NMNI editorial report, 2017.

Introduction

Since its launch 5 years ago, New Microbes and New Infections (NMNI), a journal of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology and Infection (ESCMID), has published a total of 432 of 543 submitted papers retrievable in PubMed Central. NMNI aims to provide an international forum for authors reporting facts in infectious and primarily tropical diseases and clinical microbiology that are new in one particular place and country. Accordingly, NMNI acknowledges contributions from emerging research teams, offering authors the opportunity to publish in their own language in addition to English; two such papers, dually accepted in French and English, have been published in 2015–2016 [1], [2] and one in Spanish and English in 2017 [3]. In the meantime, NMNI has been included in PubMed Central, which has obviously increased its visibility and the interest of authors and readers. We hope this is just the first step towards referencing in PubMed and being included in impact factor rankings within the next few years.

Editorial structure

NMNI is an online-only journal, meaning that authors can submit their contributions any time and that accepted papers are released by chronological order of acceptance. NMNI has reviewed papers in English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic and Chinese thanks to a panel of international editors, to whom we extend our thanks for their kind contributions to the editorial process. Accepted papers are translated into English and are published in both the original language and in English after the corresponding author has approved the English translation. Papers can be submitted in any of 12 categories with the understanding that papers must report reliable facts in infectious and tropical diseases and clinical microbiology that are new in one particular geographic region. A new category, Taxonogenomics, was launched in 2015 to accommodate reports of new bacterial, viral, fungal and parasitic species, along with their genomes.

Editorial activity

In 2017 NMNI received 118 submissions. Of these 118 submitted papers, 73% have been accepted for publication; an additional 22 papers are being reviewed or are under revision. Five papers have been sponsored with fees entirely covered by Elsevier. Altogether, a total of 432 papers have been published since the launch of NMNI, and all accepted papers are indexed in PubMed Central, with a regular progression in the number of submitted papers. Fig. 1 shows the geographical origin of submitted papers, indicating that NMNI is on the way to achieving its main goal: the rapid promotion of discoveries in infectious and tropical diseases and clinical microbiology made by emerging research teams from all over the world.

Fig. 1

Geographical origin of papers submitted for publication in New Microbes and New Infections in 2017.

NMNI reports

The current citation rate via CiteScore is 2.17, the Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP) is 0.962, and SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) is 0.932. Our next objective will be to submit an application to Thomson Reuters for indexing in the Web of Science.

Readership

Online readership of NMNI continues to grow: in 2017 total full-text downloads increased by 27% from the previous year, reaching 4 528 480. The most cited paper has 114 citations [4] and the second most cited has 35 citations [5].

Submissions

The proportion of manuscripts submitted as Original Articles and as New Species Announcements is maintaining its level of the previous year, with Original Articles representing 37% of all submissions and New Species Announcements representing 24% of total submissions, which is a little less than in 2016. In addition, these manuscripts come from a wide variety of countries (Fig. 1), showing that the journal is sought as a publication venue by many authors. It is interesting to note that compared to 2016, authors from several new countries, such as Argentina, Chile, Republic of Korea, Thailand and Malaysia, have published for the first time in NMNI. This fact confirms that NMNI is achieving its goal to be open to researchers from all over the world, especially from emerging countries. It is also interesting to note that Iran, Spain and India are among the top ten countries submitting papers to NMNI. The journal continues to make efforts to help the authors from countries with cultural impediments and financial difficulties to improve the quality of their scientific production and to share their knowledge with the global scientific community.

Perspectives

NMNI strives to further strengthen its Editorial Board in order to decrease the current processing time for online publication, which remains above its goal of a 2-month process for publication (measured from initial submission). Also, NMNI plans to publish thematic issues devoted to the current situation of infection in every country. The continuing efforts of the Editorial Board will also enhance the chances of inclusion in Thomson Reuters' impact factor listing.

Conflict of interest

None declared.