FUTURE OF DERMATOVENEREOLOGICAL JOURNALS1

Each year, during the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology, there is a meeting of the Council of Dermatology Editors organized by Professor Larry Parish from Philadelphia. It is so nice to meet old friends there and make some new ones, but above all it is a very good platform to discuss the problems journals and their editors are facing today. Some of the topics we discussed during this year's meeting were the increasing number of case reports submitted to all dermatological journals, problems of plagiarism, the rising number of online journals, and the predatory policies quite often connected with them. There was also discussion on print vs online publication versions and on open access journals. It is always useful to discuss common problems, to realize that all journals have similar problems, and to exchange experiences in solving these problems. One of the problems all journals are facing is the increasing number of case reports being submitted, and their high rejection rate due to different reasons. Acta Dermatovenerologica Croatica is overloaded with case reports from many different countries around the world. Most of them are interesting, well prepared cases and could be a good way of exchanging experience between dermatologists. From my personal point of view, case reports are a very useful form of medical communication. For many years they were usually the first articles written by residents under the supervision of their mentors, and I think that all of us should insist on that in the future as well. But the problem is that it has become very difficult to find a journal willing to publish many case reports. Authors are trying to find a journal to publish their case reports in, sometimes sending them to many journals. Unfortunately, the rate of rejection of case reports is rising. And why? There are a few reasons for that, but probably one of the most important is that a high number of published case reports per issue of any journal decreases the impact factor of journal. And for each editor and editorial board, impact factor is one of the main criterions used every year to measure the quality of the journal and their efforts to improve it. Impact factor is also an important criterion when applying for academic positions. This has resulted in some high-impact journals starting to publish separate editions of their journals with case reports only, but also with no or with very low impact factor. This is probably one of the reasons why we receive offers to publish all types of articles in different online open access journals on a daily basis. But of course, if you pay for it… Acta Dermatovenerologica Croatica is proud to be the official journal of the Croatian Dermatovenereological Society of the Croatian Medical Association and also be supported by the Croatian Ministry of Science. This gives us the freedom to make balanced content with some case reports per issue, all for free. But we of course also have to take care and try to increase our impact factor, so we try to encourage authors to publish their interesting case reports in the form of letters to the editor, which do not influence the impact factor so strongly but give us the opportunity to communicate our experiences. During this year we hope to make some improvements in the quality and visibility of our Journal, and to start the 25th anniversary of the journal with new impetus.