Another volume of the Journal closes, and we thank all those involved in making 2023 yet another important year at Pediatric Critical Care Medicine (PCCM). As we have done since 2021, the foreword to the December issue outlines details about the Journal’s latest impact factor, presents our process metrics, and provides information that will interest authors and readers.

4.1 PCCM’s 2023 JOURNAL IMPACT FACTOR (using 2020/2021 Literature Cited in 2022)

PCCM has yet again reached another peak in the Clarivate™ Web of Science journal impact factor report, now calculated as 4.1. Well done to everyone involved in producing the clinical science, improving it by review, and disseminating it after reading. Thank you. From my perspective, rather than focusing on individual articles, the insight that I gain from this information from Clarivate is that each of our 24 issues in 2020/2021 with, on average, 16 original articles and reviews accrued a total of 64 citations in 2022. PCCM is a worthy read, and collectively it represents the lifeblood of our thriving community. This result is our third consecutive year with a journal impact factor greater than 3.0 (1,2), which is considered the threshold for a journal being classed as “Good.” If you are interested, the next threshold in the impact factor is 10.0, which is the level at which a journal is considered “Excellent.”

PCCM is now ranked 13th of 35 journals in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) category of Critical Care, and 16th of 130 journals in the SCIE category of Pediatrics. Our top five citing journals are PCCM (1st), Frontiers in Pediatrics (2nd), Journal of Pediatric Intensive Care (3rd), Critical Care Medicine (4th), and Children-Basel (5th). Please remember to scan the contents pages of these journals to find the other material published in our field, besides that which is published in the main medical weeklies.

JOURNAL PROCESS METRICS

In the 32 months from January 2021 to August 2023, out of 2,107 submissions (excluding editorial material) we have 392 accepted items (19%), 1,615 rejected items (76%), and the other 100 items (5%) are still at various stages of review. Examined in another way, we have 1,255/2,107 (60%) articles that pass the internal screening stage, and 392/1,255 (31%) are selected for publication after peer review. That is, the initial presentation is very important: have you selected the right format and journal for your work, are you a reader of PCCM and know what is required by readers, and are you up to date with what is contemporary (3–6)? For more detailed information, please look at the free material about writing on the journal website (https://journals.lww.com/pccmjournal/pages/collectiondetails.aspx?TopicalCollectionId=26): select the “Collections” drop-down menu, and click on the items within the “PCCM Notes, Methods, and Statistics” section.

Publication Timeline

In the articles published in the 32 issues (January 2021 to August 2023), the time in review–from date of submission to date of acceptance–was a median (interquartile range) of 117 (75 to 173) days. The interval between final acceptance and appearance in an issue of the journal was 5 (4 to 6) months. In conjunction, there has been some improvement since last year, but the timings remain overly long. However, length in review does in my mind reflect the Journal’s academic rigor, and the necessary attention to detail, which for our clinician authors takes time to respond. Fortunately, the Journal has enough high-quality material to have a Journal lead-time of 5 months. For authors who may be concerned about any delay from acceptance to appearance in an issue of PCCM, most articles are pre-published as online ahead-of-print publications (with unique digital object identifier number), which can take as little as 15 days for certain highly topical items. Please go to the PCCM website and click on the “Latest Articles” menu or subscribe to the Journal’s RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed.

Gender Equity and PCCM

In the 2,107 submissions (January 2021 to August 2023) the female-to-male ratio of gender-tagged names using the first author of each submission was 1.2:1, which is the same as I reported in 2021 and 2022 (1,2). Over this same period, the female-to-male ratio of gender-tagged names (using the first author) for all accepted articles was 1.4:1. That is, our data fail to show evidence of an association between the process from submission to acceptance, and there being a difference in the submission and acceptance ratios.

PCCM continues to be supported by an outstanding pool of 491 highly committed reviewers who have supported the January 2021 to August 2023 submissions. Overall, the female-to-male ratio of reviewers’ gender-tagged names is 0.8:1, which remains equivalent to the 0.9:1 ratio in PCCM’s editorial writers in the 32 issues, January 2021 to August 2022. These findings are to be expected because our reviewers are our editorial writers. As we look to 2024, PCCM welcomes all volunteers and for those who are interested, please read the 2023 publication about the “reviewer academy” of the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) (7).

Must Read PCCM

Having an article published in PCCM means that the material is a well-executed, useful, and topical contribution (i.e., academic, scientific, educational, or professional) to our field, and it meets the criteria outlined by SCCM and the World Federation of Pediatric Intensive and Critical Care Societies (8).

