In June 2022, the composition of the Editorial Committee changed partially after associate director Víctor Manuel Navas López concluded his activity. Rafael Galera Martínez stepped in as a new member. We thank both of them for their work and their commitment to Anales de Pediatría.

Aware of the widespread use of social networks among paediatricians and the potential of social media to dynamize the diffusion of knowledge, the Editorial Committee invested in their use as a strategy to disseminate journal contents.1

The Committee continues to post once daily on Twitter and Facebook in the AEP profile with the hashtag #AnalesDePediatria at 11 a.m. A post is published for each item in the different sections of the current issue of the journal with a link that allows reading and downloading the contents. We have added visual tools, including a graphical abstract in the original articles—implemented in the last year—and a figure or table in the rest of the sections. For the contents in the Images in Paediatrics section, posts include a link allowing visualization of the images or videos. In addition, once a week we publish 3 articles accepted for online publication ahead of print. Last of all, at the beginning of each month, we publish a thread presenting the table of contents of the full issue using the short titles of the articles.

The analysis of the flow and interactions in these 2 platforms yields the best information for the development of improvement strategies. Thus, in the past year, the number of reactions in Twitter has tripled, with a mean greater than 4000 for the 8 most frequently read publications. The publications that prompted the most reactions were Images in Paediatrics articles containing videos. The publication with the greatest impact within social networks was the original article by Carballal-Mariño et al. titled “Expresión clínica de la COVID-19 en pediatría de atención primaria: estudio COVIDPAP”.2

There is still interesting ground to cover, with possibilities such as increasing the participation of different groups of paediatricians and establishing retweet networks to increase the view rate and diversify the readership, or creating reading groups to promote the post-publication discussion of the articles with the highest impact, among others. We encourage paediatricians active in social networks to collaborate with the diffusion of the knowledge generated in Anales de Pediatría, in the conviction that it is a useful and up-to-date resource.

In year 2022, the decreasing trend in the number of received manuscripts that started in 2021 continued,3 as can be seen in Fig. 1. The reasons for this phenomenon are not clear, but disruptions to scientific output caused by the pandemic and the proliferation of journals in our field—most of them open-access, pay-to-publish journals—with an acceptable impact factor and short processing times may partly explain it. The distribution by type of manuscript continues to be similar to that of previous years, with a slight decrease in the percentage of original articles, which continue to be more than half of the total (Fig. 2). The sharp increase in the number of submitted manuscripts in 2020 forced us to reject a greater percentage of articles, in spite of which there was still an increase in the number of accepted articles with online publication ahead of print, pending assignation to an issue. The Editorial Committee of Anales de Pediatría responded to this situation by adjusting the rejection rate and the content included in each issue until there were no more manuscripts awaiting assignation to an issue, a circumstance that is reflected in the increase in manuscript processing times reflected in Figs. 3 and 4.

Figure 1.

Annual changes in the total number of received and accepted manuscripts in years 2014–2022.

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Figure 2.

Annual changes in the percentage of original articles, scientific letters and letters to the editor received in the 2014–2022 period.

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Figure 3.

Mean time elapsed from reception to first response by the Editorial Committee (2014–2022).

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Figure 4.

Mean manuscript processing time from acceptance to publication (2014–2022).

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We have succeeded in shortening the time elapsed from acceptance of an article to online publication, which is now of approximately 6 days, which constituted a significant effort by the editorial team.

In 2022, the overall acceptance rate increased to 24%, reaching 16% for original articles (Fig. 5).

Figure 5.

Annual changes in the total number of received original article manuscripts and the percentage accepted in years 2014 to 2022.

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Following the modification of some of the indexation criteria of PubMed, the Editorial Committee decided to expand the translation to English to all the journal contents, including the sections on Images and Videos in Paediatrics and the Letters to the Editor, which were not translated in the past. In addition, with considerable effort, we have achieved our goal to simultaneously publish the translation of each manuscript approved for publication, which will allow faster dissemination of these contents.

