ABC Cardiol, the Arquivos Brasileiros de Cardiologia, an official journal of the Brazilian Society of Cardiology has been the premier scientific journal for conveying cardiovascular science publications in Brazil. In 2018 as the new editor-in-chief, I proposed two main approaches to further increase ABC Cardiol relevance in the scientific community. The first one was to increase our journal impact factor, which had been stabilized slightly above 1 and, secondly to increase the internationalization of the journal, which was recommended by Scielo.

Our most recent journal impact factor (2019) is 1.450 and the 5-year impact factor of 1.724, the highest in our history. Additionally, the number of citations in a given year also reached its all-time highest number of 3065 citations in just one year ( ). There has been an upward trend of our journal impact factor, from the previous 1.318 (2017) and highest impact at 1.679 (2018) ^, ( ). International collaboration has been increasing significantly. Currently, about 11% of our published articles are from authors of more than one country (multinational, ), and 22% of articles are originating from countries other than Brazil ( ). Our editorial board has now international associated editors that are the angular stone for increasing international collaboration and publications in the ABC Cardiol. Moreover, collaboration with the international scientific community and societies has been boosted.

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BACKGROUND: A study evaluated the relationship between the defense of dissertations and their publication within the realm of the entire Medical School of the University of São Paulo (FM-USP). The existence of differences among different areas of knowledge and the time between defense of dissertations and their publication is questioned. OBJECTIVE: To characterize publications related to dissertations defended in graduate courses of the Heart Institute (InCor) of the University of São Paulo Medical School (FM-USP). METHODS: A retrospective survey was carried out featuring graduate work at FM/USP for the 1994 – 2004 period. Initially, data were collected on students who defended dissertations during this period, on their advisors, and on the dissertations defended in the course of the period. Then, by crossing these data with data from Medline® and Web of Science®, publications by these authors and data were located that referred to the respective publications. RESULTS: During that period, 268 dissertations were defended, resulting in 195 publications within a period of up to 10 years after their defense. The median time for publication after defense was one year and nine months, with a median impact factor of 2.1, and a median of 4 citations per paper. There was no statistically significant correlation among any of the data studied. CONCLUSION: A significant percentage of the dissertations were published, and in the group studied, publication took place within increasingly short times after their defense. This fact may be related to the success of the graduate commissions’ policies and to the importance currently lent to debates on this theme, all of which contribute to improvement in the quality of graduate studies.