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Obesity 2012–2022: It's been quite a party!

When Donna Ryan and Eric Ravussin took the leadership of Obesity in 2012, the number of adults living with obesity across the globe was 511 million, representing 11.4% of the population. By 2025, these numbers are expected to increase by more than 70%, to 892 million adults living with obesity worldwide. Even more alarming is the dramatic increase in the prevalence of overweight and obesity in children and the “dual burden” phenomenon, with many countries battling health issues associated with both undernutrition and overnutrition. We are now fully aware that health problems caused by the disease obesity are jeopardizing the stability of national health care systems around the world. Since the obesity pandemic has been triggered by the creation of a human-driven obesogenic environment, we now must accept that only a partial reversal of this toxic environment through public health policies will improve and eventually solve this health crisis. Almost 30 years ago when Dr. George Bray founded and launched Obesity Research (now Obesity), there were only three journals with the word “obesity” in the title. In mid-2012, when our team took the leadership of Obesity, our goal was to bring the journal to the forefront of obesity research. In 2012, there were a total of 21 research journals with “obesity” in the title, a clear increase from January 1993 when the first issue was published. Ten years later, at the end of our tenure, we can count more than 35 such journals. These details emphasize that there is increased competition among journals to attract obesity research papers. In 2012, Obesity had an impact factor of 3.922, approximately 1300 papers were submitted annually, the average time from submission to final decision was more than 85 days, the acceptance rate for Original Articles was 32.5%, and the total number of published pages each year was close to 2500 (Table 1). Ten years later, the impact factor of Obesity is 9.298. Despite the increased competition among journals, we still receive approximately 1300 papers per year and we are now counting on more with our new high impact factor. Our average turnaround time is much faster (approximately 26 days from submission to final decision), and our Original Article acceptance rate is only 19. We can attribute such success to the hard work of our editorial team composed of an Editor-in-Chief, an Associate Editor-in-Chief, a Managing Editor, and 21 Associate Editors. This editorial team has relentlessly worked to improve the quality of Obesity by handling the papers as rapidly as possible (we still have to rely on the reviewers’ speed), soliciting Reviews and Perspectives in hot research topics, establishing an Obesity Journal Symposium at the yearly meeting of The Obesity Society, developing calls for papers in highly debated research areas, and finally, inviting COVID-19 papers very early at the start of the pandemic and more recently inviting papers on “long COVID” in obesity. With the expansion of the number of available journals, and despite the global increased research productivity (number of submitted papers), there is heightened competition to attract the best papers in the field of obesity research. Among the issues we have dealt with during our 10-year term have been the following: (1) competing with open access journals (Obesity was fast in proposing a hybrid system that included both traditional and open access publications); (2) complying with an important demand to guarantee that our published papers are aligned with the highest standards of rigor, transparency, and reproducibility; (3) checking all the submitted papers for potential plagiarism; (4) dealing with the growing popularity among authors to deposit their preprints, providing researchers with a way to rapidly reach the widest possible audience before going through the peer review process; (5) scrutinizing an increasing amount of suspected scientific fraud; (6) competing with the uptake of science by social media, which