Editorial

Hypertension: Update 2016

Anna F. Dominiczak, Denise Kuo

ypertension has enjoyed another successful year and it is

with pleasure that I share with you our progress during
the past 12 months and give a preview of what you may expect
during the next year.
We continue to strengthen the scientific importance of
Hypertension through contributions to the Recent Advances
in Hypertension, Controversies in Hypertension, and
annual Best Papers in Hypertension series. The most recent
Controversies in Hypertension, Prognosis in Relation to Blood
Pressure Variability,1,2 appeared in the June 2015 issue. Recent
Advances in Hypertension articles on the topics of masked
hypertension, aging and arterial stiffness, epoxyeicosatrienoic
acids and kidney injury, matrix metalloproteinases in aging,
pediatric hypertension, and angiotensin II and the brain are
spread throughout six issues in 2015.38 We look forward to
the February 2016 issue for the next installment of the Best
Papers series.
As an extension of the Recent Advances in Hypertension
invited article series, we embarked on a new joint venture
with American Heart Associations Council on Hypertension
at the Council on Hypertension 2015 Scientific Sessions in
Washington, DC. A full day opening session entitled, Recent
Advances in Hypertension was cosponsored and chaired by
the editors of Hypertension and featured presentations on a
wide variety of topics.9 As a follow-up to the oral presentations at the conference, speakers were invited to submit a
Recent Advances in Hypertension article or Brief Review for
potential publication. Look for these to appear in future issues
of the Journal.
Each monthly issue of Hypertensions English language
edition currently reaches >16000 subscribers. Recently,
Hypertension has become available to more members of
the hypertension community through the addition of 2 foreign language editions. A Chinese edition is distributed 4
a year in China with one of the Journal's Associate Editors,
Prof. Ji-Guang Wang, taking on an additional role by serving as the local editor. A Spanish edition is also distributed
4 a year in Argentina under the guidance of local editor, Dr
Carol Kotliar.

One of Hypertensions goals is to serve the entire hypertension community by maintaining a balance of basic science
research and research that may immediately be put into practice by clinicians. The editorial team of Hypertension works
hard to maintain this balance as evidenced in the 51% of
published papers related to clinical and population science,
whereas 49% related to basic science studies for the 12 journal
issues published in 2015 (Figure1).
Simultaneously balancing basic and clinical/population
content while increasing visibility in clinical settings and
appeal to clinicians is an ongoing goal for Hypertension.
Working toward this goal led to another ClinicalPathological
Conference in June 2015 and a collection of commentaries about the SPRINT Trial Results in November 2015. The
2015 ClinicalPathological Conference was part of regular
programming at the 25th European Meeting on Hypertension
and Cardiovascular Protection (ESH 2015) held in Milan.
Two cases were presented and discussed. A video of each
case was recorded, and is available on the journal homepage (http://hyper.ahajournals.org) as well as a supplement
to the written reports. The written description of each case
and discussion was prepared by the presenters and coauthored by Hypertension editors and audience members who
significantly contributed to the discussion. Hunter et als10
Hypertensive Encephalopathy and Renal Failure in a Young
Man is available in this issue, whereas Currie et als Woman
With Treatment Resistant Hypertension will be available in
the next issue of Hypertension. SPRINT Trial Results: Latest
News in Hypertension Management, a late-breaking clinical trial presented on November 9, 2015 in Orlando as part
of the American Heart Associations Scientific Sessions, has
many in the hypertension community wondering how best to
synthesize the trial results into future research and clinical
guidelines. Hypertension asked several experts, including the
trial authors, to share their thoughts with the entire community
through several invited commentaries.1114
Although there are many metrics available to measure the
success of the Journal, one of the most familiar is the 2015
Journal Citation Reports Science Edition (Thomson Reuters,
2015) scientific impact factor. The most recent report, released
in June 2014 listed Hypertensions 2014 impact factor as 6.50,
the highest of any journal devoted to basic or clinical hypertension research. The Journal Citation Reports has also been
reporting a 5-year impact factor since 2007 and American Heart
Association journals began tracking it in 2009. Hypertensions
5-year impact factor for 2014 is 7.04 (Figure2).
Finally, a few personnel changes occurred within
the Journals editorial team in the past year. In April,
Dr Bonita Falkner (USA), chair of the International Pediatric
Hypertension Association, began guest editor duties and,
Mrs Lutgarde Thijs, MSc (Belgium) joined as a statistical

The opinions expressed in this editorial are not necessarily those of the
editors or of the American Heart Association.
From the College of Medical, Veterinary, and Life Science, University
of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, United Kingdom.
Correspondence to Anna F. Dominiczak, College of Medical,
Veterinary, and Life Science, University of Glasgow, Wolfson Medical
School Bldg, University Ave, Glasgow G12 8QQ, United Kingdom.
E-mail anna.dominiczak@glasgow.ac.uk
(Hypertension. 2016;67:3-5.
DOI: 10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.115.06792.)
2015 American Heart Association, Inc.
Hypertension is available at http://hyper.ahajournals.org
DOI: 10.1161/HYPERTENSIONAHA.115.06792

4HypertensionJanuary 2016

Figure 1. Hypertension categories of accepted manuscripts,

January 2008 to June 2015.

consultant. In the second half of the year, Dr Ernesto Schiffrin

(Canada) retired from the Associate Editor role he held for
the past 12 years and in the final quarter of 2015, 3 additional
editors joined the Journal. Dr David G. Harrison (USA) began
associate editor duties in October and both Drs Daniel W.
Jones (USA) and Theodore A. Kotchen (USA) joined the guest
editor group in November. A current list of editorial board
members is always available online and in every print issue
of the Journal in recognition of their service to Hypertension.
A year ago, we shared news of our commitment to offering
what authors want and need by adding options for Open Access
licensing15 on all original articles. Throughout 2015, Hypertension
published 9 articles with 1 of 3 available Open Access licenses.
Whether online or in print, each Open Access article published in
Hypertension is easily identified by a tag indicating it is OPEN.
However, authors may be assured that a traditional copyright
transfer agreement remains an option for all article types.
A new editing service, offered for the first time in 2015,
resulted from a partnership between Wolters Kluwer, publisher for the AHA journals, and Editage, a leading provider
of English-language editing and publication support services

10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1

1 -Year and 5 -Year Impact Factors

2009 - 2014

2009

2010

2011

1-Year Impact Factor

2012

2013

2014

5-Year Impact Factor

Figure 2. Hypertension 1- and 5-year impact factors, 2009 to

2014.

that assists researchers.16 Available services include editing,

plagiarism check, translation, and artwork preparation.
Authors often express that rapid article reviews and
publication are important. We are pleased to report that
Hypertensions time from submission to first decision
improved again with an average of 2 weeks (13.3 days)
for 2014 and 1.8 weeks (12.5 days) for January to October
2015. We rely on the editorial board and many other excellent reviewers for their insightful comments and thank all
of them for helping us to achieve our goal of rapid reviews
by embracing our 10-day review window. It is now our goal
to maintain this fast pace for many years to come. Quickly
publishing after acceptance is another considerable element
in the important process of sharing study results with the
hypertension community. Hypertension averaged 4.0 weeks
(27.9 days) from acceptance to online publication of authorapproved copyedited manuscripts and 8.5 weeks (59.6 days)
from acceptance to print publication in 2015.
The editors truly appreciate the time and effort that so
many of our readers have spent reviewing articles, submitting
the best research to Hypertension, and providing feedback that
has improved the Journal. Thank you for the sustained commitment and energy.

Disclosures
None.

References
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5.
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