Figure 1: Carlos Bilreiro 

Dear colleagues and friends,

At the end of this year 2024, I think it is important to show the most relevant data from ARP's recent activity, as well as point out some changes that were made during the year that is now ending.

The editorial activity figures for this year will be presented below, compared with the previous year (2023) and with the annual average, from since when we have records on our electronic platform (01/01/2017). There were 43 submissions in 2024, a notable increase compared to 2023, when we had 32 submissions (an average of 37 submissions per year since 2017). In 2024 we had an acceptance rate of 68% and a rejection rate of 32%, similar to the year 2023 (acceptance/rejection rates of 64%/36%, respectively), but revealing a reduction in accepted articles when compared with the annual average since 2017 (acceptance/rejection rates of 78%/22%, respectively). The average number of days until the first editorial decision has been reduced significantly: 6 days, compared to 11 days in 2023 and an annual average of 29 days since 2017. The average number of days until the acceptance decision has been reduced as well, to 115 days (208 in 2023; average of 155 since 2017). The average number of days until the rejection decision was 74 in 2024, 47 in 2023, and 1037 on average since 2017 (to this last value contributed articles from previous years that remained without a response from authors and were archived in later years). The desk rejection rate (immediate rejection by the editor-in-chief without peer review) was 11% in 2024 (6% in 2023; average 2% since 2017).

For these calculations, articles from the sections “Editorials”, “ARP Cases”, “State-of-the-art Interventional Radiology: selected cases”, “Visual Abstracts about Radiology and the Past: Secrets Unveiled”, “In memoriam”, “ARP sections voice”, “Institutional College of Radiology”, are not considered.

These data demonstrate a positive evolution of our peer review process, which has become faster, meeting authors’ expectations. I must first thank our Reviewers, key elements in the functioning of any scientific publication, for their efforts in ensuring compliance with the stipulated deadlines and for the quality of the submitted reviews. Our Editorial Team is also to be congratulated, having contributed to speeding up the peer review process, making it more efficient.

On another topic, in order to be successful in our applications for indexing in more databases, some changes had to be made to the structure of our website and the information available there. Specifically, in the “About the Journal” section, we can now find updated and clarified information on the various topics described. In addition to this section, guidelines for authors and reviewers have been added and clarified to facilitate the preparation of articles by authors and to clarify the peer review process with specific guidance for our reviewers. These can be found under the “Submissions” and “Instructions for Reviewers” ​​tabs. We will soon be submitting new applications for more indexing, so that our articles can reach the widest possible audience internationally.

Below I present the Top 3 ARP articles for the year 2024, regarding the number of accesses and downloads (publications from 2023 and 2024).

Congratulations to the authors! The respective certificates will be sent shortly to the corresponding author of each article.

Finally, I want to wish you all an excellent 2025, with health and full of good moments!

Call for papers - Original and Review Articles

Acta Radiológica Portuguesa is seeking new submissions of “Original Articles” and “Review Articles”. These articles will be prioritized in selection for publication in upcoming issues. Articles in the “Clinical cases” and “Images of interest” sections will have lower priority, due to the high volume of submissions in these sections, and may remain on the waiting list for publication for considerable periods