We are in the year of the 20^th Anniversary of the Archives of Medical Science (AMS). I remember when in 2004, just 2 years after my graduation, I approached the largest Polish publishing house – Termedia, and suggested starting/launching an international, wide-scope, open-access scientific journal. The discussions were not easy, but finally I was able to convince the Publishers to start a completely new department in the Termedia Publishing House related to the development of scientific journals, which is now one of the largest in Central and Eastern Europe with almost 60 journals.

Within this summary of the year 2023 for the journal I would like to present the parametric data, also suggesting completely new, innovative parametric indicators that hopefully inspire other Editors to present the real potential of papers published in the given year.

Let’s start with the TOP 10 Most Cited Papers in 2022 in the Archives of Medical Science based on the citations from Web of Science by Clarivate and also Dimensions by Altmetric (Table I). Year 2022 obviously means that those papers (as well as those from 2021) will play the most important role in the calculations of the impact factor 2023 (IF2023) (to be released in June 2024). For these papers I would like also to suggest a new indicator called the time corrected citations index (TcCI) which also considers the time of collecting citations and, due to the frequency of publication of the journal (6 issues per year), means multipliers from 1.0 (for papers from 1/2022 issue with the largest chance to get the highest number of citations due to the longest time since the publication) through 1.2 (for 2/2022 issue), 1.4 (for 3/2022 issue), 1.6 (for 4/2022 issue), 1.8 (for 5/2022 issue) to 2.0 (for papers from 6/2022 issue). If we look at the areas and authors of the papers with the highest citations, the first place is definitely for the guidelines of the Polish scientific societies on metabolic syndrome [1], and in the top 10, we can find next 4 papers from the area of cardiovascular diseases [2–5], a paper on the role of statins in lung cancer [6], a paper presenting the potential genetic biomarkers in Alzheimer disease (AD) [7], which has been a very hot topic for several years now, two papers covering the issue of COVID-19 pandemic [8, 9], and finally a critically important paper on the health status and its socio-economic covariates in the older population in Poland based on the PolSenior2 survey [10]. I am very happy that some of those papers were prepared within my wide international research team, but obviously all the authors of the abovementioned papers deserve huge congratulations on these distinctions.

The papers published in the journal in 2023 can be evaluated using different indicators, including the well-recognized Altmetric Score, which reflects the interest (attention) in the article via its sharing on social media, blogs, but also mentions and citations in the different media sources (Table II). The highest Altmetric Score for papers published in 2023 was achieved by the paper prepared by Kamila Ryczkowska MSc on menopause and women’s cardiovascular health [11] with a score of 207, which reflects the reference of the article in 24 news stories from 24 outlets, by 15 Twitter (X) users and one citation in Wikipedia. The 2^nd place and silver medal happily goes to the article of my authorship, which summarized the year 2023 in the cardiovascular diseases and focused on the most recent achievements in the field, including new and prospective drugs, new data, and recommendations, with the large emphasis on the upfront lipid lowering combination therapy [12]. Our article was mentioned and discussed by 478 Twitter users. Next 8 articles from the list have Altmetric Score from 12 to 38, and they refer to the critically important issue of alcoholism [13], discussion around new effective antidiabetic drugs – SGLT2 inhibitors [14], the effective interventions on obesity [15], and related to this topic – the most common and worst monitored cardiovascular risk factor – lipid disorders, and what had the highest impact in this area in last four decades [16]. The next awarded paper referred to diet with the large emphasis on the worldwide burden attributable to high red meat diet based on the data from the Global Burden of Diseases (GBD) 1990–2019 [17]. The last 3 featured articles compared chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and depressive disorder in terms of inflammation-related biomarkers [18], presented the real-world evidence (RWE) data on the use of icosapent ethyl in coronary diabetic patients in France [19], and summarized the recent knowledge in the non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD; now correctly named as steatotic liver disease [SLD]), metabolic syndrome, and type 2 diabetes mellitus [20].