The visibility of Anales de Pediatría s continues its upward trend, thus contributing to its chief mission to disseminate scientific knowledge in paediatrics, a distinguishing characteristic of the journal that positions it as a reference in the Spanish language literature and offers significant exposure to authors. The total number of visits continues to increase at a rate of 1 million per year, currently exceeding 10 million (Fig. 6). This increase is mainly on account of the visits to the website of Anales de Pediatría (Fig. 7), while the number of visits through Science Direct has decreased (Fig. 8). The website of the journal allows readers to find out which are the articles read most often. This year, the most read article, which received 48,358 visits, is an article of the AEP by the Neonatal Resuscitation Group of the Sociedad Española de Neonatología titled “Guía española de estabilización y reanimación neonatal 2021. Análisis, adaptación y consenso sobre las recomendaciones internacionales”.4

Figure 6.

Visibility of Anales de Pediatría: total number of visits (years 2014–2021).

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Figure 7.

Visibility of Anales de Pediatría: Number of visits to the site (www.analesdepediatria.org) (years 2014–2022). The percentage distribution by country was: Mexico: 24%, Spain: 23%, Colombia: 8%, Argentina: 8%, Peru: 7%, Chile: 6%, Ecuador: 4%. United States: 2%, Bolivia: 2%, other: 16%.

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Figure 8.

Visibility of Anales de Pediatría: number of visits from Science Direct (years 2014-2022). The percentage distribution by country was: United States: 90%, Spain: 3%, Colombia: 1%, China 1%, Mexico: 1%, other: 4%.

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In 2021, the impact factor increased considerably, as expected,3 reaching the highest value in the history of the journal: 2.37. Changes to the calculation of the impact factor by Clarivate Analytics resulted in a generalised increase in nearly all publications, but Anales de Pediatría succeeded in improving its ranking and position itself in the third quartile among the paediatric journals. It is difficult to predict the impact factor for 2022, which has yet to be published at the time of this writing, due to the changes we have just mentioned, although we expect that it will remain approximately the same.

The estimate for 2022 obtained with Elsevier’s Cite Score is promising, as the number of citations increased between 2019 and 2022 (1541 citations) compared to the previous period (1329 citations).

Table 1 lists the 280 reviewers that collaborated with Anales de Pediatría in 2022.

As we have done in previous years, we thank them for their contribution, as it increases the quality of the editorial process, contributing to the selection and improvement of the manuscripts. We take this opportunity to bring to light the difficulty the journal is experiencing due to the decreasing number of colleagues that accept the invitation to be reviewers. We are aware that the peer review process requires significant effort and that it offers slim rewards in return. Anales de Pediatría is a bilingual and open-access journal thanks to the financial support of the AEP. It is the most important journal of paediatrics in the Spanish language, and participating in such a journal as a reviewer can be a source of pride. For this reason, from the Editorial Committee, we make an appeal asking our colleagues to actively and generously participate in the review of manuscripts that keeps the journal alive. Anales de Pediatría is growing in magnitude and prestige through the joint efforts of the individuals that read it or publish in it.

We thank the authors for the opportunity they afford us on submitting their manuscripts to Anales de Pediatría. We are aware that the high percentage of rejections may discourage some authors, however, we hope that the growing impact and visibility of the journal and the lack of publication costs for authors will offer an incentive to submit.

In the Editorial Committee, we continue to work diligently to fulfil our mission, striving for a responsible, ethical, transparent and rigorous management of the journal. We offer our apologies to authors for any errors that may occur.

The annual award Anales de Pediatría 2023 to the best article published by the journal in 2022 was given to the original article “Aprendiendo a reanimar en la escuela. Estudio en

escolares de 8–12 años” by Martínez-Isasi et al.5

The award to the article that has contributed the most to the impact factor of Anales de Pediatría in the last 2 years was given to an original article on the subject of the COVID-19 pandemic, “Influencia de la pandemia por coronavirus 2 (SARS-Cov-2) en la apendicitis aguda” by Velayos et al., from the Department of Paediatric Surgery of the Hospital la Paz in Madrid.6

We offer our congratulations to the authors of these articles.

We acknowledge and thank the support of the Executive Board of the AEP to the activity of the Editorial Committee, without which the improvements implemented this year would not have been possible.

Lastly, we take this opportunity to thank the members of the working groups, committees and scientific societies of the AEP and everyone whose work and willingness to contribute facilitate the growth of the journal.