2023 Annual Report

1.   The Journal

Networks and Heterogeneous Media (NHM) was founded in 2006 and has been growing successfully almost for 20 years. Responding to the journal's needs, NHM began its transformation at the end of 2022, officially changing to an OA publishing model in 2023 for the first time. From the start of the new submission system in August 2022 until December 20, 2023, the journal received a total of 330 submissions, and 80 were online, with a rejection rate of 73%, which shows that, despite the increase in publication, NHM has always maintained high standards and strict requirements. This would not have been possible without the support of our editor-in-chief and editorial board team. In the meantime, thanks to the whole EB for the work done, our editorial board has been enlarged this year with the inclusion of some outstanding young scholars. Next, journal development, manuscript processing, and future perspectives will be presented to share NHM's work and development this year.

2.   Manuscript processing

Here you will find the processing time for each stage of the paper, the turnaround time for publication, and the national & regional statistics of the authors.

2.1.   Manuscript processing time

The processing time of the manuscript comprises three measurement indicators: Average Publication Time (APT), Submission to First Decision Time (TFD), and Acceptance to Publication Time (ATOP). Each indicator includes annual average time and quarterly time.

1. APT

In the figure, the horizontal axis represents the quarter-year, the vertical axis represents the number of days, and the bar graph represents the average value of APT for each quarter. The red line indicates the annual average ATP for the year 2022, while the green line represents the same for 2023.

Since August 2023, the review period for NHM has been prolonged from 14 days to 30 days. Consequently, it is evident that starting from the second quarter of 2023, the publication cycle of NHM has progressively extended from approximately 2.6 months to 4.8 months. Ideally, the Average Publication Time (APT) for a manuscript in an Open Access (OA) journal is around 60 days.

2. TFD

TFD is the time from receipt of the manuscript to the first decision, including the time for the editorial board to do a brief check and the reviewers to review the manuscript. The average TFD for 2023 is 58.75 days. It is worth noting that the editors also waited for reviewers for much longer than 14 days when the required review period was 14 days. Similarly, after the required review time of 30 days, editors waited much longer than 30 days for reviewers, and in some holiday months, such as Christmas, it even went to 45–60 days.

3. ATOP

This section shows the average time from manuscript acceptance to publication, usually 10 days, which is influenced by the typesetting editor, the English editor, and the author's cooperation. The average ATOP for 2023 is 19.34 days.

2.2.   Distribution of countries

This section presents the geographic distribution of submitted manuscripts and published manuscripts. The distribution of author groups, serving as an indicator of a journal's future focus, constitutes a broad and influential category. This strong group has the potential to enhance the journal's citation impact, fostering its growth and prosperity.

This view provides the counts of Submitted manuscripts per region and country. The region and country are derived by the affiliation of the author. The top 10 countries list is computed using Submitted articles descending for 2023.

Submissions to NHM are mostly from countries in Asia, such as China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, etc.; final publications are mostly from countries in Asia and Europe, such as China, India, France, Italy, etc.

3.   Journal development

3.1.   Editorial board countries and regions

Currently, NHM has 56 editorial board members from 14 countries on five continents, with the highest number of editorial board members from Europe, followed by Asia and North America.

This year we have joined six new members of the Editorial Board, whose information is shown in the table below. We welcome them and hope to attract more outstanding scholars to join our team.

3.2.   Article metrics

Statistics of the most cited manuscripts of Web of Science in the last five years and the last two years, where the "*" after the title indicates that the manuscript is from a special issue manuscript.

1. Most Cited Articles, 2023 (Last Five Years)

2. Most Cited Articles, 2023 (Last Two Years)

3.3.   Special issues

Only the number of submissions and rejections, publications for the special issue were counted from August 1, 2022, to December 20, 2023.

The data counts the submissions, rejections, and published manuscripts for special issues established in 2023.

4.   Summary and perspective

4.1.   Summary

The successful publication of 80 excellent papers in 2023, the first year of the official conversion to an OA journal, would not have been possible without the support of the editorial board members, the editor-in-chief, and the contributions of authors and reviewers. Although the impact factor has dropped a bit from the previous year, it is believed that it will gradually increase.

4.2.   Perspective

At present, there are some problems that we need to improve in the next step: the manuscript processing cycle is longer than other OA journals; the editorial board needs to be further expanded, and the promotion of the journal needs to be further improved.

Next year, everything will be better.