Reply:

Dr Mamourian's letter reflects his uneasiness with the “internalization” of American academic imaging journals, in particular the American Journal of Neuroradiology (AJNR). He points out that AJNR contains a very high percentage (>75%) of articles originating outside of the United States. This pattern is not unique to AJNR, and by using the same “pencil and paper” method he did, we found out that in the last 2 months, more than 50% of articles (only those labeled as “original contributions”) in Radiology and more than 70% of those in the American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR) were written by foreign investigators. In an analysis of foreign articles published in the latter journal, Chen et al¹ found out that, during the early 1980s, only 10% of articles were “international,” whereas in the early 2000s, this number had reached nearly 40%. This is obviously a reflection of the excellent quality and reputation of American journals and their high impact factor that makes them appealing to investigators worldwide. Indeed, a recent analysis, not only of the journals with the highest impact factors but of those with the highest page ranking (a measure of the prestige of the publications), shows that AJNR, AJR, and Radiology are grouped among the world's most prestigious scientific journals.² The Web site www.eigenfactor.org offers a ranking of scores that measure the importance of journals corrected for different citation patterns across disciplines. All of the 3 previously mentioned journals have percentile factors above 92. Thus, we should be proud to see the number of international publications grow resulting in increased quality of our journals, and we should be ready to continue accepting them and the changes that they will bring to the more “traditional” structure of many of our scientific societies.

Dr Mamourian also issues a “wake-up call” to the American academic community to improve its number and quality of publications, and we completely agree with him. He also wonders if we, the editors of AJNR, feel any responsibility in the matter of article selection, as the journal can only be as American as we want it to be. He and our readership should be aware of how seriously the editors and the editorial board of AJNR take blinded peer review. Our reviewers are never aware of the origin of the articles submitted, and though their origin may be, at times, guessed by the quality of the English language used, this aspect is constantly improving, making “spotting” of international articles more difficult. We the editors do have the ability to “unblind” the articles and know their origin, but our contributors need to rest assured that nationality has never played an isolated role in their acceptance. Dr Mamourian points out that rejection of articles by junior faculty may ultimately discourage younger individuals to pursue an academic career, whereas it is our opinion that younger individuals reading high-quality articles written by foreign authors should rather be encouraged by belonging to a truly international society of investigators. The ever-increasing number of international articles in AJNR does not make it any less American, but it does makes it stronger.

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