JAMA Network Open—The Year in Review, 2022 (2024)

Last year was another tumultuous year, with the evolution of SARS-CoV-2, ongoing war and destruction in Ukraine, economic hardship throughout the world, mind-numbing recurrences of racial and ethnic violence, accumulating evidence of the devastating effects of climate change, and wide political and social divisions. At the same time, there have been positive developments regarding management of COVID-19, including new treatments for COVID-19 to replace ones no longer effective, increasing immunity among many populations from immunization and infection, and increasing recognition of the need to understand and treat post–COVID-19 condition symptoms. These circ*mstances and events have served to further energize the editors and staff of JAMA Network Open to pursue our mission “to improve health, health care, and health equity worldwide through open access dissemination of high quality, innovative, general medical research and commentary by and for a broad range of clinicians, researchers, policy makers, and public health and health care leaders.”

We remain deeply committed to addressing racism in medicine, health care, and society both in the US and abroad.^1,2 Monica Vela, MD, joined us this year as JAMA Network Open Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion associate editor. In this role, she collaborates with the rest of the editors and with Preeti N. Malani, MD, MSJ, Director of Equity for the JAMA Network, to lead implementation of the journal’s plan to improve diversity of our editors, authors, and reviewers; assist new authors in publishing their work; train the next generation of editors from diverse backgrounds; and publish the highest quality studies related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Additional information about the JAMA Network’s commitment to equity is available online.³

Submissions to JAMA Network Open continued to grow steadily, as shown in the Table.^4-10 We received nearly 13 000 research manuscripts in 2022, an increase of 18% from 2021. We have also increased the number of published articles to approximately 8 per weekday, holding our acceptance rate at 15%. Approximately 3000 of these submissions were related to the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing us to be highly selective to ensure that those we now publish provide important new information. We remain a truly international journal with 66% of submissions coming from outside the US, led by China, Korea, Canada, Japan, Taiwan, the UK, France, Australia, Germany, Italy, and Spain.

We rely on peer reviewers to advise us about the timeliness, importance, and quality of submitted work, and we thank the reviewers who contributed in 2022 (their names are listed elsewhere¹¹). Since its inception, JAMA Network Open has had a dedicated core of statistical reviewers from around the world who, along with the journal’s statistical editors Sebastien J-P.A. Haneuse, PhD, and Jesse A. Berlin, ScD, help to ensure the rigor and accuracy of the methods and data analysis of studies we publish. This year, we designated a group of JAMA Network Open Distinguished Reviewers who regularly provide high quality reviews and are listed on the journal’s masthead. This has enabled JAMA Network Open to maintain a turnaround time of a median of 3 days to first decision without peer review and 45 days to first decision with peer review; peer reviewers return their reviews in a median of 13 days.

One of the great strengths of JAMA Network Open is its integration in the JAMA Network. Authors who submit manuscripts to JAMA or a specialty journal can request that they be referred to JAMA Network Open for consideration if not accepted. When they have been reviewed at one of the other JAMA Network journals, we are often able to make quick decisions about acceptance.

The global reach of JAMA Network Open is remarkable, with more than 34 million views and downloads of articles published during 2022, a 65% increase from 2021. Articles published in JAMA Network Open were mentioned in the news media more than 92 000 times, and the journal has more than 37 000 social media followers. One measure of the media attention is the Altmetric score, which is a weighted count of mentions of an article in mainstream news, social media, blogs, and policy documents. The top articles for JAMA Network Open in 2022 as measured by views and downloads,^4,5 Altmetric scores,^6-8 and citations¹² were again all related to SARS-CoV-2, except for the important study on habitual alcohol intake and risk of cardiovascular disease.⁹

We will soon be celebrating the journal’s fifth birthday (May 18, 2023). In this short time, JAMA Network Open has emerged as one of the leading open access general medical journals in the world, with an impact factor last year of 13.37. The volume of studies we publish has allowed JAMA Network Open to provide important information on a wide variety of topics.

This year we issued a call for papers on the effects of war on health, health care delivery, access, and quality of care.¹³ We strongly believe that this fits with the mission of the journal and our commitment to serve a global audience of readers. The response to the call has been rewarding, with important studies on the effect of war on vaccination of children,¹⁴ disability among veterans related to Gulf War Illness,¹⁵ interventions to treat combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder,¹⁶ and support for medical professionals in Ukraine.¹⁷ Our other calls for papers on enhancing aging and ending agesim,¹⁸ prevention and the effect of systemic racism in health,¹⁹ and severe maternal morbidity and mortality²⁰ have each highlighted important issues affecting the health of individuals around the world and have had a tremendous response from authors.

The demands of publishing a successful medical journal in the current dynamic environment are legion and particularly challenging for a journal that publishes 8 research articles and accompanying commentaries daily, 5 days per week. It would not be possible without the concerted efforts of a large team of dedicated professionals. In addition to Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, PhD, MD, MAS, editor in chief of JAMA and the JAMA Network; Phil B. Fontanarosa, MD, MBA, interim editor in chief of JAMA and the JAMA Network; and Annette Flanagin, RN, MA, executive managing editor of JAMA and the JAMA Network, we must acknowledge the entire staff of the JAMA Network for their tireless contributions. The team of our associate editors, digital editors, statistical editors, and assistant editors has expanded as our journal has grown and is truly outstanding. Our discussions during our 3 manuscript meetings each week are lively intellectual interchanges as we carefully consider each manuscript and the reviewers’ comments in our decisions about what we should publish. Our editorial staff works tirelessly to ensure that every issue of JAMA Network Open appears online with superbly edited content. The teams led by Daniel Lowden and Heather Green perform the day-to-day processing of submissions, reviews, and author communications and are responsible for the incredibly smooth process required to publish articles across a broad range of medical specialties and topics every weekday. We are also supported by a dedicated team of manuscript editors and production staff. Our distinguished editorial board has provided guidance and advice on how to make JAMA Network Open not just the best open access journal in the world, but one of the best journals publishing health-related research.

Finally, our greatest expression of appreciation is to our authors, who have entrusted JAMA Network Open with the fruits of their toil and the many patients, families, and members of the community who participated in the studies and made all of this possible. We are justifiably proud that the day their work is published, it is available worldwide for free. The success of JAMA Network Open stands as testament to the unassailable value and validity of the scientific process, which relies on critical peer review and open public discourse. As stewards of an international journal, we join with our readers from around the world to fervently hope for a healthier and more peaceful year in 2023, and we pledge that JAMA Network Open will continue to provide a home for cutting-edge, clinically relevant science that will help meet that expectation. Thanks to all of you.

Published: March 16, 2023. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.6253

Open Access: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC-BY License. © 2023 Fihn SD et al. JAMA Network Open.

Corresponding Author: Frederick P. Rivara, MD, MPH, Department of Pediatrics, University of Washington, 325 Ninth Ave, Box 359960, Seattle, WA 98104 (fred.rivara@jamanetwork.org).

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: None reported.