The Journal of Clinical Lipidology - 2007 to 2017

The basic mission of the NLA is to stimulate and guide improvement in clinical lipidology in all appropriate medical settings. To accomplish our goals, we would need resources for: 1) Those entering the field, 2) Practical updates on research findings with immediate and relevant clinical applications, and 3) More fundamental knowledge
regarding the biochemical, physiologic and genetic mechanisms of lipoprotein disorders. Our educational programs, and LipidSpin have served the first two educational functions for many years. To best serve the latter component, we needed our own scientific journal – a publication that reported new research findings while keeping a focus
on human lipid problems. The desire for a Journal of Clinical Lipidology (JCL) was stated by the National Lipid Association Board beginning with our first meetings in 2002. As with some of our early challenging ideas, Chris Seymour put this on file but did not forget. As we grew larger and stronger, some of those early dreams came within our reach. After six years, the need to have our own journal to add credibility to the NLA as a professional organization became more evident.

It was during the International Symposium on Atherosclerosis in the fall of 2006 that Chris told me of his negotiating a contract with Elsevier to publish the JCL. It would be the property of the National Lipid Association, but it would be at very little cost to the Association since Elsevier would manage the business aspects. If we failed, we could terminate the contract on an annual basis. This was very reassuring since Elsevier was and is the largest publisher of scientific journals in the world. After dinner that evening, Chris, my wife Alice and I went up to the roof garden of the hotel for a nightcap. It was then that he suggested that I should be the Editor. Chris said, with his usual enthusiasm for a new project, all we need do is attract meaningful scientific submissions, review them and provide the appropriately revised manuscripts to the Elsevier publishing mechanism. I initially had no interest in taking on this task even though he assured me that I could do it and editor’s job would be intellectually interesting and easy. Alice, being a bit more sober, reminded me that I had a full-time job and had already said yes to more projects than I should be doing. She also reminded me that I had only written and reviewed papers but had no experience in being an editor and certainly none in starting a journal. I agreed with her and refused. I had underestimated Chris Seymour’s commitment and tenacity. The next week, I accepted.

Trying to convince investigators to send their manuscripts to a Journal that had not published an issue and was appointing an Editorial Board but had no designated reviewers, was a bit more challenging than I initially assumed. I remember our first Editorial Board meeting when the deadline for the first publication (January 1, 2007) was looming and all we had was the promise of a few review articles. In desperation, I suggested that they all could consider submitting a paper or two still lying unfinished in their desk drawers. The response was a clear statement that we could not use the initial issues of the Journal to “clean out our trash cans” by attempting to revive our lower quality work or that rejected by other journals. They had high expectations, only the better work should be considered. I was greatly encouraged by this attitude of my initial
Associate Editors. For their names, I refer you to the masthead in Volume 1, issue 1).

We had missed our first deadline, but in March of 2007, the first printed copy of JCL was sent to our membership and to libraries around the world. 

This had taken advantage of a strong interest in high density lipoproteinb(HDL) metabolism driven by the clinical trials planned or underway with the cholesterol-ester transfer protein inhibitors. There were four of these that involved thousands of patients in clinical endpoint studies. One (torcetrapib) had already failed and the other three still seemed attractive because of their very powerful effect in raising HDL cholesterol (HDL-C). Also underway was a very sincere effort by Greg Brown, to demonstrate that niacin was beneficial through its ability to raise HDL-C, the AIM-HIGH study. I wrote a review of the role of HDL in the clearance of triglyceride rich lipoproteins and my friends and loyal members of the NLA, contributed seven additional review articles on: “Intrinsic Highdensity Lipoproteins” (Anh Le and Mary Walter); ”Familial Occurrence
of Abnormalities of High-density Lipoprotein cholesterol” (Brian Kral and Diane Becker); “Severe Acquired (secondary) High-density Lipoprotein Deficiency” (Ronald Goldberg and Armando Mendez); “High-density Lipoprotein Associations with Coronary Heart Disease: Does Measurement of Cholesterol Content Give the Best Result?” (William
Cromwell); “Effects of Lifestyle Interventions onHigh-density Lipoprotein Cholesterol Levels” (Michael Roussell and Penny Kis-Etherton); “Effect of Drugs on High-density Lipoproteins” (James McKenney) and; “Should Both HDL-C and LDL-C be Targets for Lipid Therapy? A Review of Current Evidence” (Greg Brown, Xue-Qiao Zhao, Marian Cheung)). With a short editorial “From the Editor” and the “News from the National Lipid Association, we published 94 pages of text in that issue.

Subsequently, we met our deadlines and published all six issues of the first year in part, due to invited reviews but original work began to come in. We recognized that there was interesting new information from many research laboratories that was not being published because it came from investigators who were having trouble explaining the value of their discoveries. With the help of my devoted Associate Editors, we literally rewrote several manuscripts, making every effort to present the work as intended by the original authors. We would return the markedly revised manuscripts with a request to have them read by a colleague with skill in writing scientific English and a promise to publish if they returned these revised versions in an acceptable form. I believe it was this effort that has caused our journal to attract a very large number of submissions from outside North America and this continues to the present time (Figure 1). However, only because we were asked to publish the abstracts for the Drugs Affecting Lipid Metabolism symposium in October of 2007 did the first issue contain more than 100 pages per issue. Over the years, the number of submissions increased (see figure 1) allowing us to raise the standards for acceptance while maintaining each issue at approximately 100 pages.

