In 2014 this editorial team began a challenging journey. Honestly, we never expected that in 2021 GE - Portuguese Journal of Gastroenterology would be as it is today.

But let us look at the achievements [¹-⁴]. In 2015 we made English our obligatory language. We kept the Portuguese abstracts, which allowed us to keep our roots while internationalizing our journal since English is the language of science. We reduced our editorial board while expanding it with international members. Our deep transformation allowed us to achieve PubMed indexation in 2017, a landmark in the history of the journal. In 2019, with an increasing number of submissions, we increased the number of pages per issue to 74. In 2020 we were included in the Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), the first step to achieving an impact factor.

How was this possible? One of our first goals was to significantly reduce the review and publication times. Authors want to have a fast answer, even if it is a bad one. Even though the workload is much greater compared to the previous years, the amazing work of the editorial team but particularly that of the reviewers has allowed us to significantly improve our times, which are now attractive for the authors (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1: Review and publication times. Since 2015, the review and editorial times have been in line with the best journals in the area. * For resubmitted articles. 

That these times could be kept is even more amazing since the number of publications significantly increased. In 2020 we had a record number of 301 submissions - almost double compared to the previous years (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2: Number of submitted peer-reviewed articles per year. The number of submitted articles more than doubled when comparing 2012-2014 with 2015-2019, reaching a record number of 301 submissions in 2020 

All types of submitted articles increased (Fig. 3). Even though clinical cases are still the most common type of submitted articles, original ones are now a pillar of our journal, with submissions from all over the world.

Fig. 3: Types of articles submitted to GE - Portuguese Journal of Gastroenterology from 2012 to 2020. 

With increasing submission rates, we were able to be more discerning in our reviews and acceptances, with a 51% rejection rate in 2020, consequently significantly increasing the quality of our published articles. This is reflected in our increasing number of citations (Fig. 4), with cite scores of 1.1 in 2019 and 1.2 in 2020 (not closed yet).

Fig. 4: Citation analysis of published articles in GE - Portuguese Journal of Gastroenterology. The number of citations is progressively increasing, reaching a cite score of 1.1 in 2019. * Official cite score only starting in 2016. From 2012 to 2015 the cite score is only estimated and not official. 

There is no doubt that the quality of the journal has increased, and GE - Portuguese Journal of Gastroenterology is now placed in the third quarter among gastroenterology journals.

We believe that GE - Portuguese Journal of Gastroenterology is now a journal that Portuguese gastroenterologists can be proud of. Of course, this achievement depended on the work not only of this editorial team but also of all of you who believed in our work and in our journal. Many thanks to all of you who published high-quality articles in our journal and to all of the reviewers whose wonderful work improved the quality of the submitted articles.

But as someone once said: “great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending,” and this editorial team is now finishing this 7-year journey which projected our journal, GE - Portuguese Journal of Gastroenterology, internationally. It is time for another team to continue our path which we hope will be brighter than ever before!