AJCP’s Efforts to Rapidly Publish Research on COVID-19 Boosts its Standing Among Scholarly Journals

Over the past year, ASCP’s academic journal AJCP expedited publication of cutting-edge scientific papers about COVID-19 so that ASCP members and others could quickly access timely and relevant information during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

That concerted effort has resulted in more than doubling the journal’s impact factor, ranking AJCP as No. 17 within the field of peer-reviewed pathology journals. AJCP’s impact factor—a measure of the importance that an academic journal has within its field—rose from 2.4 in 2021 to 5.400 in 2022. 

An impact factor measures the average number of citations of recent articles published in a specific journal. The 2022 impact factor for AJCP was listed in Journal Citation Reports™ by Clarivate in late spring. 

To celebrate this success, Oxford University Press (OUP), which publishes AJCP, has curated a collection of the most cited papers recently published in AJCP, which is available to the general public to read until the end of 2022. 

ASCP Publisher Joshua Weikersheimer, PhD, cites the Society’s and OUP’s efforts to streamline and expedite the publication of scientific articles about COVID-19 during the past year as a key driver for the higher impact factor.

“Readiness is all. AJCP had significant articles related to COVID-19 already published worldwide before most other pathology and laboratory medicine journals were able to respond,” Dr. Weikersheimer says. Other articles on important topics that were not related to COVID-19 also figured into the new impact factor. 

Dr. Weikersheimer credits the concerted efforts of AJCP’s core editorial team—led by Editor-in-Chief and ASCP Past President Steven H. Kroft, MD, MASCP, Executive Editor Kelly Swails, MT(ASCP), Senior Editor Phil Rogers, and himself—along with OUP’s publishing team, with making the rapid release of AJCP articles possible.

Dr. Kroft says, “The impact factor citation is a measure of success in delivering timely research that is most needed, most quickly. It has always been AJCP’s intent to provide cutting-edge scientific papers for those practicing pathology and laboratory medicine.  This ensures that our members and others are always aware of the latest clinical science to help inform decisions that are made on behalf of patients.”