With the European Heart Journal continuing to hold the number one spot among global cardiology journals, Editor-in-Chief Thomas F. Lüscher outlined the superb performance over the last 12 months at the publication’s annual editorial board meeting. The meeting - held in the grand setting of the Bayerischer Hof Hotel in Munich – experienced an impressive attendance of cardiologists from around the world.

Performance and Impact
During the meeting Professor Lüscher recapped on the five-year strategic goals of the journal in the area of impact, influence, reach, and sustainability and growth, and in particular to be known as the number one journal for cardiovascular medicine globally with continued growth and influence.
Submissions in 2017 were 3,173, with an acceptance rate of around 8%.
Submissions for 2018 so far are 54.3% from Europe, 20.1% from east and south-east Asia, 17.8% from North America and the remainder from Africa, central Asia and south and central America and Oceania. The listening experts were also pleased with the launch of a Japanese edition of the EHJ under the editorship of Hiroaki Shimokawa, merited associate editor of the EHJ.

Impact Factors
A crucial marker remains the Impact Factor. The EHJ tops the Impact Factor table with 2017 figures of 23.425, up 3.213 from 20.212 in 2016. That compares with 2017 figures for Circulation of 18.880 and Journal of the American College of Cardiology of 16.834.
In terms of Cardiac and Cardiovascular Systems raking, the European Heart Journal is number one out of 128 journals.
EHJ also leads the immediacy index, which while similar to the Impact Factor, measures the activity within a single calendar year (7.055 compared to 5.982 for Circulation in 2017).

Influence and Downloads
 “Our usage report looked good last year with eight million downloads and this year I suspect we are going to get even higher, particularly with all the Late Breaking trials published from this year’s congress.”

Reviewers and Editors
In honouring the best scientific peer reviewers of the EHJ, he presented the Reviewer of the Year award to Professor Allan Jaffe from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, USA and honoured the leading elite reviewers with a certificate of special recognition. These were Professors Johann Auer, from Austria, Thomas Bartel from the Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, Bernard Iung from Paris, and Jurgen Prochaska from Mainz, Germany.
The EHJ Editor of the year is Christian Matter.

Allen Jaffe (Reviewer-of-the-year), EHJ Editor-in-chief Thomas F. Lüscher and Christian Matter (Editor-of-the-Year)

Group Awards (from left to right): Fernando Alfonso, Thomas Bartel, Hugo Katus, Nico Bruining, Allan Jaffe, EHJ Editor-in-chief Thomas F. Lüscher, Christian Matter, Johann Auer, Bernard Iung, Xavier Garcia-Moll, Malte Kelm, Kurt Huber, Nico van de Veire, Luigi Biasucci.

Thomas F. Lüscher

^{All photo credits: Sam Rogers}