ANC Opens up to the World

“Impossibilities are the most beautiful possibilities.”

—Nikolaus Harnoncourt—

Approximately six years ago, the Japanese Society of Nuclear Cardiology (JSNC) launched its official journal, the Annals of Nuclear Cardiology (ANC), with the ultimate goal of advancing research and clinical practice by those in the field of nuclear cardiology, including physicians, technologists, and scientists, as well as the industries that support them.

Initially JSNC aimed to promote its own members' research and clinical practice and therefore it required any non-JSNC members who wanted to submit their manuscript to ANC to become JSNC members. However, as ANC has become better known among physicians and researchers on different continents and as the nature of research itself has moved further towards examining issues on a global scale, the time has come to open ANC not only to our members but to all nuclear cardiology researchers around the world. Beginning this year, ANC therefore no longer requires authors to become JSNC members or to pay a submission fee. With this change, ANC is now more accessible to everyone in the nuclear cardiology field around the world.

In this spirit, the editorial board of ANC is working to ensure that articles published in ANC can be accessed via major search engines. Board members have been working very hard to collect the information necessary to apply to such search engines, but further steps are necessary. First, ANC needs to have a more international perspective. Therefore, the ANC editorial board is looking to include international advisory members among its ranks. This move will be coming soon.

We are planning to apply to PubMed or PubMed Central operated by the National Institute of Health in the United States. Improving the quality of original articles and technical articles is now even more important and so last year we started an editorial support program. Through this program, editorial board members work with authors preparing manuscripts for submission. Beginning with this edition of ANC, original articles accepted for publication will have undergone thorough scientific editing as part of ANC's process to support authors in manuscript preparation and to improve the overall quality of manuscripts. Authors sometimes overlook the new insight their studies may provide. In this regard, editorial board members, who have great depth of experience, will endeavour to help these authors to identify such new insights from their work.

For this issue of ANC at least, the number of original articles is still limited. However, I expect this number to grow in the coming years. Along with increasing the quantity of manuscripts, we continuously aim to improve their quality. In this regard, the review process is very important. Therefore, I have asked experienced reviewers in Asia, the UK, Europe, North America, and South America to review articles submitted to ANC. Among ANC reviewers this year are a number of core American Society of Nuclear Cardiology members. I am especially grateful to those who have been willing to give of their time for these reviews during the very challenging situation around the world this year. I encourage international reviewers and researchers to consider becoming involved with ANC as reviewers or authors.

To announce its existence to the world, ANC launched its website in 2017. As you can see from the figure below, interest in the site has increased substantially this year. I hope that, as our journal becomes better known in the global nuclear cardiology community, the number of submissions from around the world will continue to grow as well. In this way and with continued improvements in quality and quantity of original articles, our journal will establish itself as a noteworthy contributor in the nuclear cardiology world.

Acknowledgments

The author thanks Mr. Hideaki Takai and Mr. Osamu Konno for their support of the publication and Natsue Ito, CT, for her help with manuscript preparation. The author also thanks Ms. Holly Beanlands for her work as publication editor.

Conflicts of interest

None.

Figure 1

Transitions in the number of papers cited in ANC.

This is the annual change in the total number of ANC website visits.

Figure 2

ANC website access.