Editorial Platelets 2021: toward a brighter year

2020 will always be engraved in our memories as annus horribilis, but now with significant progress on the vaccine front, we can begin to look forward to returning to a more normal way of life. Many practices have however changed for ever, and some are for the better, including the increased use of on-line meeting platforms and recordings of presentations. We congratulate the wonderful work of one of our editors, Dr Kellie Machlus, in putting on the Blood and Bone seminar series which has kept the hemostasis and thrombosis community very much together over the last year [1]. We are delighted that Kellie has agreed to support authors of accepted manuscripts in providing a short video abstract to accompany their manuscript. We hope that all authors will take up this opportunity as this provides the opportunity to summarize the manuscript in their own words.

As a result of the lockdown, we introduced several changes to the journal to facilitate publication, including the rapid review of Covid-19 manuscripts and their publication as open access articles. We have now published 10 papers on Covid-19-related research and the manuscript from Liu et al. [2] was selected as the plenary in May. We have been able to reach a decision on the majority of these with one week of submission and we are grateful to our editors and the referees for the rapid turnaround, while performing a thorough review. In recognition of the challenge faced by authors in addressing comments, we introduced a new policy [3] in which authors can include a section at the end of their manuscript outlining the need for further experiments, unless it is essential for the overall conclusion. While intended as a short-term solution during lockdown, this is a policy that we will continue going forward, as it is not always possible for authors to address all comments for a variety of reasons, including time constraints and departures. This policy will not result in a lowering of standards, but will help the platelet community in supporting rapid dissemination of research.

Our fears at the time of lockdown on a reduction in submissions proved to unfounded, and we have had a bumper year of submission with the current projection to be in excess of 550, over 150 more than in 2019. As a result, we have had to turn down many quality publications and have a healthy backlog of quality papers. We acknowledge the work of our editors in the handling of the increased number of manuscripts, and for providing cover to our clinical colleagues who were seconded to the hospital at the peak of the infection.

Despite the difficulties of 2020, there have been a number of successes and new ventures for Platelets, including our highest ever impact factor of 3.378, which places the journal just below several of the leading journals in the field, including Journal of Thrombosis and Hemostasis and Blood Advances. Our impact factor has steadily increased over the last few years, and we hope this will continue with the high quality of submissions and the excellence of our editors. We have introduced a new format of Commentaries on leading articles, and are targeting these at early career researchers who may co-author these with established investigators. We have published six of these, including an excellent commentary from Kenny and Schoen on a new neutrophil ligand for integrin αIIbβ3 [4]. We encourage early career researchers to contact us if they are interested in writing a commentary.

We have further strengthened our editorial board through the introduction of two statistical advisors to support the work of our editors on basic research and clinical manuscripts. We are very grateful to Drs Gavin Jarvis and Mark Thomas in taking on these two roles. We continue to emphasize the importance of engaging the support of statisticians prior to submission. We are very excited to welcome Dr Kirk Taylor to the position of Social Media Editor, as replacement for the excellent work of Dr Craig Hughes, and to the newly created position of Equality, Diversity and Inclusive (EDI) Officer. Kirk will work alongside our current Social Media Editor, Kellie Machlus, in both of these roles. EDI is a very important and new direction for the journal that is long overdue, and we encourage you to read the associated editorial from Kirk in this issue, and welcome thoughts and feedback. We welcome Dr William Parker to our Editorial Board, who will strengthen our expertise in antiplatelet agents and cardiology. Dr Parker has a strong track record of publishing in Platelets including a Plenary paper (Parker et al., 2019 [5]). We have seen an increasing number of papers on platelet count as a biomarker in disease, and have written an editorial [6] (Harrison et al., 2020) to follow on from that on mean platelet volume to guide authors in this emerging area.

Platelets publish a wide range of types of manuscripts including reviews, research articles and specialist articles including interviews, gene of the issue, opinion articles and special review series. We draw your attention to the following series which have been commissioned and welcome proposals and offers to serve as guest editors for further series:

• New targets for anti-platelet agents - Series Editors: Drs Mark Thomas and Pip Nicolson

• Structure-function relationships of platelet glycoprotein receptors - Series Editor: Professor Steve Watson

• Ion channels and ion homeostasis in platelet and megakaryocytes - Series Editors: Professor Martyn Mahaut-Smith and Dr Kirk Taylor

• Platelets: bridging thrombosis and inflammation - Series Editors Drs Craig Jenne and Julie Rayes

• The state of the art and future of platelet rich plasma (PRP) therapy - Series Editors: Drs Paul Harrison and Joseph Alsousou

• Platelet blood banking and transfusion - Series Editors: Drs Jose Rivera and Joan Cid

• Viruses and platelets - Series Editor: Dr Matthew Rondina

• Biomarkers of platelet activation - Series Editors: Dr Jianlin Qiao and Professor Elizabeth Gardiner

• Review series on GPIb-IX-V - Series Editor: Dr Renhao Li

We encourage you to contact us with questions on the journal, and while this can be done through electronic means and on-line platforms, we hope that some of this will soon be face-to-face.

Steve P Watson, Paul Harrison, and Gayle Halford