In last year’s special issue, celebrating 60 years of Acta Cytologica, we wrote a publisher’s note [1] updating you regarding the journal’s deselection from the impact factor.

The response was overwhelming. In the following months, over 1,000 cytopathologists signed an online petition to have the impact factor restored to Acta Cytologica. Your support helped convince the owners of the impact factor (Clarivate) to reevaluate the journal 2 years earlier than planned. Thank you!

Since Clarivate’s reevaluation, there has been constant discussion between Karger and Clarivate on the criteria used to evaluate Acta Cytologica. This is why this update for you, the community, is long overdue: there never seemed to be a good time to “put a stake into the ground” and say “this is the status quo.”

A real example should help explain some of the complexity and delay. Clarivate has over 12,000 journals in their database, and they strive admirably to be consistent and fair in their evaluations. Therefore, each journal should fulfill the same selection criteria. A very reasonable criterion for a new journal would be to show an increase in citation activity. However, Acta Cytologica has an incredibly strong back catalogue, and has consistently shown good citation activity (even after deselection from the impact factor). Thus, it is almost impossible for Acta Cytologica to meet the criteria for “increased citation activity” as the citation activity is already very good.

Examples such as these have led to a great deal of discussion between Clarivate and Karger. As a result of these productive discussions, Clarivate have again kindly agreed to reassess Acta Cytologica earlier than planned, and the new evaluation will take place in July 2019. This upcoming evaluation will take factors like Acta Cytologica’s strong history into consideration when applying the selection criteria.

On every conceivable metric, Acta Cytologica is performing very well relative to its field – even without an impact factor. We have a renowned editorial board, an extremely responsive team of peer reviewers, and continue to publish high-quality papers on (or even ahead of) schedule. Moreover, we know that if Acta Cytologica had an official impact factor, it would be over 1.1.

There can be no clearer demonstration that this journal offers something very valuable to the cytopathology community. So, in the coming months, we will be focusing on ways to refine and increase the value that we bring to you.

As the first step, we would like to extend a warm invitation to you to take part in this process. Tell us about the challenges you are facing when publishing and consuming the cytopathology literature. Tell us about the challenges you face in your daily practice. Let us see if we can help. We promise that every email will be responded to individually, and all challenges and novel ideas will be discussed between the Acta Cytologica editorial team, the International Academy of Cytology and Karger Publishers. You can email your thoughts to: p.lavender@karger.com.

Last, but not least, we were genuinely overwhelmed by the demonstration of community support for this journal. We have been wondering about the best way to say “thank you.” To show our appreciation, we have decided to waive all charges for color figures published in Acta Cytologica. We pride ourselves on the exceptionally high quality of our printed journal, and now authors can enjoy this service at no charge.

With very best wishes

Paul Lavender, Publication Manager, Acta Cytologica

1.
Publisher’s note
.
Acta Cytol
.
2017
;
61
(
4-5
):
257
–
8
.
https://doi.org/10.1159/000475110
0001-5547
Crossref
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© 2018 S. Karger AG, Basel
2018
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