NUMB3RS

“I know math is full of absolutes; unfortunately, the rest of the world isn't.

Charlie Eppes, Numb3rs, Season Four, Trust Metric

In this year's first issue we brought you “Cardiac surgery in Germany during 2012” and promised the statistics for 2013 for the near future. Meanwhile providing an insight into the innards of this journal may help to keep you entertained. Some journals publish their annual numbers in regular original articles. I would like to start more modestly with an Editorial with the potential for further development if interest is generated. At the annual board meetings the Editor-in-Chief reports to the Editorial Board how the journal is developing. Then the publisher presents his part of the story, finally potential strategies and immensely intelligent ideas for the future are discussed, and in general a good time is had by all.

At this year's board meeting on February 10th, 2014, the following numbers were presented among many others: development of manuscripts, distribution by countries, acceptance/rejection ratios, efficiency of the review process.

To start with the development of new submissions: there is a continuous upward trend, 2013 reaching an all-time high of 329 manuscripts with an equal distribution between original cardiovascular and thoracic ones, supplemented by the various other categories ([Table 1]). For a highly specialized surgical journal such as ours this is a very pleasant situation. The contributions came from 28 countries, the most prolific being Turkey, the People's Republic of China, and Germany – in that order. We are particularly proud to have received manuscripts from such outlying regions as Trinidad and Tobago as well as Singapore.

Table 1 Development of manuscript submissions

	2010	2011	2012	2013
Original Cardiovascular	119	118	114	119
Original Thoracic	81	121	128	119
Original Basic Science	8	12	14	13
Reviews	5	2	15	9
Short Communications	11	17	6	17
How-to-Do-its	15	17	22	20
Letters-to-the-Editor	8	9	8	9
Others	2	4	5	23
Total	249	300	312	329

The overall rejection rate was 73.3%, rising slightly, which is comparable to similar journals. It varied widely between categories ([Table 2]). The extremely high rejection rates in “Short Communications” and “Others” were caused by submissions of Case Reports, also reflected by the sudden increase in absolute numbers in these two. The Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgeon founded its sister journal ThCVS Reports to accommodate this kind of publication in December 2012 and does no longer accept them for the main journal – which is clearly stated on the submission site. Many authors, however, still try to submit Case Reports, attributing them a different category. This only leads to immediate rejection for formal reasons. It is true that we are still publishing some in the mother journal (just look at the back of this issue), but those are from the backlog of manuscripts accepted before we introduced the new concept.

Table 2 Rejection rate by manuscript category

MS-type	Rejection Rate
Original Cardiovascular	72.8%
Original Thoracic	77.3%
Reviews	77.7%
Short Communications	81.2%
How-To-Do-Its	75.0%
Letters-to-the-Editor	22.2%
Others	95.6%
Overall	73.3%

One thing to be really proud of is the turnover time of the review process. We did achieve an average time span from submission to first decision of 26 days. The Editor believes that this highly competitive number is a main attraction of the journal, because authors do not like to be left in suspense. Even in case of a rejection they get a speedy answer and can go on from there. This is only possible because of the extraordinary discipline of the majority of our reviewers who cannot be thanked enough on behalf of both, the editorial board and the authors.

These are just some of the many numbers and statistics generated throughout the year to keep the makers of this journal informed. Utilizing bibliometric analyses helps to steer the ship on a smooth and comfortable course. The amount and quality of the submitted manuscripts allow the editorial staff to make pointed selections after a speedy and efficient review process. This, in turn, should guarantee that we achieve our primary goal: satisfaction of the readers. I hope you can confirm this by staying tuned.