The European Heart Journal: leading the fight to reduce the global burden of cardiovascular disease (2024)

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The mission of the European Heart Journal

The fundamental mission of the European Heart Journal (EHJ) remains ‘the reduction of the global burden of cardiovascular disease’. We aspire to advance this aim by worldwide teamwork to communicate practice-changing research, inspire clinical cardiologists, and pursue rigour and transparency in the application of science at the service of human health. The Journal will strive to lead the field in its impact, influence, and reach (Figure1).

The first issue of the EHJ was published in February 1980 under the editorship of an outstanding cardiologist Desmond G. Julian. Each of the following Editors contributed substantially to a very successful story. Desmond Julian was succeeded by Henri E. Kulbertus in 1989, Kim Fox in 1995, Frans Van de Werf in 2003, and Thomas Lüscher in 2009. Under their leadership, the Journal’s Impact Factor has risen to an outstanding 22.673.

Thomas Lüscher’s success as Editor-in-Chief extends beyond this stunning increase in the Impact Factor (noteworthy but reflecting only one dimension): with his elegant and effective leadership he has made a substantial contribution to the Journal’s globalization. He introduced innovative features including CardioPulse, which reports on issues of general interest, such as personalities, political aspects affecting our profession, historical vignettes, cardiology practice, national healthcare systems, funding sources in different countries, and many other issues of cardiovascular advocacy. CardioPulse has gained popularity in many sectors, ranging from renowned scientists to practising cardiologists; it forges an attractive link between the Journal and its readers.

The success of the EHJ parallels that of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC), which has grown impressively over the last three decades. Each year the ESC Congress welcomes >30 000 delegates from all continents. This overwhelming success has contributed importantly to the growth of the EHJ, thanks to the high-quality research presented at the ESC Congress and then published in the Journal, and to the engagement of conference attendees authoring and citing the world-class research published in the Journal. The simultaneous advance in quality of the ESC Congress and of the Journal have both played a major role in establishing the leadership of European cardiology internationally.

The new Editorial Board intends to build on this extraordinary trajectory. We will continue the Journal’s tradition of publishing across the whole spectrum of translational, clinical, and population research, with a focus on what is relevant for clinicians and patients based on the sound foundation of science. The appointment of joint Editors for Basic Science shared between the EHJ and Cardiovascular Research will ensure the most appropriate distribution of manuscripts between the two journals. In addition, we will substantially expand the reach of the Journal by including new important topics, such as digital health and innovation, as well as healthcare policies and economics.

We will continue to spotlight important clinical trials, and follow contemporary standards of transparency, ethics, and conflict of interest declarations. The new Editorial Board remains committed to the Journal’s scientific integrity and has appointed a dedicated Editor for Quality Standards. The Journal will encourage the systematic publication of protocols, not only of clinical trials, but also of observational studies and meta-analyses. A more ambitious goal will be to promote data sharing, while respecting trial investigators’ proprietary ability to mine their own data. Enabling responsible data sharing is a major endeavour that will affect how clinical trials are planned and conducted. We believe that data sharing will increase confidence and trust in clinical trials, enable independent analyses of results, and promote the development of new scientific hypotheses. Furthermore, this is an opportunity to define criteria for data collection and sharing that will make outcome events comparable and potentially combined among trials. An open data repository would offer obvious advantages for authors, institutions, funders, and journals, including greater transparency and enhanced feasibility of patient-level meta-analyses.

The new Editorial Board and the ESC Journal Family: the importance of teamwork

One of our main objectives will be teamwork within the Editorial Board and the ESC Journal Family, and with the ESC and other leading journals in cardiovascular medicine. The new Editorial Board will be substantially expanded to ensure a global reach and competence in the many expanding fields of cardiovascular medicine. The Editorial Board will include Executive Editors, Co-Editors, Deputy Editors, and Associate Editors with different, but complementary, roles (Figure2).