In 2013, another trend began when the submission rate began to accelerate. Volume 9 in 2015 reached a milestone when we published 1,054 pages in our six issues plus supplements. This reflected the addition by Jacobson et. al. of the “National Lipid Association Recommendations for Patient-Centered Management of Dyslipidemia: Part 1” (40 pages) in March and “Part 2” (122 pages) in a Supplement to the December issue. The Abstracts for the National Scientific Sessions in May (67 pages) and a Supplement on Pediatric Dyslipidemia (106 pages) in October edited by Don Wilson carried us over the 1,000-page mark.

In 2016, our 10th year, the Journal experienced a dramatic increase in both the number and quality of articles submitted. We published 1,539 pages of manuscripts, including one supplement edited by Harold Bays (43 pages) entitled the “National Lipid Association Annual Summary of Clinical Lipidology 2016” and 194 abstracts (70 pages) for our Annual Scientific Sessions. The acceptance rate had fallen to 36% mostly due to the increasing quality of submissions. In 2017 we are receiving articles at approximately 50 per month which, if continued, will result in over 600 total submissions. This would represent an increase of 50% over the total received in 2016. This increase in submissions, rejection rate and number of published articles (Figure 2) is attributable to the excellent articles written by our membership, the listing on PubMed and our steady growth of the Impact Factor (Figure 3) relative to other journals of interest to clinical lipidologists.

PubMed provides a listing for all reputable journals after one to three years of publication. Listing requires documentation of meeting appropriate standards for review and acceptance of manuscripts as well as meeting physical quality standards. Without listing in PubMed, the content of a scientific journal will not have a significant following by individuals or institutions and can never become recognized as an attractive place to submit original research. We were accepted for our  first full year of listing in 2010. Prior to that, this Journal was known by NLA members but was unknown by most of the clinical world and this prevented our achieving the full impact of the Journal on the broader field of clinical lipidology.

The question of impact is customarily assessed by calculating the Impact Factor. This is a measure of the perceived value of overall publications in any scientific journal. It is dependent upon the number of times that the JCL reports of original research and review are quoted in other scientific publications. Although qualifying articles were recorded for our publications in 2010 and 2011, it was not until 2012 that the Impact Factor calculation reflected two years of PubMed listings. The Impact Factor was quite low at 1.47 and 1.58 in 2010 and 2011. However, in 2012, this measure almost doubled to 2.74 and has been rising since with values of 3.59 in 2013, 3.90 in 2014 and 4.91 in 2015. These values compare favorably to some other journals that are of interest to our readership (Figure 3). The official Impact Factor for 2016 from Thompson Reuters will be reported by July 2017.

We believe the measure of success that is most important is one that indicates readership. In 2015, the average number of full articles downloaded by individuals combined with those in libraries through Science Direct reached an annual total of 212,395. This accelerating number of annual downloaded articles is expected to increase again
in 2016 and 2017. The specific articles in the JCL that were most often downloaded during the year of 2016 are shown in Figure 5. These reflect the time of the download and may include articles that were in issues of past years. The NLA recommendations and review articles made up five of the ten listed. Two of the five dealt with clinical trials of the new PCSK9 inhibitor alirocumab and two with dietary factors including supplemental palmitoleic acid and avocado-enriched diets. I found it somewhat humorous that in 2016, the paper downloaded most was on dietary avocados, 3,517 times. It is of some note that only 38% of all downloads were made in the United States. Australia, China, France and the United Kingdom together obtained 24% and the remaining 38% of the total was contributed by all other countries of the world (Figure 6). We have become an international journal.

I have derived immense joy from the Editorship of the JCL. There were bumps in the road, which looked like canyons at times, but were overcome by our staff. We have enjoyed some success because of the strong support provided by the members of the Editorial Board, by my Associate Editors, by the leadership of the NLA and by the competence of Elsevier. I owe much to Chris Seymour and recently to Brian Hart for their unfailing support. Our staff has sustained me on a daily basis. Angelica Kerr, our first Managing Editor was all knowing and guided me through the first year with grace and forgiveness. More recently Cindy Delano and now to Diane Drexler who took over in sequence from Angelica are demonstrating devoted service to our Associate Editors, reviewers and to me. Without them, we could not have had a successful journal. It
is difficult to leave this capable and devoted team but I feel that now is the right time as the Journal is finding a useful place in the mission of the NLA and continued growth now seems possible.

My dear wife has tolerated my many hours in front of the computer knowing that the Journal fed a part of my joy in science, and I am grateful. I now owe her more time as we look forward to sharing more of life. So, by the end of this year, I will end my editorship of the Journal. I am most pleased that our colleague and friend, John Guyton, will be taking over to guide this Journal to new heights. John was key to the birth of the NLA, and I can think of none other who can be better trusted to do this job effectively given his well-demonstrated wise and gracious leadership in this organization.