GSA’s Journals Continue Tradition of Strong Stewardship

By CEO James Appleby, BSPharm, MPH

As of January 1, GSA welcomes three new editors-in-chief to its peer-reviewed journals! I extend my congratulations to these successors who are about to embark upon four-year terms, and thank the outgoing editors for their tremendous contributions which have led to the journals’ continued growth as leading journals in the field of gerontology and associated disciplines.

Jessica A. Kelley, PhD, FGSA, of Case Western Reserve University is the new editor-in-chief of the social sciences section of The Journal of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, succeeding Deborah Carr, PhD, FGSA. Steven M. Albert, PhD, FGSA, of the University of Pittsburgh is the new editor-in-chief of Innovation in Aging, succeeding Laura Sands, PhD, FGSA. And Lewis A. Lipsitz, MD, FGSA, of the Hinda and Arthur Marcus Institute for Aging Research at Hebrew SeniorLife, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Harvard Medical School is the new editor-in-chief of the medical sciences section of The Journal of Gerontology, Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences, succeeding Anne B. Newman, MD, MPH, FGSA.

Editors-in-chief provide leadership for the interconnected GSA publications team that includes staffers, authors, reviewers, editorial boards, and the GSA Program, Publications, and Products Committee. They have overseen periods of significant growth for the scholarly publications for which they are responsible. We’ve witnessed this most recently with the many new articles that have been published about the COVID-19 pandemic. And there are many other aspects to be proud of as well.

In 2020, authors were afforded increased opportunities for publishing when The Journals of Gerontology, Series B increased its annual issue count from eight to 10 and The Gerontologist jumped from six issues to eight. By midyear, all journals completed their transition to a rapid publication model; advance access enables the

journals to publish papers online soon after they have been accepted for publication and well ahead of their appearance in an issue, thus greatly reducing publication times. And GSA’s titles also adopted Reframing Aging Journal Manuscript Guidelines in 2020.

The exciting news continued with the latest release of the Web of Science Group’s annual Journal Citation Reports, which includes impact factor rankings for 2019. It showed that GSA’s journals, which took three of the top five spots in the Social Sciences Citation Index’s Gerontology category, continue to grow in impact and influence within the gerontology community. (Impact factor is a measure of the frequency with which articles in a journal from the two preceding years have been cited in the given year.)

The Journals of Gerontology, Series A held its spot at first in the Gerontology category for the tenth consecutive year, with an impact factor of 5.236. The Journals of Gerontology, Series B moved to number three in the Gerontology category with an all-time high impact factor of 3.502. And The Gerontologist ranks number five in the Gerontology category with an impact factor of 3.286. Both Series B and The Gerontologist have ranked in the top five journals within the Gerontology category for the past six consecutive years. (Innovation in Aging, GSA’s first open access journal, which launched in 2017, is expected to join the rankings soon.)

Congratulations, team!