Let’s start from the back, and with good news: Since January 2021, Ophthalmic Research has become a fully open-access journal. Another improvement is the new pre-evaluation process. It enables the editor to assess a submission for suitability in regard to scope and priority, before the editorial office checks the submission’s adherence to the journal’s submission requirements and guidelines. This ensures authors are not required to make any unnecessary efforts before it is clear that their planned publication will go into a full peer-review process.
Ophthalmic Research continues to put an emphasis on clinical trials, basic discovery, early translation, and original clinical research that are relevant for ophthalmology with the ultimate goal to positively impact clinical care and public health.
The editorial year 2020 in review
The year 2020 was a very busy one for Ophthalmic Research, despite the pandemic lockdowns, our clinical director and chief editor of the journal writes in his editorial (Ophthalmic Res 2021; 64(4):529-531; click here to review the full text.
In 2020, Ophthalmic Research received well over 400 submissions, an all-time high in its history.
It was the year in which 228 hospitals in 40 US states lost 81% of ophthalmology patient volume, faced a 97% reduction in cataract surgery volume and an 88% reduction in glaucoma procedures compared to 2019.
2020 was also the year of ‘quarantine myopia’. This term was coined by Caroline Klaver, Head of our Genetic Epidemiology of Ophthalmic Diseases Group and colleagues. They commented on a Chinese prospective cross-sectional study which revealed that home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic appeared to be associated with a significant myopic shift.
Read the full text of the editorial in the latest issue of Ophthalmic Research (click here) for more info on
- what has been achieved to eliminate avoidable blindness by 2020;
- the top 3 articles in 2020 in terms of views and Altmetric score (a measure of news and social media attention);
- the top 3 articles in terms of Web of Science citations for articles published between January 2018 and December 2020;
- and why the burden of global blindness and vision impairment is set to reach historic levels in the coming years, and we require expanding eye care services worldwide.