Table II

TOP 10 2023 articles with the highest Altimetric Score

1.	Ryczkowska K, Adach W, Janikowski K, Banach M, Bielecka-Dabrowa A. Menopause and women’s cardiovascular health: is it really an obvious relationship?. Archives of Medical Science. 2023;19(2):458-66. https://doi.org/10.5114/aoms/157308
2.	Banach M, Surma S, Toth PP. 2023: The year in cardiovascular disease – the year of new and prospective lipid lowering therapies. Can we render dyslipidemia a rare disease by 2024?. Archives of Medical Science. 2023;19(6):1602-15. https://doi.org/10.5114/aoms/174743
3.	Ryu T, Yang K, Chung BS. Defecation alleviates hangover by terminating intestinal drinking. Archives of Medical Science. 2023;19(6):1909-12. https://doi.org/10.5114/aoms/174445
4.	Bernardi M, Spadafora L, Galli M, Biondi-Zoccai G, Sabouret P. Should SGLT2 inhibitors be prescribed in all diabetic type 2 patients?. Archives of Medical Science. 2023;19(2):528-31. https://doi.org/10.5114/aoms/160006
5.	Hao Z, Liu K, Qi W, Zhang X, Zhou L, Chen P. Which exercise interventions are more helpful in treating primary obesity in young adults? A systematic review and Bayesian network meta-analysis. Archives of Medical Science. 2023;19(4):865-83. https://doi.org/10.5114/aoms/153479
6.	Banach M, Surma S, ILEP. A look to the past – what has had the biggest impact on lipids in the last four decades? A personal perspective. Archives of Medical Science. 2023;19(3):559-64. https://doi.org/10.5114/aoms/166256
7.	Liu D, Shi Q, Cheng G, Huang Q, Li S. Worldwide burden attributable to diet high in red meat from 1990 to 2019. Archives of Medical Science. 2023;19(1):1-15. https://doi.org/10.5114/aoms/156017
8.	Małujło-Balcerska E, Sipowicz K, Pietras T. Comparing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and depressive disorder in terms of inflammation-related biomarkers. Archives of Medical Science. 2023;19(3):814-9. https://doi.org/10.5114/aoms/161803
9.	Sabouret P, Dib J, Ecarnot F, Banach M, Lellouche N. Eligibility for icosapent ethyl in a French population of coronary outpatients with type 2 diabetes. Archives of Medical Science. 2023;19(6):1901-3. https://doi.org/10.5114/aoms/173511
10.	Mitrovic B, Gluvic Z, Obradovic MM, Radunovic M, Rizzo M, Banach M et al. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, metabolic syndrome, and type 2 diabetes mellitus: where do we stand today?. Archives of Medical Science. 2023;19(4):884-94. https://doi.org/10.5114/aoms/150639

Another way to present the hot topic articles is using the parameters related to the number of paper’s views and especially downloads (what may suggest a higher interest in the given paper), and based on this, new suggested indicators – the downloads/views (D/V) ratio (the higher the ratio, the larger interest based on the higher number of full paper downloads), and the paper recognition index (PRI), which is D/V ratio enriched with the Altmetric Score based on the following formula: (Downloads + Altmetric Score²)/Views. Articles were selected for this category by the number of downloads, and next categorized based on the PRI (Table III). Again (what makes me very pleased) the first place goes to our article that summarized the year 2023 in CVD, focusing on the lipid disorders area – with the number of downloads of almost 3000 [12], the second and third places go also to articles included in the Altmetric Score list – one by the French authors led by Drs. Bernardi and Sabouret [14], and the other on the largest achievements in lipidology in the last 40 years [16]. The state-of-the-art paper on the pathophysiology and management in hyponatremia in patients with arterial hypertension took fourth place [21]. The following fantastic articles that were often read were related to the role of exercise in the prevention of lymphoedema secondary to breast cancer [22], in vitro/in vivo/clinical studies on the role of current herbal extracts in bone regeneration through dental implants [23], and non-invasive measurement of liver iron concentration by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) [24]. The paper from the orthopedic area presenting the results from the randomized controlled trial on the virtual reality (VR) versus Biodex training in adolescents with chronic ankle instability [25], from the area of molecular medicine on the flow cytometric characterization of cell surface markers to differentiate between fibroblasts and mesenchymal stem cells of different origin [26], and finally a meta-analysis from the group of Prof. Adrian Hernandez, on the efficacy and safety of sacubitril/valsartan in heart failure (HF) compared to renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system (RAAS) inhibitors [27] were the last ones included in the TOP 10 Most Viewed articles.

I believe, it is also important in this 20^th Anniversary Year of the journal to present also 10 papers defined as the highly cited papers in the Web of Science by Clarivate. One of them was a paper recently published in 2023 by Dr Aleksandra Klisic which aimed to evaluate the potential relationship between iron status markers and insulin resistance and showed that serum soluble transferrin receptor levels were independently associated with HOMA-IR, whereas higher serum ferritin levels together with higher retinol-binding protein-4 were related to higher HOMA-IR in adolescent girls [28]. Another highly cited paper published in 2021 – the Polish lipid guidelines [29] – is worth mentioning, especially as the authors are now working on its update. One should also mention the article published in 2017 with the highest number of citations for all AMS articles (n = 1017) and entitled “Obesity and inflammation: the linking mechanism and the complications” authored by Drs Mohammed S. Ellulu, Ismail Patimah, Huzwah Khaza’ai, Asmah Rahmat from the University Putra Malaysia, and Dr Yehia Abed from the Al Quds University of Gaza in Palestine [30]. I extend my sincere congratulations to all mentioned and awarded papers and great thanks for their large contribution to the success of the Archives of Medical Science.

Let’s hope this 20^th year of the journal and the forthcoming ones will be equally successful. Let me say a few words what awaits us. We would still like to increase the quality of accepted papers (the acceptance rate for 2023 was < 15%, and for original papers < 11% for 1274 papers submitted and only 172 accepted), to improve the review process and invite new, very experienced Section Editors (please join us if you are interested!), and in next 2 years, for the IF2025 (published in 2026) we would like to have IF of AMS > 5. Please keep your fingers crossed!

Taking this opportunity, I would like to kindly thank all Authors, Readers and especially my amazing Editors I have a great honor to collaborate with every day.