Like a snail, our journal (JDI) makes slow, but steady, progress

As the Journal of Diabetes Investigation (JDI) was launched as the official journal of the Asian Association for the Study of Diabetes (AASD) in 2010, it will enter its 7th year of publication in 2016. It has also been almost 2 years since our journal became an Open Access journal in 2014. As the background of our shift to an Open Access journal was mentioned in my previous Editorial in JDI in 2015, I won’t repeat its history. It has been a short-term experience, but our efforts seem to have been a success for the following reasons. After the first printed issue of JDI in 2010, the first impact factor was released with the evaluation of 1.881 in 2011. Then, the impact factors in 2012, 2013, and 2014 were 1.770, 1.496 and 1.825, respectively. The number of citations in other journals and downloads of the articles that appeared in our journal grew steadily after the shift to an Open Access journal. In the case of downloads, as shown in Figure 1, the number markedly increased after the shift to an Open Access journal. As the data in 2015 are up to September, it is as clear as day that the total number of downloads could increase by approximately 30% by the end of 2015. In addition, JDI was accepted for inclusion in MEDLINE/ PubMed in October 2015. Furthermore, it is a great pleasure for us to know that some articles in our journal were reported on famous global websites, such as “DiabetesPro SmartBrief” by the American Diabetes Association, just 2 weeks after their acceptance. All this evidence suggests that, like a snail, JDI is making slow, but steady, progress. As the disadvantage, there are the letters to inform us of the withdrawal of manuscripts by authors during review or after acceptance. The reasons come from the expensive charge for article publication. As one of its causes, the information including the expensive charge for article publication after the shift to an Open Access journal is not widespread throughout the whole world. It cannot be helped, because it has been a short time since becoming an Open Access journal. We are very sorry about this. However, this problem has resolved as time has passed. Recently, two interesting articles for researchers were published in the journals, Cell Metabolism and Nature. I would like to discuss the current situation of JDI based on what was discussed in these two articles. Their information seems to be important for all researchers to keep in mind. At Cell Metabolism, readers and potential authors are informed, “We emphasize having a detailed experimental section in our papers so that anybody reading the paper can rigorously assess how the experiments were conducted and have enough information at hand to repeat the experiment”. Then, the writers emphasize the following point: “We and reviewers examine the figures during