Since the publication of Medicina Curiosa, the first English medical journal in 1684, there has been exponential growth in the numbers of medical journals. It is roughly estimated that there are about 30000 scientific journals in the world. In the circumstances of overflowing numbers of medical journals, progress of their own medical journal is one of the primary goals of many medical societies and their members. After the introduction of impact factor by Eugene Garfield, it has become a major standard for evaluating the quality of a journal [2]. That is why editors of many medical journals anticipate for the updated JCR to be released in end of the June every year.

The 2020 impact factor (IF) of the JKNS was 1.729, which is a 26% increase from last year (1.376). This rise in IF means that it is maintaining the upward trend that has continued in recent years, which is very encouraging (Fig. 1). Since JKNS was registered in the Scientific Citation Index in 2008 and received the first IF of 0.155 from 2009 JCR, there has been relatively steady state of IF around 0.6 to 0.7 for several years. It is in recent years that IF has started to increase remarkably, and this is the result of the unremitting efforts of all the members of the Korean Neurosurgical Society (KNS). Awareness of the importance of journal and support from KNS were also of great help [3, 4].

Total citation number of articles published in JKNS was 294 during this period. The percentile of journal ranking of JKNS according to the IF was 27.12%, and 15.14% in the surgery category, and the clinical neurology category, respectively. This ranking is comparable to those of last year, indicating that the scientific influence of JKNS is currently stationary (Fig. 1).

Looking at the number of citations of the top-cited articles, there are one paper with 12 citation and two papers with 11 citations. A total of 11 papers have been cited more than six times, of which eight papers are review articles. One of the points worth mentioning is that the JKNS has low self-citation rate (6.8%) which means the IF is thanks to citations mostly from other journals. The weak point is that there are still considerable percentage of articles without citation (32.9%, 56 out of 170 articles), and the large portion of the articles cited only once (30.6%, 52 out of 170 articles).

The recent development of JKNS is paid off from combination of efforts of the KNS members, authors and editorial board of the JKNS. At the same time, it is noteworthy that these continuous efforts are essential components not only for past reputation but also for future development of the JKNS. This is why we need to put in more effort than ever before for the development of JKNS. As part of such an effort, it is thought that giving priority to JKNS when members of KNS submit their manuscripts would be of great help to the development of JKNS.