By Joy Curzio
Posted: August 19, 2020
The Journal of Thoracic Oncology (JTO), the official journal of the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), has a 2019 impact factor of 13.357, an increase from 12.460 in 2018. This moves the journal’s rank to 3rd out of 64 respiratory medicine journals and 11th of 244 oncology journals. Journal impact factors are published by Clarivate Analytics using the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) database, which tracks citations for science and social-science journals. The 2019 findings were released in mid-June 2020.
“With this new impact factor, JTO is now among the top 5% of all oncology journals and the leading journal that is entirely focused on thoracic oncology,” said Dr. Alex Adjei, Editor-in-Chief.
As evidence of its success, JTO received 1,104 manuscripts in the first 6 months of 2020, which equals an annualized 2,220 manuscripts. The rejection rate is 92.4%, and the journal has an exceptionally quick turn-around time of 5.4 days to initial decision and an average of 7 days for revisions for most submissions, as well as a fast-track category that allows for publication within 5 days of acceptance.
“With this new impact factor, JTO is now among the top 5% of all oncology journals and the leading journal that is entirely focused on thoracic oncology.” –Dr. Alex Adjei, JTO Editor-in-Chief
The JTO Clinical and Research Reports (JTO CRR) was launched at the IASLC 2019 World Conference on Lung Cancer. A gold open-access publication, JTO CRR complements JTO content through the spin-off’s inclusion of early and single-arm clinical trial data, subset analyses and retrospective studies, and case reports. With only two issues published to date, JTO CRR has already applied for indexing on PubMed, which comprises more than 30 million biomedical literature citations from MEDLINE, life-sciences journals, and online books. This application is 6 months ahead of the initially projected time line because JTO CRR has published 27 manuscripts in the first 2 issues.
“Application for indexing is just the first step on the journey toward being rewarded its own impact factor,” Dr. Adjei, who is also Editor-in-Chief of JTO CRR, said. “Based on the quality of submissions this new journal has already received, we are confident that it will be a valuable addition to the existing range of oncology journals.” ✦
