Editorial

Dear Members of EFORT

Dear Authors and Readers of EOTR

Dear Editors and Reviewers of the official Journal of EFORT-EOTR

This editorial’s first priority is to address with thanks all who tried to use EOTR –the official Journal of the European Federation of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, EFORT, as a respected platform for their scientific publications.

To reach the point of being a serious publication, much expertise and time for reviews are needed.

So I warmly thank in the name of EFORT and, as Editor in Chief, personally all Editors and reviewers for their work, done in the interest of the Orthopaedic and Trauma community of Europe and so in the interest of the growth and stability of EFORT.

Guided by the impression, that it is a difficult task to build up a scientific federation between colleagues from many nations with different language-culture-social systems and health systems,

EFORT ExCom with a vision discussed its own Journal as helpful and necessary and also with a view to a combined identity and harmonisation inside our home continent of Europe.

So such a Journal for our federation was pre-discussed and pre-structured by the entire ExCom and for a final decision was given to the General assembly as the highest authority-

EOTR –to be given free of charge to all members of EFORT was then agreed and decided as a first priority.

Deep thanks to all experts than continuously worked -as editors or reviewers -on our scientific Journal.

When the journal started publishing in 2010, it was conceived as a new communications channel connecting societies of EFORT and their members representing the gold standard in diagnostics and treatment in orthopaedics. As the official journal of EFORT, it was made freely available to all members of EFORT’s member societies in addition to the around 7,000 institutions worldwide that subscribe to the online edition of the journal through the publisher’s consortia agreements.

The development of the journal was positive throughout the years of its publication (2010 – 2015). Submissions and papers published increased year by year as did the usage of the journal measured in full-text downloads. The journal was promoted heavily, also through combined efforts of the publisher and EFORT, since EFORT’s portal provided an excellent platform for any promotion activity to reach all EFORT members on a global scale.

Despite all of this, chances to have the journal indexed in the most reputable and important databases, Thomson Reuters ISI Web of Science (providing journals’ Impact Factors) and the National Library of Medicine (providing access to journals through Medline/Pubmed) proved to be limited. The number of orthopaedic journals with a general focus indexed in these databases is large and the willingness to add more to the list is therefore small. The journal needed a “unique selling point” to be fit for the application. Based on this insight the strategic direction and focus of the journal was discussed and aligned several times in the process. A major step forward with regard to indexing in Pubmed would have been the transformation of the journal into an Open Access publication, which was suggested and offered by the publisher several times during the past two years. Unfortunately, no decision was made to this end. Open Access journals are accepted by Pubmed with hardly any exception and inclusion into Pubmed usually facilitates acceptance by the ISI in order to get an Impact Factor for a journal. As a consequence, we now face the discontinuation of European Orthopaedics and Traumatology by the end of of 2015.

With a view to the needs of all our European colleagues-the members of our member societies- and with wisdom and enthusiasm to work for better patient care, hopefully EFORT will have excellent instruments for necessary communication and exchange of scientific data enabling us in addition to network inside our European federation as well as globally.

Prof.Dr.Wolfhart Puhl

Editor in Chief EOTR

Past President EFORT