Last Year, This Year and Next Year

The world is in a state of instability as Russia continues its aggression in Ukraine. In addition, due to the seventh wave caused by COVID-19, the daily number of infected people in Tokyo has exceeded 30,000. Many healthcare workers have been forced to respond in unusual ways, and I really appreciate their efforts.

I would like to take a look back at the past year. The annual meeting and congress of the Japanese Society of Nuclear Cardiology, which had to be held remotely due to the coronary pandemic, was held face-to-face in 2022 under the leadership of President Taishiro Chikamori. I have asked questions at many conferences by remote participation, but I was disappointed that I could not ask additional questions after the answers were given. The face-to-face conference was great because I didn't have to worry about this.

In 2022, ANC submitted an application for inclusion in PubMed Central (PMC). Although we do not have the final results of that application, I am pleased to inform that it has successfully passed the first round of review. This means that it has passed the scientific quality review by the U.S. National Library of Medicine. We will continue with the technical review of the XML data of the paper, which is the second round of review. With your support and encouragement, we are aiming for the final PMC listing, which will allow ANC papers to be found in PubMed searches and thus reach a wider audience. We are aiming to increase the number of citations of articles by PubMed search and to obtain the impact factor of ANC.

The Japanese Society of Nuclear Cardiology and its editorial board are facing various reforms. In particular, what we must accomplish as soon as possible is to increase the number of female councillors and female editorial board members. We believe that it is important to manage the editorial board from a woman's point of view. Please feel free to contact the Editor-in-Chief with your nominations, whether self-recommended or not.

As for the timing of the ANC web release, the annual conference will be held in June, and there are only about two months until the web release at the end of August. We have been informing authors and reviewers of the tight schedule, but we will consider the timing for Vol. 9, which will be published in 2023.

We are still facing the difficult task of dealing with the COVID-19 disaster caused by Omicron BA5, and we wish you all the best.