This issue marks the tenth anniversary of the Journal of Developmental Origins of Health and Disease. In the early years of the International DOHaD Society, we initiated a process to explore the establishment of a society journal. After review of proposals solicited from several publishers, we elected a partnership with Cambridge University Press. We established an editorial advisory board, international editorial board, and a team of dedicated associate editors. Our cover photo was formulated to represent life stages of early development through aging. We solicited articles for a then new journal, unlisted in PubMed and with no impact factor. Following our publication of the Proceedings of the DOHaD Sixth World Congress (2009), the first J DOHaD manuscripts were published in print form in February 2010 and included one of our most cited papers (Table 1).
Table 1. The most downloaded articles from each year of J DOHaD publication
With the support of the society members and scientists, the journal has succeeded, establishing itself as the leading journal focused on the field of developmental programming. During the past 10 years, the journal has progressed remarkably. We have expanded our associate editors and added our Themed Issue and Supplements Editor (Janna Morrison), and two esteemed Statistical Editors (Darren Dahly, Mark Gilthorp). The journal has embraced and partnered with DOHaD affiliate and regional societies, providing publications of themed issues from regional society meetings, and initiating a policy where each affiliated society nominates a representative associate editor. Our quality and quantity of submitted papers have steadily increased, reflected by a steady increase in our impact factor to 2.340. Consistent with the trend in journal publishing, we adopted an online circulation and incorporated enhanced electronic submission and review processes. Cambridge and J DOHaD have embraced open access publishing and adhere to all EU and NIH public access policies. We instituted “FirstView”, which incrementally publishes papers online ahead of their issue allocation, allowing authors to see their work published quickly and content to be read and cited with minimal delay. We have increased the breadth of the journal scope, to include fetal and neonatal biology and physiology, environmental toxicants, teratology, and public health and policy, in addition to our core focus on developmental programming. We have further established a J DOHaD award at the International Congress, acknowledging the most cited paper during the past 2 years.
Among the metrics during the past year, our submissions have continued to increase. Our acceptance rate for 2018 was 60% and our average time from submission to first decision is less than 2 months. Our themed issues have been a mainstay of the journal, with 2018 themed issues including: A Canadian Perspective of DOHaD; DOHaD in Indigenous Populations and papers from the 10th World DOHaD Congress on the subject of Translational Challenges for DOHaD. Planned Themed Issues for 2020 include a collection of papers themed around International Women’s Day; Advanced Imaging in DOHaD; and papers associated with the 2018 DOHaD ANZ meeting. We welcome suggestions from our readership for additional themed issue proposals. Among our articles published during 2018, 33 countries were represented, with Brazil and the USA among the most prolific contributors. Our 2010 inaugural year averaged 70–80 pages per issue, while 2018–2019 issues average 120 pages, reflecting our increased quality and quantity.
We have examined the most downloaded articles from each year of J DOHaD publication (Table 1). Beginning with the first published article in the first issue “A Conceptual Framework for the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease”, the most downloaded articles have included a focus on placental physiology, epigenetics, fetal hypoxia, environmental toxicants, maternal diet, breastfeeding, the microbiome, the role of assisted reproductive technologies, and the effect of developmental origins among aboriginal communities. The topics represented by the most downloaded articles reflect the breadth and depth of our journal’s focus.
For the future, our objectives are to grow our publications, particularly open access content, while maintaining the highest quality of manuscripts and continuing our steady impact factor increase. We will, of course, continue the support of the International DOHaD Society and each of the regional and affiliate societies. We hope to maintain a dynamic journal increasing our editorials and our letters to editors.
Our past, our present tenth anniversary, and our future would not be possible without the support and dedicated contributions of Cambridge University Press (Dan Edwards, Cecilia Marshall, Valerie Dennis, Katie Henderson), our dedicated and hard-working associate editors, our reviewers, and most of all our authors and readership. Together, our team looks forward to the next decade of J DOHaD.
