The irruption of COVID-19 forced the Editorial Committee to adapt to the need of paediatricians to receive immediate and updated information. As we remarked in an editorial on the subject,2 we had to establish a specific protocol for the management of submitted manuscripts related to COVID-19 to try to shorten reviewing and editorial times as much as possible to be able to publish them quickly. This entailed a risk of accepting less rigorous manuscripts with information that was not checked as thoroughly, as has been the case in other journals. During this year of the pandemic, we published 40 articles on COVID-19, corresponding to approximately 20% of the total published. In addition to their inclusion in the monthly issues of the journal, all of them can be found in the “COVID-19 articles” special section of the Anales de Pediatría website. There are also 6 consensus documents published in the “Special content about COVID-19” section of the website, endorsed by the Asociación Española de Pediatría (Spanish Association of Paediatrics, AEP)3 and several of its affiliated Societies and Committees, which have been updated periodically. The number of visits to these articles has been very high, and 3 of them are among the 4 most-read articles in the past 3 years.4–6

In the past few months, the large number of manuscripts that we have received, many of them with redundant information that had bene published previously, forced us to be very strict in their assessment.

As can be seen in Fig. 1, in year 2020 there was a substantial increase in the number of submitted manuscripts, which for the first time exceeded 1000. The distribution by type of manuscript was similar to the distribution in recent years (Fig. 2). The acceptance rate remained stable at around 20%, which means that the total number of accepted manuscripts has increased to 250 (Fig. 1). Scientific letters and letters to the editor account for most of this increase, as these two types of manuscript allow quicker processing of the content. When it came to original articles (Fig. 3), we found that the increase in submissions from 310 to 484 was associated with a corresponding decrease in the acceptance rate to 10%, which may be the lowest in the history of Anales de Pediatría. Fig. 4 presents the response time of the Editorial Committee. Due to the need to expedite decisions about manuscripts related to COVID-19 as much as possible, there was a decrease in the response time, which was the shortest in recent years (Fig. 4). We tried to be particularly quick in notifying authors of rejections to allow them to submit their manuscripts to other journals before the information became obsolete. There was no change in the time elapsed from acceptance to publication of the manuscript (Fig. 5).

Figure 1.

Annual changes in the total number of received and accepted manuscripts, years 2012–2020.

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Figure 2.

Annual changes in the percentage of original articles, scientific letters and letters to the editor received in the 2012–2020 period.

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Figure 3.

Annual changes in the total number of received original article manuscripts and the percentage accepted in years 2012–2020.

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Figure 4.

Mean time elapsed to first response (years 2012–2020).

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Figure 5.

Mean manuscript processing time from acceptance to publication (years 2012–2020).

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Due to the substantial increase in visibility achieved in 2019,1 we expected it to plateau in 2020. Instead, the number of visits has continued to increase significantly, which fulfils the main mission of the journal, which is to convey scientific information to the largest possible number of readers. We found increases in the visits made through the Anales de Pediatría website (Fig. 6) and through Science Direct (Fig. 7), by approximately one million and half a million, respectively. Thus, the total number of visits increased by nearly 1.5 million to approximately 8.4 million visits (Fig. 8). Our readers continue to respond very favourably to the most-read article section of the Anales de Pediatría website and being able to see the number of visits previously made to the article they are consulting.

Figure 6.

Visibility of Anales de Pediatría: number of visits to the site (www.analesdepediatria.org) (years 2012–2020). The percentage distribution by country was: Mexico 23%, Spain 22%, Argentina 9%, Colombia 9%, Peru 6%, Chile 6%, Ecuador 5%, United States 2%, Bolivia 2%, Venezuela 2%, other 13%.

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Figure 7.

Visibility of Anales de Pediatría: number of visits from Science Direct (years 2012–2020).

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Figure 8.

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

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Our current estimates of the number of citations made in 2020 are promising, amply exceeding the 214 citations achieved in 2019. However, the expected changes in the formula used to calculate the impact factor announced in December 2020 and the ambiguity of citation metrics may have a negative effect on the calculated impact factor. The estimate obtained for 2020 using Elsevier’s Cite Score is also positive, as it shows an increase in the citations made between 2017 and 2020 to 824 from 692 between 2016 and 2019.

Table 1 lists the 412 reviewers that collaborated with Anales de Pediatría in 2020. As we do every year, we thank them for their altruistic work, which is all the more important at a time when we are forced to reject a greater number of manuscripts.

It is very gratifying to observe the increase in submissions to our journal. We think that this reflects the interest that the journal is generating among publishing paediatric researchers. This leads to a high percentage of rejections and considerable responsibility in the selection process. The Editorial Committee, guided by the assessment provided by peer reviewers, attempts to select the best articles, but as we do every year, we acknowledge the possibility that errors may be made during the evaluation process. We do our best to keep them to a minimum.

The annual award Anales de Pediatría 2021 to the best article published by the journal in 2020 was given to “María José Sánchez-Soler, Vanesa López-González, María Juliana Ballesta-Martínez, Jorge Gálvez-Pradillo, Rosario Domingo-Martínez, Virginia Pérez Fernández and Encarna Guillén-Navarro. Evaluación del desarrollo psicomotor hasta los 3 años de edad de niños españoles concebidos por técnicas de reproducción asistida (FIV/ICSI): estudio prospectivo de cohorte controlado. An Pediatr (Barc) 2020; 92(4):200−207”.

The award to the article that has contributed the most to the impact factor of Anales de Pediatría in the last two years (2019 and 2020) was given to 2 articles that achieved the same number of citations:

Marta Carballal Marino, Ana Gago Ageitos, Josefa Ares Álvarez, Mercedes del Río Garma, Clara García Cendón, Ana Goicoechea Castano and Josefina Pena Nieto, on behalf of the Working Group on Child Psychiatry of the Asociación Galega de Pediatría de Atención Primaria (AGAPap). Prevalencia de trastornos del neurodesarrollo, comportamiento y aprendizaje en Atención Primaria. An Pediatr (Barc) 2018; 89 (3): 153–161.

María Pichel López, Santiago Martínez-Isasi, Roberto Barcala-Furelos, Felipe Fernández-Méndez, David Vázquez Santamarina, Luis Sánchez-Santos and Antonio Rodríguez-Núñez, on behalf of the Working Group of the ANXOS Project. Un primer paso en la enseñanza del soporte vital básico en las escuelas: la formación de los profesores. An Pediatr (Barc) 2018; 89 (5): 265–271.

We offer our congratulations to the authors of these articles.

In the 4 years that this Editorial Committee has been responsible for the management of Anales de Pediatría, we have periodically expressed our thankfulness to the Board of Directors of the AEP for their unconditional support to our work. Despite the considerable economic investment required to offer open access to the journal and its simultaneous publication in English and Spanish, both of these strategies have been maintained. We believe that this editorial policy is key to continue to increase the international dissemination of Anales de Pediatría.

To make sure that we do not fall short in our acknowledgments, we want to devote this last paragraph to thank all individuals that have contributed to the development of the journal through their work.