Impact factor increases for Journal of Foot and Ankle Research

The Journal of Foot and Ankle Research (JFAR) was launched in July 2008 as the endorsed research publication of the Australian Podiatry Association and the Royal College of Podiatry (UK). JFAR was developed to meet the growing need for an international platform for the publication of foot and ankle research that had reach and significance across the podiatry profession. The timing of its launch coincided with the rise of open access publishing: an innovative publication model which enables free full-text access to anyone with an internet connection. Since its inception, JFAR has been published by BMC Springer, one of the pioneers of scholarly open access in our opinion.

Since July 2008, over 600 papers have been published in JFAR, with authors from over 40 different countries. JFAR has also published conference proceedings, including the biennial Australian Podiatry Conference; annual Royal College of Podiatry conference; the International Foot and Ankle Biomechanics Community (i-FAB) conference, and six article collections: Diabetic Foot (2012), Rheumatoid Foot (2013); Cross-journal Collection (2014); Paediatric Foot (2015); The Science and Sociology of Footwear (2017) and Neurological and Degenerative Conditions (2020).

Journal of Foot and Ankle Research 2020 Metrics

It is with great pleasure that we announce that the Journal of Foot and Ankle Research has achieved an increased impact factor. The impact factor is an objective measurement of a journal’s quality, expressed in terms of numerical figures. The impact factor is a parameter for highlighting the relative significance of a journal within its specific field. It indicates the frequency with which an article appears in the Journal Citation Reports. The impact factor acts as a measuring medium for the number of citations received by articles in a particular journal.

According to Journal Citation Reports^®, published by Clarivate Analytics, the new Impact Factor is 2.30, a substantial increase from the previous 1.59 (Table 1). Further metrics include in 2020, 68,000 article downloads and 1,584 social media mentions. Table 2 illustrates a comparison to impact journals publishing foot and ankle/podiatry research.

Table 1. Illustrates impact score trends of JFAR over the past seven years

Table 2. Comparison of Impact Factors for Journals commonly publishing foot and ankle/podiatry related research.

We would like to thank our readers, reviewers, authors and editors for their contributions to this major achievement.