Rigour and quality: the secrets behind a scientific journal on the rise

Abstract

With the bibliometric tools now at our disposal, it is easy to regularly monitor the evolution of our articles’ citation numbers. This therefore generated expectations, which were more than fulfilled when the official news came out last July: with an impact factor of 1.23 in 2018, our journal has crossed the symbolic threshold of 1. This impact factor remains modest for a generalist journal in the field of agronomy, but nevertheless it means we rank first among bilingual (French and English) scientific journals in this field. The evolution of BASE since 1997 reflects the constant concern for quality that drives the editorial and publishing boards. The Editorial Board has recently been renewed and will soon welcome members from other Belgian universities. The rigour in the selection of articles for publication translates to a decreasing total number of published articles: the rejection rate is in the high range of 70 to 90%. Moreover, the internal process for handling manuscripts is constantly evolving; for example, a new and strengthened procedure will improve the tracking of citations in journals known to be predatory. In addition, a new version of the manuscript management software, OJS, has just been put online. Finally, the switch from paper to fully digital is planned for 2020. These decisions and developments do not solve all the weaknesses identified in last year's editorial (Pochet et al., 2018), but the significant increase in the number of citations shows that BASE