Let’s make this go viral: welcome to your 18th dose of Future Virology

To our readers, on behalf of the whole team, I would like to extend the warmest welcome to the 18th volume of Future Virology!

This issue will begin by taking a look at some of the highlights of the past year, including some of our content successes, insights into our author and reader demographics and an acknowledgment of our fantastic editorial board.

I am particularly proud to announce that one of our many highlights this year has been the increase in the journal’s impact factor to 3.015 and, of course, a more personal highlight has been my appointment as the new Commissioning Editor for Future Virology. I am looking forward to being able to collaborate with our enthusiastic and dedicated authors and continue to grow the impact of the journal throughout the upcoming year.

Content highlights

Similar to previous years, Future Virology has continued to experience a surge of COVID-19 related submissions, with many of the most popular research and opinion-based articles to date (summarized in Tables 1 & 2) continuing to explore all aspects of SARS-CoV-2 infection, from vaccines and prevention to comorbidities and the repurposing of antimicrobial therapies.

Our most-read article this year, ‘A brief review on DNA vaccines in the era of COVID-19’ by Shafaati et al. [1], provided a brief overview of DNA vaccines. This review considered multiple aspects of DNA vaccines, from design to production, the use of adjuvants, delivery and administration and emphasized the importance of DNA vaccines as a relatively low-cost tool in tackling viral diseases such as COVID-19.

The second most-read article this year was a Case Series titled ‘Cervical and preauricular lymphadenopathies as atypical manifestations in the setting of COVID-19: a case report’ by Ala et al. [2]. This Case Series reported cervical and preauricular lymphadenopathies as atypical COVID-19 induced symptoms. The authors, therefore, highlighted the need for clinicians and healthcare professionals to consider SARS-CoV-2 infection as a potential cause in patients presenting with enlarged lymph nodes.

Nie et al.’s Special Report titled ‘The need for more robust research on the effectiveness of masks in preventing COVID-19 transmission’ was the third most-read article of volume 17 [3]. This report considered the evidence for the effectiveness of face masks (both medical and cloth) in the prevention of COVID-19 transmission. The authors noted the need for more robust experimental evidence, particularly to inform government policies and guidance.

Further popular content from volume 17 included: ‘Identifying asymptomatic cases during the mass COVID-19 vaccination campaign: insights and implications for policy makers’ by Chirico et al. [7], an opinion piece that described the significance of asymptomatic carriers as drivers of the COVID-19 pandemic and drew attention to the need to promote point-of-care testing, contact tracing and use of personal protective equipment; and ‘Massive third wave of COVID-19 outbreak in Bangladesh: A co-epidemic of dengue might worsen the situation’ by Devnath et al. [8], another opinion piece in which the authors considered the dangers of concurrent COVID-19 and dengue outbreaks.

Readership & Author demographics

Future Virology’s readership (Figure 1) and authorship (Figure 2) demographics continually provide a source of significant interest as they evolve with the journal’s persistent growth.

In 2022, the greatest contributor of content was Asia at 69%, followed by Europe (13%), Africa (13%), North America (7%) and South America (3%). In contrast, North America represents the largest readership proportion at 48%, a 15% rise in comparison to the previous year [9]. North America is followed by Asia (22%), Europe (20%), Oceania (5%), Africa (3%) and South America (2%).

The diverse sources of our publications are of great pride to Future Virology and we are thankful for the readers and authors that continue to support the journal through submissions, downloads and citations. We will endeavor to provide you with more high-quality virology research from an ever-expanding source of topics in the upcoming year.

Social media

For updates on the latest news, journal highlights and newly published articles, readers can follow the Future Virology twitter account @fsgfvl or LinkedIn group [10,11]. The Twitter account has seen very good engagement this year, with ‘Myocarditis and COVID-19 mRNA vaccines: a mechanistic hypothesis involving dsRNA’ by Milano, Gal, Creisson and Chamorey [12], receiving 493 re-tweets and scoring within the top five outputs from all volumes of Future Virology, as scored by Altmetric.

Editorial Board

The Future Virology team would like to extend our utmost thanks to the Editorial Board for their continued contribution and advice.

Conclusion

I would like to thank all our readers, authors, Editorial Board members and peer reviewers on behalf of the team at Future Virology for playing such an important role in the continual growth and success of the journal.

As ever, we greatly appreciate feedback and always encourage the submission of unsolicited Research Articles, Reviews and Editorials. More information about article types and submissions can be found on our website [13].

We look forward to working with you in 2023!