2020: It Was Quite a Year!

Abstract

The year 2020 provided opportunities and challenges for our journal, Obesity. While the first reported case of SARS-CoV-2 occurred in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, giving the name to the disease COVID-19, the World Health Organization declared this a Public Health Emergency of International Concern on January 30, 2020, and a pandemic on March 11, 2020. When we became aware of the global threat of COVID-19, we quickly drafted an Editorial ((1)) expressing concern that patients with obesity might be at increased risk for morbidity and mortality associated with the disease. Persons with obesity indeed have increased rates of comorbid conditions, often have impaired immune responses to viral threats and abnormal proinflammatory and prothrombotic profiles, and experience stigma in health care settings where they are at a disadvantage because of their size (limited use of diagnostic equipment and therapeutic maneuvers), all factors driving COVID-19 complications and mortality ((1)). Our journal then sent out a call for COVID-19 papers with a promise of expedited review to make publications quickly and freely available online. We received more than 200 submissions and have published approximately 70 Letters, Perspectives, Commentaries, Brief Cutting Edge Reports, Original Articles, and Reviews. These COVID papers have already generated 900 citations before Thanksgiving 2020, and they have helped our journal continue a trajectory of significant growth in article downloads (Figure 1). One early paper from France ((2)) documenting the relationship between obesity and invasive mechanical ventilation has been cited more than 250 times. Other papers discussed the role of lipofibroblasts as potential contributors to SARS-CoV-2 pulmonary complications ((3)) and adipose tissue as a reservoir for the virus ((4)). We would like to think that we met the challenge of the COVID-19 impact on persons with obesity and created an opportunity for the journal to become a platform for basic, clinical, and population scientists to advance discovery around obesity and COVID-19. In 2021, we will continue this effort with a new call for papers seeking data on COVID-19 vaccination and obesity. But this approach to COVID-19 discovery did not take us away from our day-to-day commitment to advance obesity research. Overall, we received more than more than 1,200 manuscripts through November 2020, which is already an increase from calendar year 2019. Our decision times continue to improve (Figure 2), although we are becoming more selective. In 2020 we reviewed only 44% of submitted manuscripts, down from about 49% the year before. We also are increasing our number of commissioned reviews (8 in 2020, up from 2 in 2019) to be more relevant to our readers’ needs. The average time from new submission to final decision was 19.7 days (down from 33.1 in 2019) and the median time was 4 days. From submission to final decision for manuscripts with external reviews, often with two rounds of revisions, the average time was only 52.4 days (median 40.0), and that is down from 79.2 days in 2019. Finally, the annual Obesity Journal Symposium was held virtually at ObesityWeek with an outstanding and diverse group of papers and young scientists presenting their work. We are seeing this improve and grow each year in both number and quality of submissions. Have we reached our limit in speed and efficiency for Obesity? Every year, we seem to think that we are at the apogee, but thanks to excellent communication and a top-notch group of Associate Editors we continue to improve. This is a team effort, after all. Our statistics are a measure of the editorial and publishing groups who make it possible through their hard work and commitment to the journal and to the field. This year will be the last for Dr. Deborah Tate and the first for Dr. Rekha Kumar and Dr. Tom Wadden as Associate Editors. We are grateful for Deb’s guidance on electronic behavioral interventions and look forward to having the expertise in clinical obesity medicine and behavioral intervention that Rekha and Tom bring. Be on the lookout for a special “Meet Your Editorial Team” feature that will appear in our journal next year. We are also trying to innovate and move Obesity forward. We now publish “study importance” bullet points with Original Research, Brief Cutting Edge Reports, and Review papers answering the following questions: What is already known? and What does this study add? Our readership has been enthusiastic about this innovation which briefly provides information on innovation and importance of the papers. In addition, we have now adopted visual abstracts as an option for our authors. We've also tightened our standards for rigor and reproducibility—including requiring data availability statements for clinical trials and requiring health research reporting checklists upon submission. Yes, 2020 was a challenge and an opportunity. And we expect 2021 to be the same. We have contracted to s