Acta Anaesthesiologica Scandinavica (Acta) is an international journal that publishes articles within the fields of anaesthesia, intensive care medicine, pain, and emergency medicine. The journal is owned by the Scandinavian Society of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine (SSAI), and thereby also by the 5 Nordic national societies which make up the SSAI. Most of the submissions and articles are related to perioperative medicine, and each year we receive nearly 1000 manuscript submissions. The majority are from outside Scandinavia, and only around one-third of the printed articles are from Scandinavia. Last year we rejected more than 75% of all submitted manuscripts.
Members of the SSAI (and of the national societies of the 5 Nordic countries) recieve full text access to the journal (and potentially a print version, if allowed by the national society) as part of their SSAI membership. The journal is the flagship of the SSAI.
Manuscript handling is electronic, using ScholarOne, and all articles can be read or downloaded from the journal homepage, including the first articles from 1957 and those most recently accepted but not yet printed (Early View). The homepage also contains interesting lists of most accessed and most cited articles. Through simple choices in the personal user profile area for each SSAI member’s Acta registration with the publisher, Wiley, the member can elect to receive regular notifications with full text links for the current issue table of contents, or for new articles being published digitally before coming into a print issue. Again, through simple logging in to the Acta Anaesth Scand journal website through Wiley, one can directly open any or all Acta journal articles in full text from anywhere.
We try to handle manuscript submissions as quickly as possible, and the average time from submission to first decision was approximately 35 days in 2015.
Topical or narrative reviews, which are articles that systematically describe the current status a research field as an update for the general reader.
Expert’s opinions are articles that cover a specific clinical problem and contain recommendations for clinical practice.
Systematic reviews and meta analyses that adhere to the required format for these highly focused articles.
We also publish articles on education as well as Ph.D.dissertation abstracts from Scandinavia.
Authors are encouraged to read our author guidelines carefully. Reports of randomised trials must conform to the CONSORT guidelines. For such studies, a flow diagram should be a part of the manuscript and a completed Consort Checklist must be submitted with the manuscript. For other types of studies, the CONSORT checklist is also very useful, for instance the focus on a specific primary hypothesis and one primary endpoint.
Future challenges are to obtain a better position on the journal ranking list in our field, but also to be more visible within intensive care medicine, pain, and emergency medicine.