The first edition of the European Heart Journal appeared in January 1980, as a monthly scientific magazine with Desmond Julian as its first editor, followed by Henri Kulbertus from Liege, Belgium, Kim Fox, from London, UK and Frans Van De Werf from Leuven University, Belgium. In 2009, Thomas F. Lüscher, then from Zurich, now London, took over as the fifth editor of the European Heart Journal with the vision “The European Heart Journal Goes Global” [1]. With this strategy, numerous editors from around the world were invited to participate in the editorial process, in particular, from the US Bernard Gersch from the Mayo Clinic, and Marc Pfeffer, Scott Solomon and Christopher Cannon from Harvard University, Boston, as well as Hiroaki Shimokawa from Sendai, Japan, David Celermajer from Sydney, Australia and Runlin Gao from Beijing, China, to mention just a few. With this team, the editor-in-chief set new standards of scientific publishing and improved the quality of the published manuscripts [2].
Also, the content of the European Heart Journal was expanded with a news section, CardioPulse run by Dr Andros Tofield, and soon the journal was published weekly with reviews, original research, editorials, CardioVascular Flashlights and more recently a Discussion Forum for its readers.
Furthermore, the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) journal family (fig. 1) was established, with transfer of manuscripts from the European Heart Journal to specialty journals. This allowed authors of papers considered by the editor-in-chief to be better suited to a specialty journal to transfer their manuscripts, with the existing reviews and without new formatting, to either Europace, the European Journal of Heart Failure or any other member of the ESC journal family. Over the years, the number of titles increased substantially, with new journals on acute cardiac care, pharmacotherapy, quality of care and, most recently, digital health. In addition, the appearance of the ESC journals underwent a significant change, with a new design reflecting corporate identity.
Figure 1
The ESC journal family.
The journal and its specialty sisters became available on iPhone and iPad, and views and downloads increased from 1 million to an estimated 12 million per year. The impact factor of the European Heart Journal and all the other members of the ESC journal family increased substantially (table 1). For the younger readers, a Twitter editor was hired and the editor-in-chief also regularly tweets about the content of each issue of the journal (the weekly Issue@aGlance), more recently with video summaries. Indeed, the Twitter editor, Ricardo Ladeiras Lopes, performed a randomised trial showing that tweeting on articles increases citations [3].
Table 1
Bibliometric data of the ESC journal family. IF = Impact Factor.
Journal
Submissions
Downloads
IF
Remarks
Eur Heart J
3’200 (4000)
7’680’091
28.848 (24.122)
Cardiovascular Res
1’250 (1’500)
Eur J Heart Fail
1’419 (1’920)
1’200’000
12.129 (11.4)
EuroPace
1’400 (1’500)
656’451
EHJ CV Imaging
1’100
1’120’200
5.260
Eur J Prev Cardiol
1’658 (2’688)
566’035
EHJ CV Pharmac
520 (600)
129’000
6.723
EHJ QCCA
172 (300)
84’000
‒
Estimated IF 3.7
EHJ ACVC
347 (700)
95’000
EHJ CV Nursing
506
244’999
2.479
EHJ Supplements
13 issues
‒
1.321
EHJ Case Reports
570 (1’100)
153’160
EuroIntervention
4.02
ESC Heart Failure
300 (580)
200’000
3.407
eJournal Cardiology
50
n.a.
n.a.
Weekly one article
Thus, in summary, in the last decade the European Heart Journal was completely transformed into one of the leading journals in cardiovascular medicine world-wide and is now ready to be run by a new editor-in-chief. After a difficult selection process, the Search Committee decided to nominate Filippo Crea from Rome, Italy to become the new editor-in-chief from 1 September 2020. Filippo Crea has worked closely with Thomas F. Lüscher since January to assure a smooth transition from one editor to the next. Also, the editorial managers of the European Heart Journal, Amelia Meier, Susannah Dedecke and Johanna Huggler from the Zurich Heart House will continue to work with the new editor to assure sustainability of the current quality of the journal.
Science is built on trust, but nor all authors deserve it. Very rarely overall, but nonetheless importantly, the editors have had to deal with accusations, questions, whistleblowers and other individuals who rightly or wrongly felt that scientific fraud might be involved in submitted or even in published work [4] As a consequence, the editor-in-chief created the ESC Journals Ethics Committee chaired by Maarten Simoons from Rotterdam, Kim Fox from London and Christian Hamm from Bad Nauheim. Later, to expand the expertise to basic science, Ursula Ravens, David Garcia-Dorado, who sadly passed away in 2019, and Mat Daemen joined the team. Unfortunately, this committee became increasingly busy over time, but it did an exceptional job in solving delicate issues with good judgement as well as high ethical standards [5].
