At the time of this writing, the Editorial Committee of Anales de Pediatría is undergoing a transition after a 4-year term during which we worked on consolidating the achievements of the preceding Committee while pursuing new goals. As we noted in our first editorial on taking the helm of the journal,1 we came into a magnificent legacy characterised by a progressive increase of both the impact factor and visibility of the journal, achievements that we strived to maintain, as they are the main objectives of the work of this committee.

The visibility of a journal reflects its appeal and interest to the readership, and is probably the best measure of its usefulness in clinical practice. On the other hand, the more widely a journal is read, the greater its influence in the scientific community. The data on the visibility of the journal in the past few years (Fig. 1) is encouraging, as the readership of Anales de Pediatría keeps growing. As expressed in previous editorials,2 it is important to evaluate the diversity of our readership in terms of the origin of visits to our site. The United States corresponds to the highest frequency of visits (more than 1 600 000 in 2020), followed by Mexico (slightly more than 1.5 million) and Spain (with nearly 1.5 million). Anales de Pediatría is read widely in Latin America, while readers in China are just starting to visit our journal.2 As the former Editorial Committee expressed in their farewell editorial,3 visibility is important in quantitative terms, but also in qualitative terms when it comes to assessing the global impact of Anales de Pediatría.

Figure 1.

Visibility of Anales de Pediatría: total number of visits (years 2012–2020).

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The impact factor is the metric that we consider most important in assessing the scientific reputation of a journal. It is calculated by dividing the number of citations made in the year of interest of articles published the 2 previous years by the total number of citable articles published in those 2 previous years. For instance, for year 2020, we obtained the value of 1.5 from dividing the 273 citations made in 2020 of articles published in 2018 and 2019 by the 182 articles published in 2018 and 2019.

Fig. 2 shows the trends in the impact factor in the past few years, which are also encouraging as regards the scientific impact of Anales de Pediatría.

Figure 2.

Impact factor of Anales de Pediatría (years 2011–2020).

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In 2018, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the publication of the first issue of Anales de Pediatría with a special article written by the History of Medicine Committee of the Asociación Española de Pediatría (Spanish Association of Paediatrics, AEP).4 This historical review made us aware of the milestones achieved in this half century thanks to the commitment of successive editorial teams and the organization of the paediatric community in Spain under the umbrella of the AEP. We have also tackled newly emerging and potentially controversial issues, attempting to remain as objective as possible, such as conflicts of interest in the editorial team,5 gender bias6 or plagiarism in the scientific literature.7

Nevertheless, there is no question that the COVID-19 pandemic was the event that most required quick and efficient adaptation by this Editorial Committee. Analysing the data currently available, we can assert that we were able to improve manuscript processing times during this pandemic, reducing the time intervals corresponding to peer review and editing to ensure prompt publication of articles related to COVID-19. On the other hand, several of these articles are among the most read, thus contributing to increasing the visibility of the journal and the citations made this year, which we believe may contribute to improving the impact factor in 2021.

After these four years in which we have tried to consolidate and advance our achievements, it is the right time to do a careful change in the leadership of the journal, allowing a new team to steer it towards new goals. The positive achievements of the exiting Committee will be maintained, as one of its associate editors is to become the new editor-in-chief. The incorporation of four new associate editors will bring the renewed perspectives and drive that we were referring to above.

Lastly, we want to thank the Executive Committee of the AEP for giving us the opportunity to lead the paediatric journal that is most read and has the highest impact factor in the Spanish language, which supported us in making consensus-based decisions, express to the incoming Editorial Committee our wishes for every possible success and ask authors and reviewers to continue bringing their enthusiasm and dedication so that Anales de Pediatría can reach the highest possible rank among paediatric journals.