One Year of JAHA

W ith the February 2013 issue, the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA) begins its second year. JAHA was created as a forum for high-quality cardiovascular and cerebrovascular science and to particularly represent the domains of the 16 Scientific Councils of the American Heart Association (AHA). As an open access journal, JAHA was designed to provide readers with immediate subscription-free access to the entire content of articles from any device connected to the internet. The launch of JAHA was particularly timely, because funding agencies in the United States and the United Kingdom have recently established policies requiring that publicly-funded research be freely accessible. We have no restrictions on article length and provide unlimited use of color images and video, thus allowing authors to present all aspects of their work. It was our particular goal to provide rapid review and posting of manuscripts. In our first year, we have accomplished many of these goals and have begun to establish our identity within the AHA family of journals. In 2012, we published 99 original articles and 24 reviews/ editorials and had a marked increase in the number of articles per issue during the course of the year (Figure). Articles are reviewed rapidly, with a median time to first decision of 19.5 days, and are posted online within 4 weeks of acceptance. Articles are submitted from around the world: Over 40% of our submissions came from outside the United States, including 8% from Japan, 5% from the United Kingdom, 5% from Canada, and 4% from Germany. As authors become more aware of JAHA, we expect further increases in the number of articles published per issue and we are striving to decrease the time for review and online publication. Our published articles covered a broad range of cardiovascular science. About two-thirds of the original articles reported clinical science and one-third reported basic science. The most frequent topic categories included coronary heart disease, vascular medicine, heart failure, stroke, and electrophysiology. In line with our goal to support the missions of the AHA and to represent the scientific councils, we also published articles on resuscitation science, pediatric cardiology, health services and outcomes, interventional cardiology, cardiovascular surgery, the kidney in cardiovascular disease, nutrition, and physical activity. We also have been a forum for leadership to comment on the AHA’s goals for the cardiovascular health of all Americans. This broad range of topics was achieved, in part, because our editorial board is composed of representatives from each AHA Council. Board members act as guest editors for papers within their area of expertise and help identify editorialists and authors for review articles. We have developed close relationships with the other AHA journals. The editors of Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, Circulation Research, Hypertension, Stroke, and the Circulation family of journals cannot exceed their print and online page budgets, and often must reject highly meritorious papers. JAHA has no such limits, because we do not have a print version and because publication costs are borne by authors and/or their institutions and research sponsors. We communicate with the editors of the other AHA journals on a daily basis about such papers. After consideration of the content and reviewer comments, we invite the