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Best videos of the year in 2017

EDITORIAL

This year has been another memorable year for the International Brazilian Journal of Urology with quality international submissions to the video section from across the World. It highlights the commitment by the urology community in continually striving to improve the outcomes of surgical patients. We should never accept that good is good enough particularly with the plethora of surgical tools at our disposal. In this regard, it gives me a distinct pleasure to introduce the three best videos for 2017. These selections were made based on their novelty and potential to favorably impact the surgical care of urological patients. Making these selections is always challenging, being that all accepted videos are already of an incredibly high quality; hence, I would like to congratulate all authors for accepted videos over the past year and look forward to receiving your future submissions in the months to years to come. The selection of best videos of the year are as follows:
The third prize goes to the video entitled “Laparoscopic partial nephrectomy for multiple (four) tumors” by Lessandro Curcio et al. from the Hospital Federal Ipanema in Brazil, published in the May-June issue (43(3): 567) (1) of our Journal. The authors nicely depict in this video a two-stage approach to managing a patient with multifocal renal tumors using a minimally invasive laparoscopic approach in which the larger tumors were approached in na initial setting using a conventional clamp technique, followed by which the two smaller ones were approach in a non-clamped manner. This video nicely depicts that each case must be approached in a personalized fashion with the individual tumor characteristics, multifocality, and location aiding in the selection of the most suitable surgical strategy, including appropriateness of minimally invasive and clamp versus non-clamp vascular hilar control techniques.

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Selection of best videos of the year for 2016

Dear esteemed colleagues and friends,

            As we begin a new year, I would like to take this opportunity to thank each of you for your commitment in supporting our journal and expanding its readership. This past year has been truly exceptional in the quality of submissions we have received within the video section of the International Brazilian Journal of Urology. We are committed in publishing the highest quality videos detailing novel surgical techniques and approaches by leading surgical teams from across the world. Similarly, we encourage groups pushing the envelope in terms of how we can continually refine the art of surgery and ultimately improve the outcomes of our patients. In this regard, I am pleased to share with you this year’s selection for best videos of the year for 2016. Many individual criteria were taken into account in making this selection including novelty, superior quality in terms of video depiction and narration, and lastly vides that best depict re-defining surgical approaches to urological diseases. On that note, here are the selections:

First Prize:

            Robotic ureteroureterostomy for treatment of a proximal ureteral stricture by Andrade HS et al. from the Glickman Urological and Kidney Institute, Cleveland Clinic (Cleveland, Ohio) published in volume 42(5):1041-1042, September-October 2016 (see video) (1). This video is truly a masterful depiction on how minimally invasive robotic surgery can be used to tackle benign ureteral stricture disease. Excellent perioperative surgical outcomes are reported and the authors provide sufficient follow-up of 27 months to insure these favorable outcomes are maintained with adequate follow-up. There is no question this surgical approach and specifically this video...

Reviewers: the soul of a scientific journal

            Peer review system is like democracy: it is absolutely imperfect, but the best available. It allows criticism to articles, suggestions for improvement under different perspectives and allows the editor to make a fairer decision about the future of the article.

            The reviser is the soul of a medical journal like International Brazilian Journal of Urology.  He/she dictates the quality of publishing, the velocity by which each article reaches the reader, being a voluntary job that takes time. A good reviser is rapidly identified by different magazines and is overloaded by many requests.

            A good reviser is not necessarily famous in his/hers specialty, but a dedicated person that spends precious time without payment in order to evaluate a paper and to decide if its valuable enough to be published or if it needs improvements and guidance to authors.

            International Brazilian Journal of Urology has received 641 new submissions in 2016, added to other 275 that were revised and resubmitted. 456 revisers participated in that task and it is important to nominate, as we have been doing in the past years, the most efficient and more collaborative.

            We created a formula  by which this choice is not subjective and only based on the opinion of the Associated Editors:

Reviser score = (completed revisions/invitations)x R-score

                                   Median time consumed for revision

The result is multiplied by 100.

R-score: given note that each AE gives to each revision (1= bad revision to...