• Executive Editors will cooperate with the Editor-in-Chief on a daily basis in the selection of manuscripts for publication, as well as in taking strategic decisions aimed at improving the quality and the reach of the Journal (Figure3).

  Figure 3

  

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  Editor-in-Chief Filippo Crea, and Executive Editors (From top left: Anne Tybjærg-Hansen, Perry M. Elliott, Lina Badimon, Colin Berry, Robert Hatala, Cecilia Linde, Peter Libby, Raffaele De Caterina).

• Co-Editors will be the ambassadors of the Journal on the five continents. They will play a pivotal role in promoting the Journal in their geographical regions and, in particular, at important congresses by conducting joint sessions highlighting key studies published in the Journal. Co-Editors will also write regular reports summarizing scientific contributions from their geographical regions and contribute topics to the CardioPulse section of the Journal.

• Deputy and Associate Editors will manage the evaluation process of incoming manuscripts. We will have a large panel of 21 Deputy Editors, each a top expert in a specific field of cardiovascular medicine. To reflect the expansion of cardiovascular medicine and the evolution of new fields of interest over the past decade, the number of Deputy Editors will be much larger than in the previous Editorial Board. Each Deputy Editor will operate in close collaboration with two Associate Editors. One Associate Editor will be European, the other non-European, to reinforce the global reach of the Journal. Working in close collaboration as a mini-team, Deputy and Associate Editors will ensure that each manuscript is assessed at the highest possible level of competence. Furthermore, they will cooperate proactively with the authors to improve the presentation of manuscripts selected for publication.

Our mission to operate as a cohesive team will extend to the ESC Journal Family through a strong interaction among the Editors-in-Chief to ensure optimal allocation of manuscripts to the journals, including the co-publication of Guidelines and important position papers. The new Editorial Board is strongly committed to the success of the Journal Family, which began in 1999 with the European Journal of Heart Failure—now the official Journal of the Heart Failure Association and recently joined by ESC Heart Failure, an open-access Journal. Other partner journals, most of which are linked to corresponding ESC Associations and other constituent bodies, include Cardiovascular Research that focuses on basic mechanisms of cardiovascular disease, European Heart Journal – Cardiovascular Imaging, European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, EP-Europace, European Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing, European Heart Journal – Acute Cardiovascular Care, European Heart Journal – Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy, European Heart Journal – Quality of Care and Clinical Outcomes, European Heart Journal – Case Reports, and soon two new open-access titles: European Heart Journal – Digital Health and European Heart Journal – Open. A long-standing member of the ESC Journal Family is European Heart Journal Supplements that serves as a publication medium for supplemental issues of the EHJ. Importantly, the European Association on Percutaneous Coronary Interventions edits EuroIntervention, which, although not an official journal of the ESC, works in close collaboration with the ESC Journal Family.

The partnership between the ESC and the EHJ is fundamental for ESC CardioMed, an encyclopaedic online resource covering more than 60 disciplines within cardiovascular medicine. Among other things, the Guidelines published in the EHJ link to ESC CardioMed, which provides extensive scientific evidence supporting the recommendations made by Guidelines.

We envisage teamwork with the other journals in the field of cardiovascular medicine to promote an open data policy and full transparency in disclosing potential conflicts of interest.

Attracting readers, authors, and reviewers: innovative features

We will seek to continue to attract and inspire our readership through quality content, including original research articles, clinical reviews, and meta-analyses addressing unmet clinical needs, diagnostic/prognostic discoveries, game-changing therapies, and global health policies, as well as by introducing new online educational features including: (i) an archive of image-driven, interactive clinical cases with a specific focus on multimorbidities; (ii) a Journal scan, reporting key manuscripts relevant for clinical cardiologists published by important general medicine journals and accompanied by a commentary; and (iii) educational materials extended to social media. We also aim to promote the EHJ in clinical communities where journals written in English still have limited readership. This will be addressed by identifying an adequate number of clinically focused manuscripts (preferably state-of-the-art reviews) with high practical impact. Official journals of the various ESC National Cardiac Societies will have the option to translate these manuscripts and publish them in their local language, identifying the original source.

