Resolutions for the New Year

A focus on excellence

With 68 hematology journals available today, and more being launched each year, Haematologica aspires to stand out from the crowd, not by publishing huge numbers of articles, but by focusing on scientific quality, open access and constructive peer review. Just as both the European Hematology Association and the Ferrata Storti Foundation aim to promote excellence in science, Haematologica supports their vision by providing an open access forum to publish high-quality research. Over the past years, the editorial team has used stricter selection criteria based on the novelty of the results and the importance of the data in their field. In 2015, we have accepted 142 original research articles for publication out of the 752 articles submitted (acceptance rate: 19%). Over the next years we will continue to carry out a strict selection procedure, while at the same time we aim to provide fast and fair peer review. On average, we communicate a first decision after 15 days, and we can reduce that to one week for selected articles under our fast-track review system. Haematologica will remain an open access journal, without the need to pay an extra fee, as some other journals do.

The ‘Leaders in Hematology’ review series

Haematologica can count on a history going back 95 years and in 2015 we celebrated the publication of Volume 100 of the journal. And although it’s good to look back, we are also looking forward to a bright and exciting future. As part of our new activities, we have initiated the review series ‘Leaders in Hematology’. These authoritative review articles by leaders in the field provide a comprehensive overview of the latest developments in one particular aspect of hematology accompanied by high-quality figures and illustrations. In 2015, we covered various topics, including β-thalassemia, T-cell and natural killer cell therapies, the bone marrow niche, and B-cell receptor signaling inhibitors in CLL.41 We will continue this review series in 2016, and we will also link it to a ‘Question & Answer’ session where you as a reader will have the opportunity to put questions to the authors. I hope the review articles published in Haematologica are of value to you and your colleagues and students, and that they help to address your need to stay up-to-date on new developments in hematology. Feel free to share these articles, and use the figures in your presentations and teaching activities. Haematologica is an open access journal and we like to see that our articles are useful!

Figure 1.An overview of the activities of Haematologica during 2015.

We are determined to remain on this path of excellence, and to continue to publish top review articles and high-quality research articles in 2016. I wish you a successful year and hope you will consider publishing your work in Haematologica!

Footnotes

• Financial and other disclosures provided by the author using the ICMJE (www.icmje.org) Uniform Format for Disclosure of Competing Interests are available with the full text of this paper at www.haematologica.org.