Newsletter Editor: Yoichi Nakanishi Associate Editors: Yoshinosuke Fukuchi, David CL Lam, Suga Konno

Vol.30, No.1 (January 2021) Newsletter Editor: Yoichi Nakanishi Associate Editors: Yoshinosuke Fukuchi, David CL Lam, Suga Konno Message from the President A Happy New Year to all APSR members. Last year was a year of COVID-19. The APSR was also influenced by the disease, and the APSR 2020 Congress in Kyoto was postponed to 2021. I would express sincere appreciation to the Japanese Local Congress Committee team for their tremendous efforts to re-arrange the Congress, and also to the Korean Local Congress Committee team for their kind acceptance of postponement of the APSR Congress in Seoul to 2022. Under this difficult situation, we should not stagnate scientific progress and educational activities. We have held two COVID-19 webinars, three APSR virtual meetings, an ATS-APSR joint webinar, joint symposia with the Philippine College of Chest Physicians (PCCP), the Malaysian Thoracic Society (MTS) and the Taiwan Society of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine (TSPCCM). It is a great pleasure that many APSR members joined these web meetings and all of them were so successful. I am profoundly grateful to the Central Congress Committee members, Assembly members, presenters, facilitators, audiences, en bloc members, sponsors and the APSR secretariat office. The Asia-Pacific region has the biggest population in the world and is accomplishing rapid development, though it still has many health problems such as air pollution, tobacco smoking, respiratory infection including tuberculosis, and poor medical infrastructure. We are happy to have lots of projects to solve these problems. This year, we are going to further enhance our activities in order to achieve our objectives, i.e., “The advancement and promotion of knowledge of the respiratory system in health and disease, which strives to encourage research, improve clinical practice through teaching, increase awareness of health problems in the area and promote the exchange of knowledge among respirologists in the Asia-Pacific region”. Although we cannot feel completely refreshed in mind and body due to the COVID-19 surge, we can still be in this world and can feel at least average-sized happiness. I would like to thank our society, friends and family with great sincerity. Let’s make this year better than last year. Finally, I would introduce one famous haiku made by the haiku poet, Issa Kobayashi. (Haiku is the shortest poetry in the world) my “Happy New Year!” about average my spring Yoichi Nakanishi Message from the new President-Elect The Beginning of a Year is always a good time to review, to sum up, to evaluate and to look forward to the new year with hope. In 2020, I was really honoured to have gathered enough support from colleagues in the APSR to take up this position in preparation to serve the APSR further. It’s my fortune to have all the predecessors who laid down a strong and solid foundation for the APSR. Strengths have been built up but we do need to face up to challenges. ‐1‐ The COVID-19 pandemic imposes a great screening new submissions. The pre-screening challenge for the APSR. The annual Congress has process continues to be very competitive, with had to be postponed. Educational activities have only 12% of Original Articles being approved for had to be conducted online, and we seem to be a external peer review. But more than 50% of those long and tough distance away from the possible are eventually accepted for publication. The Asia- end of this pandemic. Pacific region continues to be well-represented with more than half of the published papers We are, however, looking forward to the reporting research from this region. challenge of working even more closely with colleagues in the APSR. The online platform The 2019 impact factors were announced in doesn’t separate us but enables us to meet and to June and it was pleasing to see that Respirology’s host educational activities even more frequently Impact Factor has increased to 4.88 (from 4.756 than having physical meetings as before. last year) and the journal remains in the top 20% of Respiratory System journals (Clarivate As President-Elect, I have the luxury of working Journal Citation Reports) ranking 12th out of 64. with current office bearers and with great help A list of the top cited papers is available on our from the APSR Secretariat. We are planning website and includes many review papers. Since ahead to revamp the APSR strategic planning and the last newsletter, Respirology has published action in the region to face up to the challenges two new series of reviews of great interest – the ahead of us and to move forward in the New ‘Interventional Pulmonology Pearls’ series edited by Normal state to come. Phan Nguyen, Pyng Lee and Noriaki Kurimoto, was published