One night during the summer of 2009, while on vacation in India, I received a telephone call from Professor Bob Tranquillo, then the Chair of the BMES Publications Board. Bob informed me that the BMES Executive Committee had decided to create a third BMES journal focused on Cardiovascular Engineering, and would like for me to be its Founding Editor-in-Chief (EIC). I was of course thrilled and honored and enthusiastically accepted the assignment. Over the next couple of months, I dialoged with the publications board to launch the inaugural issue of Cardiovascular Engineering and Technology (CVET) in March 2010. CVET was created to present to its readership a wide spectrum of research, from basic to translational, in all aspects of cardiovascular engineering and cardiovascular medicine. It offers academic, industrial and clinical investigators a forum for the dissemination of research that utilizes engineering principles and methods to advance fundamental knowledge and technological solutions related to the cardiovascular system. CVET is a journal that draws a diverse readership beyond a large segment of the traditional BMES membership, including cardiologists, cardiac surgeons and members of the cardiovascular industry from around the world.

Right from the start we established this diverse intent of the journal starting with its cornerstone, the Editorial Board. Over the past the decade the Editorial Board has had ~ 30% associate editors from clinical/medical institutions and ~ 10% from the cardiovascular industry. Additionally, ~ 25% of our associate editors are female, and ~ 30% are from outside of the United States. The number of submissions has steadily increased from 60 to over 225 in 2020, as shown in the figure below. The ~ 25% annual international contributions and ~ 30% of international associate editors, reflect the international appeal and reputation of CVET. With the increasing number of submissions, the journal has gone from four issues per year to six issues starting in 2020.

figure a

With its high scientific review standards and the increasing number of submissions, CVET earned its inclusion into PubMed Central/MEDLINE, within five years, in March 2015. Starting from 2014, the journal was being indexed and abstracted in the Science Citation Index Expanded (also known as SciSearch) and in the Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition. We received our initial Impact Factor of 1.06 in 2016, and which has steadily increased during the past few years:

Year

2016

2017

2018

2019

Impact Factor

1.06

1.45

1.77

1.77

As of now, the list of where CVET is abstracted and indexed is as follows: Science Citation Index Expanded (SciSearch), Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition, SCOPUS, PubMed/Medline, EMBASE, Google Scholar, Academic OneFile, EI-Compendex, Health Reference Center Academic, OCLC, SCImago, and Summon by ProQuest.

The impact of CVET is also reflected by the number of special issues organized by various guest editors. To date, we have published seven special issues in emerging areas:

  • Pediatric Mechanical Circulatory Support: Keefe Manning (Issue 4, 2011, 6 articles)

  • Fetal Hemodynamics: Developmental Fetal Cardiovascular Biomechanics in the 21st Century: Brad Keller; Kerem Pekkan (Issue 4, 2013, 7 articles)

  • Engineering in Stroke Intervention: Matthew Gounis; Baruch Leiber; (Issue 3, 2013, 7 articles)

  • Mitral Valve Mechanics: Karyn Kunzelman; (Issue 2, 2014, 9 articles)

  • Vascular Access: Michael Walsh; James Moore, Jr. (Issue 3, 2017, 9 articles)

  • Heart Valve Mechanobiology: Hanjoong Jo; Craig Simmons (Issue 2, June 2018, 8 articles)

  • Verification, Validation, and Uncertainty Quantification of Cardiovascular Models: Towards Effective VVUQ for Translating Cardiovascular Modelling to Clinical Utility: David Steinman; Francesco Migliavacca (Issue 4, December 2018, 15 articles)

There are two additional special issues that are currently in process. The first will pay tribute to Professor John Tarbell, a pioneer and distinguished researcher in cardiovascular engineering, at the City University of New York. The second, I am proud to say will celebrate the 40 years of pioneering research in my Cardiovascular Fluid Mechanics Laboratory, at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University.

As I bid a fond farewell as the Founding Editor-in-Chief, in these challenging times, I would like to echo a very special thanks to the Editorial Board members and hundreds of reviewers who over the past decade helped to launch and establish CVET’s reputation and scientific expectations. I also owe a deep debt of gratitude to my three assistant editors at Georgia Tech & Emory - Drs. Neelakanathan Saikrishnan, Milan Toma and Zhenglun (Alan) Wei - who have assisted me with the daily running of the journal. Finally, I would like to thank the BMES Publications Board members and the Springer Nature editorial management team (USA; Europe & India) for their support over the past 11 years.

I have greatly enjoyed serving as the Founding EIC of CVET, but I am happy to state that the future of CVET is bright. Under the leadership of the incoming Editor-in-Chief, Professor Igor Efimov of George Washington University, the journal will continue to increase its scientific and translational impact for many years to come, and I look forward to its future success.