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Nutrition Bulletin recognised with Impact Factor™

2021; Wiley; Volume: 46; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/nbu.12520

1471-9827

Anne de la Hunty, Alison Gallagher, Judith Buttriss,

Agriculture Sustainability and Environmental Impact

Nutrition Bulletin has always punched above its weight but it has not always been easy to assess its impact and so we are delighted to announce that the journal has now been indexed in the 2021 Journal of Citation Reports with an Impact Factor™ of 3.609, putting it in the top two thirds of all Nutrition and Dietetics journals. Although its scope is wide-ranging, encompassing the many and diverse areas that together comprise nutrition science, from metabolomics to food systems analysis, Nutrition Bulletin's particular niche has always been the interface between the interests of nutritionists in research, health promotion, clinical settings, policy, education and those working in the food industry. Its emphasis is on useful knowledge that will have an impact on the range of foods that are grown, produced, promoted and consumed by the population, and in this way, it fulfils the British Nutrition Foundation's core aim of ‘translating evidence-based nutrition science in engaging and actionable ways’ for a professional audience. Published quarterly since 1968, it includes original, topical articles about recent developments and current thinking in nutrition science applicable to a global audience. These include reviews, original research (e.g. new dietary analysis data, secondary analyses of data sets, mechanistic and social science studies), commentaries on developments in nutrition science (e.g. on research studies, reports, nutrition guidelines, policy and application of new legislation) and dissemination of EU and UK research programmes. The Special Issue on ‘Reformulation and Innovation: Future solutions for healthier and more sustainable diets’ (https://bit.ly/351pqX3) that was published last year was a great example of the Nutrition Bulletin's unique perspective in that it included articles ranging from the need for product reformulation as one way of meeting population dietary goals, to the effects of different dietary fibres on the gut microbiome, consumer attitudes to plant protein, the technological challenges associated with reducing the sugar content of some foods and case-studies considering novel ingredients for use in reformulated products. This unique perspective has led to Nutrition Bulletin experiencing significant growth in the last 5 years in terms of its global reach and the number of article downloads. In 2020, it was available in over 14 000 institutions across the globe and its readership spanned 218 countries around the world from Aruba and Anguilla to Zambia and Zimbabwe. Although, not surprisingly, the UK and the US were the top downloading countries, India and China are also now in the top 5 downloading countries and are becoming an increasingly important audience for us. The Nutrition Bulletin Editorial Advisory Board recognises the need to engage more with our readers in these countries and plans to appoint new members from them to help us identify and meet the interests and needs of these readers more accurately. Reflecting this increase in global reach, the number of full text downloads has also grown hugely over this time and increased from around 110 000 in 2015 to 372 000 in 2020. Many of our most popular articles reappear each year in our lists of most downloaded papers, suggesting they are enduringly useful as accessible overviews for students and have a major impact in this way. For example, ‘Opportunities and hurdles of edible insects for food and feed’ by D Doberman, published in 2017, was in the top 3 downloaded papers in both 2019 and 2020 (Dobermann et al., 2017). In addition to the quarterly issues, Nutrition Bulletin regularly publishes online Virtual Issues and Spotlights, which bring together recent articles on a similar theme, further extending their impact. The recent Virtual Issue on ‘Chrono-nutrition: How important is when you eat?’ (https://bit.ly/3BGmCwF) brought together seven articles discussing different aspects of chrono-nutrition, published in Nutrition Bulletin in the last couple of years with a newly written editorial asking whether chrono-nutrition should now be considered as an emerging, modifiable risk factor for chronic disease (Pot, 2021). In parallel with our increasingly international readership, we are also receiving submissions from a wider range of countries with submissions from over 30 countries received in 2020. This is also now reflected in the articles we publish so that our author reach increased from eight countries in 2015 to 12 countries in 2020. This current issue has articles written by authors from Brazil on energy intake under-reporting in women who have previously received professional nutrition counselling (Praxedes et al., 2021) and from Indonesia on whether low-cost, local food supplements can improve maternal and birth outcomes in rural Indonesia (Susiloretni et al., 2021), which we were delighted to publish and which reflect our increasingly international outlook and impact. But of course, we are grateful to all our authors for choosing to publish with Nutrition Bulletin. We have always been proud of the quality of the reviews we publish and the high calibre of the authors who write them and this is reflected in the good number of citations they receive. Nevertheless, without a recognised Impact Factor™, it has not always been easy to demonstrate this and so we are pleased that the high quality of articles published in Nutrition Bulletin is now evident to all. We are particularly pleased that our authors will now get better recognition for the work they have published with us. The Impact Factor™ is calculated as the number of citations in a given year to articles published in the previous 2 years divided by the total number of citable items published during those 2 years. The 2020 Impact Factor™ is therefore based on citations in 2020 of articles published in 2018 and 2019. Of course, there are well-recognised problems with journal impact factors, as enumerated in the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (https://sfdora.org/read/) but, for journals at least, if not for the research published in them, they are a quick and easy way to assess the impact of the articles they publish. A high Impact Factor™ in turn attracts high-quality submissions, and we fully expect to see an increase in high-quality unsolicited submissions as a result of this announcement. Scientific publishing is a highly competitive field with journals competing for authors and peer reviewers, whilst aiming to maintain their distinctive perspective and trying to balance the need to engage new readers with continuing to meet the needs of their current ones. We are confident that the inclusion of Nutrition Bulletin in the Journal of Citation Reports, with an initial Impact Factor™ of 3.609, will help us better achieve these goals, and we are excited about the future of the journal.