With this short feature, the current editor-in-chief, Thomas F. Lüscher, would like to thank in particular the editors in Switzerland who were involved from the very start of his editorship and were crucial, as were Swiss reviewers, for the tremendous success of the European Heart Journal, which allowed it to grow to its current stature (table 2).
Table 2
Swiss editors of the European Heart Journal from 2009–2020.
Name
Site
Area of expertise
Lukas Altwegg
St Clara Basel
Interventional cardiology
Corinna Brunckhorst
USZ Zurich
Arrhythmias
Giovanni G. Camici
UZH Zurich
Basic science, stroke
Francesco Cosentino
Karolinksa, Stockhom
Diabetes
Sarah Costantino
UZH Zurich
Basic science
Firat Duru
USZ Zurich
Arrhythmias
Oliver Gämperli
Hirslanden Zurich
Imaging, interventional cardiology
Urs Eriksson
GZO Wetzikon
Myocarditis
Andreas Flammer
USZ Zurich
Heart failure
Johannes Holzmeister
Zurich
Devices
Peter Jüni
University of Toronto
Statistics, metanalysis
Philipp A. Kaufmann
USZ Zurich
Imaging
Ulf Landmesser
Charité Berlin
Interventional cardiology
Luca Liberale
UZH Zurich
Basic science, stroke
Willibald Maier
USZ Zurich
Interventional cardiology
Robert Manka
USZ Zurich
Imaging
Martin Meyer
USZ Zurich
Production
Christian M. Matter
USZ Zurich
Basic science
Christian Mueller
University Basel
Biomarkers, ACS
Fabian Nietlispach
Hirslanden Zurich
Interventional cardiology
Francesco Paneni
UZH Zurich
Basic science
Aju Pazhenkottil
USZ Zurich
Imaging
Lorenz Räber
Inselspital Bern
Interventional cardiology
Frank Ruschitzka
USZ Zurich
Heart failure
Christian Schmied
USZ Zurich
Sport medicine
Simon F. Stämpfli
KS Luzern
Echocardiography
Jan Steffel
USZ Zurich
Arrhythmias
Felix Tanner
USZ Zurich
Echocardiography
Christian Templin
USZ Zurich
Interventional cardiology
Ludwig von Segesser
CHUV Lausanne
Cardiovascular surgery
ACS = Acute coronary syndromes; GZO = Gesundheitszentrum Zurich Ost; KS = Kantonsspital; USZ = University Hospital Zurich; UZH = Centre for Molecular Cardiology, University of Zurich
Not least, the success of the European Heart Journal is in large parts thanks to an amazing editorial team with the lead editorial manager Amelia Meier and her team (fig. 2)
Figure 2
The energetic team of editorial managers of the European Heart Journal (from left to right: Stine Thomsen, Amelia Meier-Batschelet (lead), Susanne Dedecke, Maike Harder, Johanna Huggler, Jeannine Felber).
As such the European Heart Journal, transformed into a leading journal in cardiovascular medicine over more than a decade, is ready to be handed over as of 1 September 2020 to the new editor-in-chief Filippo Crea from Rome, a distinguished scientist and clinician with experience, as he has been one of the best associate editors of the journal (fig. 3).
Figure 3
Change in editorship.
Correspondence
Correspondence:, Professor Thomas F. Lüscher, Zurich Heart House, Hottingerstrasse 14, CH-8008 Zurich, cardio[at]tomluescher.ch
References
1Lüscher TF, Gersh B, Brugada J, Landmesser U, Ruschitzka FT, Serruys PW. The European Heart Journal goes global: the road ahead of the editorial team 2009-2011. Eur Heart J. 2009;30(1):1–5. doi:. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehn549PubMed
3Ladeiras-Lopes R, Clarke S, Vidal-Perez R, Alexander M, Lüscher TF; ESC (European Society of Cardiology) Media Committee and European Heart Journal. Twitter promotion predicts citation rates of cardiovascular articles: a preliminary analysis from the ESC Journals Randomized Study. Eur Heart J. 2020;ehaa211. doi:. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehaa211PubMed
5Simoons ML; all Committee Members. The ESC Publications Ethics Committee: Report from the first 5 years’ experience of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) journals family ethics committee. Eur Heart J. 2018;39(27):2518–21. doi:. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/ehy323PubMed
