Happy New Year! By now, you have probably seen the current Clinical and Translational Science (CTS) Impact Factor (IF) of 1.954, a more than two-fold increase over the previous year. As you know, IF assesses a journal’s performance by calculating how often researchers cite journal papers.Thus, it’s considered an approximation of the influence and scientific rigor of the published research. IF is the number of current year citations of articles published in the two previous years, divided by the number of articles published during those two years, providing a 2-year rolling citation average. CTS has now been published under the ASCPT banner for two full years (2016 and 2017), which means we “own” half of the current metric, with the other half attributed to the previous editorial management. With your help, we will continue to look forward to further increases in IF in the coming years.

We view the increased IF as a big success and positive “biomarker” for implementation of the vision for CTS, which is to become the beacon and organizing principle for the field of translational medicine, as well as to provide a vehicle for ASCPT member publications. This vision continues to be well-aligned with the 2015-2020 ASCPT Strategic Plan asserting the Society’s influence and leadership on the science and practice of translational medicine. 

In the spirit of a 2018 review, we wanted to celebrate our most impactful contributions. From an IF perspective, the three most highly cited papers^* were:

1. Immunotherapy and Novel Combinations in Oncology: Current Landscape, Challenges, and Opportunities by Morrissey et al., published in April 2016 with 27 citations. 
2. Gene Therapy 2017: Progress and Future Directions by Keeler et al., published in July 2017 with 24 citations. 
3. The IGNITE Pharmacogenetics Working Group: An Opportunity for Building Evidence with Pharmacogenetic Implementation in a Real-World Setting by Cavallari et al., published in May 2017 with 14 citations. 

IF is not the only way to measure journal influence. Other metrics of impact include downloads and Altmetrics; these metrics also demonstrate strong results in 2018. Downloads are an obvious impact metric that measures how often journal readers take the time to download an article. CTS downloads have shown impressive growth since we relaunched in 2016. The three most downloaded articles published in 2018^** were:

1. Lessons Learned from Alzheimer Disease: Clinical Trials with Negative Outcomes by Cummings, published in March 2018. 
2. Challenges and Opportunities in Dose Finding in Oncology and Immuno-oncology by Ji, et al. published in July 2018. 
3. Innovation at the Intersection of Clinical Trials and Real-World Data Science to Advance Patient Care by Swift et al., published in September 2018. 

The Altmetric score is a measure of the global, public attention articles garner, including through news outlets and social media. The three articles published in 2018 with the highest Altmetric scores^*** were:

1. Opportunities and Challenges in Implementation of Multiparameter Single Cell Analysis Platforms for Clinical Translation by Keating et al., published in May 2018. 
2. Innovation at the Intersection of Clinical Trials and Real-World Data Science to Advance Patient Care by Swift et al., published in September 2018.
3. Developing Pharmacogenomic Reports: Insights from Patients and Clinicians by Jones et al., published in May 2018. 

Thanks to the ASCPT membership, CTS authors and readers, and the many folks who make the Journal work – including editors, reviewers, as well as ASCPT and Wiley staff – CTS had a third successful, impactful year on the journey to becoming a beacon of translational medicine. The Journal owes its success to each and every one of you. 

Will you have the next IF, download or Altmetric winner? Submit to CTS and find out. Join us in 2019 to help drive our vision for translational medicine with your submissions.

*Citations are shown for 2018 only and are approximation that may or may not reflect the final numbers considered for the official Clarivate Analytics IF calculations. 

**2018 downloads were assessed through November 2018

***Altmetrics calculated through 1/4/2019

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