as a Special Issue in September; I would wish you all stay Safe and Healthy for the and the ‘Essential Update in Lung Cancer Medicine’ New Year. edited by Alistair Miller and Emily Stone, was published as a Supplement in November. David CL Lam We’d also like to draw your attention to the winning papers of the 2020 Fukuchi Award for Message from the Co-Editors Best Original Research Paper in Respirology - in Chief of Respirology Predictive factors and prognostic effect of telomere shortening in pulmonary fibrosis and Novel endosomal NOX2 oxidase inhibitor ameliorates pandemic Firstly, we’d like to wish all APSR members a influenza A virus-induced lung inflammation in healthy and prosperous new year. 2020 has been mice. With the help of a generous donation by Dr very challenging and we hope that 2021 will bring Fukuchi, we can now reward two papers per year, relief for everyone. starting 2020. We congratulate the authors on this achievement and we look forward to meeting In November 2020, we presented Respirology’s them at the award ceremony at the 2021 APSR 2020 Annual Report to the APSR Executive Congress in Kyoto. Committee. A copy of the report is also available to members via the APSR website. Despite the This year has highlighted the importance of challenges of the pandemic, we’re happy to thorough peer review and rapid publication of report that Respirology performed well in 2020, its th high-quality respiratory research. We’re proud 25 year of publishing. The journal experienced that Respirology is part of this important mission a significant jump in manuscript submissions this and we thank all our Editors, Editorial Board year, especially during the months of April, May members, Editorial Office staff, APSR staff and and June when submissions doubled compared to Wiley for supporting us in this goal by offering last year. Close to a quarter of submissions were their time, knowledge and expertise. on topics related to COVID-19, and 12% of these were accepted and fast-tracked for publication. A Philip Bardin collection of all COVID-19 related publications is Paul Reynolds available on Respirology’s website, and the journal has dedicated the cover of its December issue to the topic of COVID-19. Message from the Editor in Chief of Respirology Case Reports We’re very thankful to our editors, Editorial Board members and reviewers for continuing to dedicate their time to Respirology while also dealing with Respirology Case Reports saw a 66% increase in the demands of being at the frontline. Thanks publication in 2020. Submissions almost tripled to their support, Respirology was able to maintain during the period of March to July and overall the same turnaround time (9 days until rejection increased by 34% in 2020 compared to 2019. We before review, and 56 days until first decision received manuscripts from 29 different countries after review). Since the last newsletter, we’ve (compared to 27 last year). The majority of welcomed Garun Hamilton, Stavros Selemidis submissions originated from Japan (40%), and Emily Stone, and promoted Frits Franssen, followed by Australia (14%) Malaysia (9%) to the Deputy Editor team responsible for pre- and Taiwan (6%). To cater for this increase in ‐2‐ publication, we are pleased to announce that we the journal’s website. will publish 12 issues in 2021 (compared to 9 in 2020). The journal continues to be widely marketed by Wiley and has electronic table of content (eTOC) We received 24 manuscripts on COVID-19 and alerts. We have continued to advertise the published 9 in 2020. All COVID-19 related papers journal on the Respirology and APSR websites, published are accessible in a special collections as well as that of other societies. There have on our website: Special collection COVID-19. been advertisements in the WABIP and Wiley’s Respiratory Medicine Newsletters and flyers at The acceptance rate remains high and stable the APSR, ATS and ERS conferences. We send at about 70% and on average, the authors are a message on Twitter each time a case report informed of a first decision within 23 days of is published and have noticed that some case submission. The articles, once accepted, are reports have attracted a lot of comments and published online within a few weeks and then activity on this social media. available on PubMed Central within a couple of weeks. In 2020, we farewelled our Editorial Board members, Garun Hamilton from Australia, Respirology Case Reports is strongly supported Fabien Maldonado from the US and Wai-Cho by the APSR members, who represent about Yu from Hong Kong, who stepped down due to 75% of the manuscripts published. We would other commitments, and Hiromasa Inoue from like to take this opportunity to thank them for Japan who had come to the end of his term. We their support of our journal.

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