Submissions, impact factor, reviewer's recommendations and geographical bias within the peer review system (1997-2002): focus on Germany.

At the occasion of the Congress of the European Society of Cardiology in Berlin in 2002 we provide our readership with data on the impact factor of Cardiovascular Research and on the submission of manuscripts from different parts of the world. Fig. 1 shows the increase in submissions over the last years. The average of monthly submissions is well above 90 since the year 2000. In previous editorials we commented on the steady increase of submissions from Europe during the last decade [1–4]. Although there were slightly less submissions from Europe in 2000 compared with 1999, the year 2001 showed an all time high of 651 manuscripts (Fig. 2). From North America we received more manuscripts in 2001 than in the two preceding years. European submissions keep track with the general increase in submissions, leading to percentage of 55.3% in 2001. From North America (USA and Canada) we received 22.3% of the total number of manuscripts in 2001 and 10.9% came from Japan with the remaining 11.5% from the rest of the world. There is a trend to an increase of submissions from the rest of the world since 1997. With respect to individual countries most manuscripts in 2001 still were sent from the USA (16.7%), with Germany (13.2%) and the UK (11.2%), taking the second and third positions. Fig. 1 Total number of submissions per month during the years 1997–2001 and over the first 4 months of 2002 (2002/4). Fig. 2 Total number of submissions from Europe and North America from 1997 till 2001. Fig. 3 shows the official impact factor for Cardiovascular Research as communicated by the Institute for Scientific Information (solid line) and our own estimates (dashed line) since 1997. The last official impact factor was 3.783 (2000). We predict an impact factor of 4.60 … * Corresponding author. Tel.: +31-30-253-8923; fax: +31-30-2539-036