Archives of Disease in Childhood was first published in 1926 as the Official Publication of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH). The Fetal and Neonatal Edition was added in 1988 and Education and Practice in 2004. It joins Paediatrics, first published in 1948 and since that year the official publication of the American Academy of Pediatrics; JAMA Pediatrics, formerly the American Journal of Disease in Children (1910) and then Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine (2012); Journal of Pediatrics (1932), now associated with the US Association of Medical School Department Chairs, and Lancet Child and Adolescent Health (2017), as the best known of the generalist paediatric journals. It should be noted that ADC and Pediatrics are the official publication of large paediatric societies, while two of the other three are independent publications with no specific affiliation and one represents a small society of departmental chairs. ADC is the most comprehensive of these influential journals with separate Fetal and Education Editions, although the other four journals also publish in these areas. These five journals join a plethora of other paediatric titles. The Journal Citation Reports (the impact factor folks) lists 186 journals under paediatrics and Scimago, which is a publicly available database from Elsevier, lists 332.1

What is the role of a journal that is the official publication of a society? Should it represent the views of that society or be editorially independent? For most of its content, the journal should be editorially independent, with the editors making final decisions about its content. This allows the editors to consider manuscripts that are critical of the society or governmental organisations that could potentially impact society itself. On occasion, it is reasonable for a society to publish manuscripts in its journal, but these must be carefully noted as such so that readers understand that this publication was not reviewed in the same manner as other manuscripts. This should be done selectively and on a limited basis. In addition, most societies have other ways to communicate with their membership, so the use of the journal should be limited. I cannot recall a single time during my tenure as Editor in Chief of ADC (2003–2011) that the RCPCH influenced any content of the journal.

Where does ADC sit in the collection of paediatric titles? I believe that because of its age, history of editorial excellence and independence, its affiliation with the RCPCH and its reach, as measured by downloads, social media accounts and impact factor, it is among the most influential of paediatric titles. A recent bibliographic analysis of 602 358 paediatric manuscripts published between 1990 and 2020 supports this view.2 Of 20 journals evaluated, ADC was fifth in number of citations per article and third in number of citations per article of general paediatric journals. The accompanying article by Tse reinforces the international standing of ADC by highlighting the most cited articles over the past 100 years, including the first description of Kwashiorkor (1933), recurrent abdominal pain (1958), variations in pubertal development (1969), vitamin deficiencies and neural tube defects (1976), revised criteria for coeliac disease (1990), health consequences of obesity (2003) and long-term consequences of bullying (2015).3 Scholars of medicine recognise the importance of these articles.

I am often asked how to assess the quality of a journal. It should be based on several factors. First, editors must have editorial independence from the publisher—that is, editors make the final decision about content. This has become an increasingly challenging issue in the era of open access, since revenue for open access journals is largely dependent on the number of manuscripts published. Numerous editors have resigned when asked to publish more manuscripts, largely to increase revenue. This may be less of an issue for journals associated with professional societies, since the society may have revenue streams other than the journal, although this will vary from journal to journal. Second, high-quality journals should have a robust peer-review process. Although peer review is known to be inefficient, ineffective at detecting fraud and often biased, it remains an important part of scientific publication.4 Although the recommendations of peer reviewers are not binding at most journals, with editors making the final decision, there were many times at our editorial meetings when we disagreed with the recommendation of peer reviewers; their opinions do shape editorial content. Third, an often under-recognised attribute of good journals is the quality of manuscript editing. Final accepted manuscripts often have errors, for example, with the references, data in the abstract not matching the data in the manuscript or the formatting of tables and figures. ADC is blessed to be published by BMJ Group—assuring high-quality editing. Fourth, the accepted rate of research manuscripts should be guided by the quality of submissions. But I would be concerned with journals that have acceptance rates of 50% to 60% to 70%. At ADC, the acceptance rate for research reports is about 25%. Fifth, journals have become major communication centres—with social media accounts, visual abstracts and podcasts. High-quality journals distribute content in many ways. Currently, ADC has social media accounts and podcasts. Sixth, good journals publish value-added material, for example, editorials, opinion pieces, review articles and various types of short articles, like reviews of major guidelines. Lastly, although many disagree, the impact factor is a good measure of the overall quality of a journal, although not a specific article. It is highly correlated with other measures of journals such as CiteScore and SCImago score, which provides journal ranks in quartiles. The current impact factor of ADC is 4.4 and Fetal and Neonatal is 3.9. This places ADC and the Fetal and Neonatal Edition in the top 10% of 186 paediatric journals. It should be noted that impact factors vary substantially by discipline. For example, impact factors of oncology and cardiology journals are far higher than those in paediatrics simply because there are more journals in those areas leading to many more citations, which is a key component of the impact factor.

What about the future for ADC and its other editions? I envision a day when initial peer review will be done by large language models—increasing both the speed and the quality of initial reviews.5–7 AI will likely be more effective than peer reviewers at assessing whether a manuscript adheres to the appropriate reporting guideline. It can also be trained to make assessments independent of the authors' reputation or the quality of English—that is, it should be less biased. Editors will then decide how to proceed. Some journals may begin to use AI to place manuscripts in the greater context of what is already known about a subject—something that authors often do in the discussion section of a manuscript, but on a limited basis. ADC will continue to mature as a communication network—offering podcasts, potentially animated depictions of manuscripts powered by AI, and distributing content on various social media outlets. ADC will remain one of the most influential paediatric titles.

On a personal note, my time as EIC at ADC was a joy. I was welcomed by the UK community, learnt much from my colleagues at ADC and Fetal and Neonatal and was pleased that the RCPCH supported the launch of Education and Practice in 2004. We pioneered podcasts, numerous short article types, publication ahead of print and use of social media. Particular thanks go to Harvey Marcovitch, the EIC before me, who was always available for wise counsel when needed. Harvey’s accompanying article highlights the many important changes he made during his tenure and equally as important, his wit and wonderful writing style.8 Thanks also to Richard Smith, the then EIC of BMJ who allowed me to experiment with new types of communication and Janet O’Flaherty, the managing editor of ADC who tolerated my various requests and always assured that we published on time with great content. I was blessed to be EIC of ADC.