association and chair of the International Committee and I'm here today with Marc Fisher, the editor of "Stroke" and we're here to talk about the journal "Stroke" which is the premiere journal in stroke in the world. And Marc now has been editor for almost four years. - Yep. - So tell us about how great is the journal doing? - Well, I think we're doin' pretty well by all accounts. We've had an increase in the number of manuscript submissions. So last year it went up by almost 10%. - That's great. - I think the number of full-article downloads off the internet is pretty astounding. It's over seven million full-article downloads, at least in 2012. And I think that people are definitely paying attention to what we publish and are interested in having their papers appear there. - What new initiatives have you done, say in the last few years, as journal editor to make the journal "Stroke" even better for the readership? - Well, we've started a whole series of new article types because we've gotten funding from the AHA to be able to invite 150 pages for electronic-only publication and so we've started seven new ventures, I call them, which are actually different types of articles. For example, we have an illustrative teaching cases which we started hopefully trainees and junior faculty appreciate. We've started basic science reviews. We started a history of stroke series. We have a literature synopses series which one month is looking at three basic science papers that are themed and then the next month it's three clinical papers. These are papers that are published in other journals so that we're keeping track for our readership of the literature related to stroke in other journals. And then this year we're starting three more of these, or we're starting a series of review papers that are targeted for stroke nurses because I felt that they were under represented by the journal.
We're starting a series of papers on new statistical methodology written by statisticians for basic science people as well as clinicians so that they're kept abreast of some of the new statistical methodology. - How about now even an editorial board? How much of a global representation do you now have on the editorial board for stroke? - Well, I don't have the exact breakdown but I think that more than half of the members of the editorial board are representing countries outside of North America. And we're trying very hard to increase diversity on the editorial board. So a little over 20% of the board members are female and we're increasing the Hispanic and African American representation. Basically, I look at everybody who's on the masthead because that includes several other groups of people besides editorial board members as very key contributors to the journal in a number of ways. Most importantly we use them frequently for reviews. - For reviews, some people measure success in terms of the impact factor and we know there are pros and cons there. How do you think we could relate the metrics of success for the journal "Stroke"? - Well, that's a difficult and complex question. - Sorry. - But we'll try to deal with it. So I'm a little disappointed in the impact factor. It did go up in the number that we got last June but it's not come back to where it was a couple years ago. And the reason that the impact factor for "Stroke" is sort of modest as opposed to much higher is that we publish a lot of papers and so if you publish a lot of papers that is the denominator for the calculation of the impact factor dividing that number into citations. And since we're by far the leading journal in the field as far as visibility and publication numbers it's very hard for us to have a high impact factor because we publish a lot of papers. But if you look at some other metrics, which I think are important for judging the impact of a journal we're number two in both the peripheral vascular disease journals and clinical neurology in the total number of citations and also another metric called the Eigenfactor, which factors into the citations where they appear.
So that you get a higher Eigenfactor if your articles are cited in journals with higher impact factors. And so again we're number two in both peripheral vascular disease field and clinical neurology for Eigenfactor. - That's great, so the journal has grown tremendously under your leadership. You know, we enjoy working with you and I want to be one of the first to congratulate you on the David Sherman Lecture Award. - Thank you. - Dr. Fisher has received the David Sherman Lecture Award. He'll be giving a lecture at the International Stroke Conference this year. What are you going to be talking about? - Well, I decided that I wanted to talk about a big picture issue which is sort of my modus operandi usually. - Right, right. - And Ralph knows quite well because he's been involved with helping me formulate this concept that we really need to do something to ensure that we have an adequate supply of future productive academic stroke researchers. And so I'm going to make the case I hope to convince people that we need to generate a targeted fund through the AHA and the ASA to fund stroke research fellowships beyond the first year of fellowship so that people like you and me actually exist 15 or 20 years from now. And the AHA has agreed that this is important and I'm working with Paul Kaleel who's in charge of major fundraising to generate this targeted amount of money which in my opinion we need to raise about 10 million dollars so that we can fund somewhere between 12 and 15 positions for people that will hopefully carry the torch forward and be productive basic and clinical stroke researchers over the next number of decades. - More people that can write great articles for the journal "Stroke" in the future, which is terrific.
So we are really excited to have been here talking with Dr. Fisher, editor of "Stroke" at the International Stroke Conference. "Stroke" is the premiere journal in stroke and many of the papers being presented here at the meeting hopefully will soon be in print in "Stroke" as well. Thank you Dr. Fisher for sharing your vision about stroke. - Thanks.
We're starting a series of papers on new statistical methodology written by statisticians for basic science people as well as clinicians so that they're kept abreast of some of the new statistical methodology. - How about now even an editorial board? How much of a global representation do you now have on the editorial board for stroke? - Well, I don't have the exact breakdown but I think that more than half of the members of the editorial board are representing countries outside of North America. And we're trying very hard to increase diversity on the editorial board. So a little over 20% of the board members are female and we're increasing the Hispanic and African American representation. Basically, I look at everybody who's on the masthead because that includes several other groups of people besides editorial board members as very key contributors to the journal in a number of ways. Most importantly we use them frequently for reviews. - For reviews, some people measure success in terms of the impact factor and we know there are pros and cons there. How do you think we could relate the metrics of success for the journal "Stroke"? - Well, that's a difficult and complex question. - Sorry. - But we'll try to deal with it. So I'm a little disappointed in the impact factor. It did go up in the number that we got last June but it's not come back to where it was a couple years ago. And the reason that the impact factor for "Stroke" is sort of modest as opposed to much higher is that we publish a lot of papers and so if you publish a lot of papers that is the denominator for the calculation of the impact factor dividing that number into citations. And since we're by far the leading journal in the field as far as visibility and publication numbers it's very hard for us to have a high impact factor because we publish a lot of papers. But if you look at some other metrics, which I think are important for judging the impact of a journal we're number two in both the peripheral vascular disease journals and clinical neurology in the total number of citations and also another metric called the Eigenfactor, which factors into the citations where they appear.
So that you get a higher Eigenfactor if your articles are cited in journals with higher impact factors. And so again we're number two in both peripheral vascular disease field and clinical neurology for Eigenfactor. - That's great, so the journal has grown tremendously under your leadership. You know, we enjoy working with you and I want to be one of the first to congratulate you on the David Sherman Lecture Award. - Thank you. - Dr. Fisher has received the David Sherman Lecture Award. He'll be giving a lecture at the International Stroke Conference this year. What are you going to be talking about? - Well, I decided that I wanted to talk about a big picture issue which is sort of my modus operandi usually. - Right, right. - And Ralph knows quite well because he's been involved with helping me formulate this concept that we really need to do something to ensure that we have an adequate supply of future productive academic stroke researchers. And so I'm going to make the case I hope to convince people that we need to generate a targeted fund through the AHA and the ASA to fund stroke research fellowships beyond the first year of fellowship so that people like you and me actually exist 15 or 20 years from now. And the AHA has agreed that this is important and I'm working with Paul Kaleel who's in charge of major fundraising to generate this targeted amount of money which in my opinion we need to raise about 10 million dollars so that we can fund somewhere between 12 and 15 positions for people that will hopefully carry the torch forward and be productive basic and clinical stroke researchers over the next number of decades. - More people that can write great articles for the journal "Stroke" in the future, which is terrific.
So we are really excited to have been here talking with Dr. Fisher, editor of "Stroke" at the International Stroke Conference. "Stroke" is the premiere journal in stroke and many of the papers being presented here at the meeting hopefully will soon be in print in "Stroke" as well. Thank you Dr. Fisher for sharing your vision about stroke. - Thanks.