Of course, the Journal’s Impact Factor will continue to be a major attraction for authors. This metric has particular importance because, in spite of its limitations, many academic institutions, governmental agencies, as well as search and promotion committees continue to use it as one measure of performance. Critical to increased support for authors will be an enhanced dialogue with the members of the Editorial Board, which will have an important role in improving manuscripts. In a new development, the Journal will organize monthly webinars where the authors of the highest cited and downloaded manuscripts will have the opportunity to increase the visibility of their studies.

To attract young authors, we will introduce prizes to be given during the ESC Congress to those who have published notable studies in the EHJ during the previous year in each of the major fields of cardiovascular medicine. In addition, given the popularity of review articles, we will expand their utility to clinical cardiologists, involving young authors. Specifically, we will ask the authors of each provisionally accepted review to contribute a ‘Clinical vignette’ prepared by young co-authors that will be published as a complementary online article. Each vignette will include a brief case presentation with graphics (ECGs, invasive data, echo clips, and the like) and will be followed by a discussion highlighting the practical clinical applications of the review article. This approach of ‘translation to the clinic’ will broaden the appeal of review articles and ensure the involvement of young cardiologists. Finally, in collaboration with Cardiovascular Research, we will also actively work with Scientists of Tomorrow and with the ESC Committee of Young Cardiovascular Professionals, who are already very active within the ESC.

Scientific journals depend on the quality of the peer reviews. We are aware of the time it takes to craft a quality review, which includes consulting existing literature, checking numbers, and verifying internal consistency among various steps. To attract young and motivated reviewers, the Journal will provide Continuing Medical Education credits for high-quality reviews and the contribution of reviewers will be acknowledged (subject to their consent) in published manuscripts. Reviewers will also be invited to participate in our webinar programme.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that Publons has already been fully integrated in the EHJ as well as in the other journals of the ESC Journal Family. Thus, reviewers can record their peer review activity via their profiles on Publons and gain recognition for their contributions.

Looking to the future with optimism

We face a period of enormous difficulties related to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has caused illness and mortality on a global scale, disproportionately affecting older and fragile patients (particularly those with risk factors for or pre-existing cardiovascular disease), as well as disadvantaged segments of the population. COVID-19 is forcing us to rethink our habits, has dealt a huge blow to our economies, and has cast a shadow on future plans. Nevertheless, human history is studded with wars, pandemics, and famines, frequently in deadly combination. Yet resilience, hard work, and optimism have enabled humankind to overcome the most difficult moments. The current pandemic is no exception. More than ever we should enlist our global network and inspire confidence in science: success in one region of the planet will not suffice to vanquish this scourge. A scientific approach must prevail to contain and overcome this viral pandemic effectively.

René Descartes first proposed the need for a scientific method to create new knowledge. He proposed four principles: (i) only what presents to the mind as clear and distinct must be accepted as true; (ii) each complex problem must be divided into simpler subproblems, to be considered separately, the solution of which is evident immediately; (iii) it is necessary to move gradually from the simplest to the most complex knowledge; and (iv) it is necessary to verify that the analysis and the synthesis have been carried out correctly. Galileo Galilei first successfully applied the scientific method proposed by Descartes to study the universe. After several centuries these two giants should continue to inspire us.

Global teamwork and confidence in the scientific method can allow us to view the future of our planet with optimism. Upholding an open and transparent scientific environment will ensure the future of our Journal, the vibrancy of our global cardiovascular community, and achieving ‘the reduction of the global burden of cardiovascular disease’.