If you are a generalist in the field and looking for guidance as to what to read in PCCM, look at the Journal website and select the “Collections” drop-down menu and click on the items in the “Editor’s Choice” section for an overview, issue-by-issue. Further than that, there are two other approaches that will keep you up to date.

Review the five articles in PCCM, 2022, that by October 2023 had already gained 10 or more citations in the Clarivate Web of Science database for 2023, which places them in the “Excellent” category (see section above about impact factor). First, there is the “2022 SCCM Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPG) on Prevention and Management of Pain, Agitation, Neuromuscular blockade, and Delirium in Critically ill Pediatric Patients with Consideration of the ICU Environment and Early Mobility” (PANDEM) (9). As of May/June 2023, this CPG gained the status of “highly cited paper” by Clarivate, meaning that it is in the top 1% of the academic field of Clinical Medicine. Second, there is the PCCM Special Article about “An Antiracism Approach to Conducting, Reporting, and Evaluating Pediatric Critical Care Research” (10). Third, a Feature Article about the epidemiology of pediatric critical care admissions in 43 United States children’s hospitals, 2014−2019 (11,12). Fourth, an Executive Summary of the Transfusion and Anemia EXpertise Initiative–Control/Avoidance of Bleeding (TAXI-CAB) that provides recommendations and expert consensus for platelet and transfusion practice in critically ill children (13). Fifth, an Online Clinical Investigation using a curated physiologic dataset to examine lung mechanical phenotype and association between driving pressure and ventilation outcomes in pediatric acute respiratory failure (14). In total, two CPGs (i.e., PANDEM and TAXI-CAB), a professionals’ Special Article, an epidemiologic Feature Article, and it is good to see that at least one Clinical Investigation report made the cut.

The other approach is to get a head start on PCCM’s 2023 material that will likely hit the citation headlines in 2024. We already have two CPG items that have gained recognition with 10 or more citations in 2023. Both come from the “Second Pediatric Acute Lung Injury Consensus Conference” (PALICC-2): an Executive Summary about the diagnosis and management of pediatric acute respiratory distress syndrome (15); and an article describing PALICC-2 methodology (16). Of note, as of May/June 2023, the PALICC-2 Executive Summary has also gained the status of “highly cited paper” by Clarivate, meaning that it is in the top 1% of the academic field of Clinical Medicine (see above, the PANDEM CPG).

NEW SECTION AND MATERIAL ABOUT CLINICAL TRIALS

In 2022, I thought that we would see novel research material on PICU Organization, Outcomes, and Respiratory practices in 2023 (2). We have not been disappointed. However, the real surprise in 2023 has been the evolution in contributions about Clinical Trials.

Toward the end of 2022 it was apparent that PCCM needed space to keep readers and researchers informed of contemporary randomized controlled trials (RCTs) (17). Thus, the PCCM Trials section was started with a protocol, a debate, and a description of national research groups with a track record in large multicenter RCTs. First, there was the protocol for the conservative versus liberal oxygenation targets in critically ill children in the PICU (Oxy-PICU) (18). Next, if you recall, after the “First-Line Support for Assistance in Breathing Trials on Noninvasive Respiratory Support” was published, the PCCM Trials section contained a written debate between the trial researchers and three of our editorial writers (19,20). Now that the Oxy-PICU study is completed, PCCM hopes for another researcher-editorial discussion in 2024. Third, a Mini Symposium provided details about three national research networks doing RCTs: 1) the Collaborative Pediatric Critical Care Research Network (CPCCRN) and its development of the PeRsonalizEd Immunomodulation in PediatriC SepsIS-InducEd (PRECISE) in multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) study (21); 2) the Pediatric Acute Lung Injury and Sepsis Investigators (PALISI) network and its activity in measurement of longer term outcomes in patients enrolled in RCTs (22); and 3) the United Kingdom Paediatric Critical Care Society Study Group and its approach to testing PICU therapies using pragmatic RCTs (23).

From this start, publications about RCTs in 2023 have set a new standard. There was a commentary about recent RCTs in congenital heart disease (24). There was a Feature Review Article about adaptive clinical trials in pediatric critical care (25), and a methodologic article about the design of nested adaptive clinical trials of MODS (26). Other methodology articles covered consent/assent (27,28), and coenrollment (29). Finally, there were reports of interventions in three areas of practice: RCT of “bundled-consent” for PICU procedures (30); open-label study of vasopressin in the Fontan circulation (31); and a stepped-wedge cluster-randomized study of infant kidney dialysis and ultrafiltration (32).

Taking all the above together, the PCCM community is flourishing, and I’m looking forward to a new year and PCCM 2024, volume 25.

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