Why the AEA endorses the REACA

Dear friends and members,

After a period of difficulties due to the pandemic, in September this year we were again able to hold the Congress of our Society on a face-to-face basis in Palma de Mallorca, where we were all happy to meet each other again.

At that Congress, and in the course of the general assembly, one of the members asked the Steering Committee about the convenience of the REACA, since maintaining the journal implied an important financial cost. I wish to thank this member for expressing his concerns, since it offers me the opportunity to write this Editorial.

Maintaining the journal is a recurrent issue that has been commented upon in all the Steering Committees on which I have served, and each time the decision was made to continue the project and not to put an end to its trajectory.

It is true that maintaining the REACA comes at a cost, despite the fact that decisions have been made in recent years to reduce the expenses by converting the publication from paper to digital format, for example.

The REACA was originally called Cuadernos de Artroscopia, and was conceived as the organ for scientific expression of the newly founded AEA, which next year celebrates its 40th anniversary. The different Directors of the journal have done a great job, and have always had the support of the Editorial Committee in charge of the selection and review of the submitted manuscripts.

One of the greatest difficulties of the journal in recent years has been the reception of manuscripts for publication. In effect, despite the efforts of the respective Directors and Editorial Committees to encourage professionals in our setting to submit original papers, the fact that the REACA is not an indexed publication and has a low visibility profile greatly complicated the reception of such manuscripts.

And it is here where we really ask ourselves whether it is advisable to either maintain the REACA or dedicate its resources to other things.

When I became the Chairman of the AEA, I was firmly convinced that the REACA not only must be maintained but should be promoted as a scientific tool for the arthroscopic community. In this regard, we entrusted the project to Dr. Miguel Ruiz Ibán, the current Director of the REACA, who proposed a four-year roadmap with the ultimate aim of indexing the journal and securing its financial self-sufficiency.

I have always believed that, although our technical performance in arthroscopy is absolutely comparable to that of any other country, we do not really have faith in our own capacity and feel that we cannot stand up to other much more visible and indexed "competitors" – as a result of which our original papers of high scientific value simply serve to improve other journals instead of our own.

Clearly, if we want to receive more original articles, we ourselves must be the first ones to believe that the REACA is a very good journal. To this end, the current Director is supported by an Editorial Committee in charge of reviewing the papers that are received, with the purpose not of rejecting any of them but of improving the submitted originals as much as possible in order to increase the scientific value of the publication. The articles are also being translated into English – this being crucial for the desired indexing of the journal.

Likewise, and under the auspices of the REACA, a "School for Authors" has been created as a tool for helping young professionals who wish to start publishing and to do so as correctly as possible.

But these efforts will be futile if we do not all believe that the REACA may be a journal on a par with any other publication which we presently hold to be superior. If we do not value ourselves, nobody will.

Considering all the above, we are fully convinced that the REACA must be one of the most important tools of the AEA in order to fulfil its mission of communicating and promoting knowledge of arthroscopy among the professionals in our setting. Thus, we firmly endorse this project and we are sure that with your collaboration we will be proud of having a fully standardized journal of excellent scientific quality.

My warmest regards,
Dr. Francesc Soler
Chairman of the AEA

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Dr. Francesc Soler Romagosa. Chairman of the AEA