The COVID hangover

When I received the honor of directing our Spanish Journal of Arthroscopy and Joint Surgery (Revista Española de Artroscopia y Cirugía Articular [REACA]), the Steering Committee of the Spanish Association of Arthroscopy (Asociación Española de Artroscopia [AEA]) was presented with a renewed editorial project involving a young and dynamic team, an accelerated editorial process, translation into English of the articles published in the journal, and mechanisms of support for novel investigators, which we referred to as the "school for authors". This project had a clear objective: to include the journal in the international citation indexes.

This new impulse was reflected in a year 2021 that brought a lot of good news. Many authors, some of which were novel, submitted original papers, and two monographs were published in barely six months. The new editorial project seemed to be producing results. As usual, "joy is brief in the home of the poor": the year 2022 was one of the years in which the fewest original papers were submitted to the journal since its refoundation as REACA. This produced a crisis in the number of articles available for this year 2023, which we are trying to overcome, not without difficulties.

It could be suggested that this decrease in scientific activity oriented towards the journal reflects a loss of faith among the AEA community in the project which I am leading as Director of the journal (as was well expressed by Dr. Gelber in the general assembly), and in part it may be so. However, this tendency has also been noted in many other national publications (such as the Revista Española de Cirugía Ortopédica y Traumatología) and international journals: during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020-2021, an increase was recorded in the number of articles submitted to all the scientific journals. Investigators and clinicians, under lockdown and with reduced care activity, focused on writing their articles and submitting them for evaluation. This led to an increase of between 30-40% in the number of articles received by most scientific journals - a work overload not well accepted in other circles, but very much welcomed by REACA, where we rarely see so many submissions.

However, following this unprecedented increase, there has been a rebound effect in the form of a drop in submissions: the authors, with the impression of work been done, and with the reopening of leisure and travel opportunities, have reduced their submissions for publication. For other editorial boards this constitutes a relief from their workload, though for REACA it represents an unprecedented crisis.

Despite this, I consider this number to be one of the most complete to be published in recent times: four original papers that include a systematic review, surgical techniques, a clinical case, a cover image (clear winner of the Pau Golanó Award), and our usual resident's backpack. Articles on the knee, shoulder and hip, reflecting the range of affinities of the AEA members.

The problem persists. If you read this and have something which you might publish with us, do not hesitate: send it, or a message, a summary, an idea... REACA is the home of the investigators of the AEA. You will always be welcome.

Miguel A. Ruiz Ibán
Director of the REACA

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Miguel A. Ruiz Ibán. Director of the REACA