Conflict of interest: EHJ Inauguration Editorial by EHJ Executive Editors: Dr. Badimon reports research grants from AstraZeneca, speaker fees from AstraZeneca, BMS/Pfizer, Lilly, FICYE and PACE outside the submitted work; consulting work for Sanofi, Bayer, and Glycardial SL, outside the submitted work. In addition, Dr. Badimon has one licensed patent (APOJ-GLY diagnostics), and two filed pending patents (IV-STATIN and DJ1-F) outside the submitted work; and research grants from Spanish National Institute of Health Carlos III, the Spanish Ministry of Research and Education and the European Union (IMI and H2020), outside the submitted work. Dr. Berry reports grants and other from AstraZeneca, consultancy, grants, non-financial support and other from Abbott Vascular, grants and other from GSK, grants and other from HeartFlow, other from Menarini, non-financial support and other from Coroventis, grants and other from Novartis, non-financial support and other from Dalcor, consultancy, non-financial support and other from Medyria, consultancy, non-financial support and other from Genentech, non-financial support and other from Miracor, consultancy, non-financial support and other from Neovasc, non-financial support and other from Boehringer Ingelheim, non-financial support and other from Siemens Healthcare, outside the submitted work; and Colin Berry holds research grant awards from the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government, British Heart Foundation, Medical Research Council, Wellcome Trust and European Union. Dr. Crea reports personal fees from Amgen, personal fees from Astra Zeneca, personal fees from Servier, personal fees from BMS, outside the submitted work. Dr. De Caterina reports grants from Boehringer Ingelheim, grants and personal fees from Bayer, grants and personal fees from BMS/Pfizer, grants, personal fees and non-financial support from Daiichi-Sankyo, personal fees from Janssen, grants and personal fees from Portola, grants and personal fees from Roche, from Novartis, outside the submitted work. Dr. Elliott reports grants and personal fees from Pfizer, personal fees from Alnylam, personal fees from Sanofi Genzyme, personal fees from Idorsia, personal fees from 4D Molecular therapies, personal fees from Cytokinetics, outside the submitted work. Dr. Hatala reports grants from Abbott, personal fees from Bayer, grants and personal fees from Biotronik, grants and personal fees from Medtronic, personal fees and non-financial support from MSD, personal fees and non-financial support from Novartis, grants, personal fees and non-financial support from Pfizer, personal fees and non-financial support from Servier, outside the submitted work. Dr. Libby has a financial interest in Xbiotech, a company developing therapeutic human antibodies, outside the submitted work. Dr. Libby's interests were reviewed and are managed by Brigham and Women's Hospital and Partners HealthCare in accordance with their conflict of interest policies; Dr. Libby reports unpaid consulting work for Amgen, unpaid consulting work for Corvidia Therapeutics, unpaid consulting work for Kowa Pharmaceuticals, unpaid consulting work for Olatec Therapeutics, unpaid consulting work for Medimmune, unpaid consulting work for Novartis, unpaid consulting work for Novartis, unpaid consulting work for Amgen, unpaid consulting work for AstraZeneca, unpaid consulting work for Baim Institute, unpaid consulting work for Beren Therapeutics, unpaid consulting work for Esperion Therapeutics, unpaid consulting work for Genentech, unpaid consulting work for Kowa Pharmaceuticals, unpaid consulting work for Medimmune, unpaid consulting work for Merck, unpaid consulting work for Norvo Nordisk, unpaid consulting work for Novartis, unpaid consulting work for Pfizer, unpaid consulting work for Sanofi-Regeneron, outside the submitted work. Dr. Linde reports research grants to institution by Roche Diagnostics and Astra Zeneca; grants from the Swedish Heart Lung foundation and Stockholm County Council, personal fees from Vifor, Abbot, Novartis, Medtronic, Abbot, Micropore, Impulse Dynamics and Bayer, outside the submitted work. Dr. Tybjærg-Hansen reports personal fees from Astra Zeneca, personal fees from Akcea, outside the submitted work.

Published on behalf of the European Society of Cardiology. All rights reserved. © The Author(s) 2020. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

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