It was another banner year for article publication and engagement in Cureus. You published 8,453 peer-reviewed articles in 2021, a 43% increase from 2020. We also welcomed over twice as many visitors to the Cureus website and saw monthly article reads in December increase by roughly one million compared to December 2020. In addition, the average time to publish decreased by three days and our acceptance rate dipped as we continued to expand our team of Associate Editors.

Meanwhile, we’ve maintained our commitment to publishing all qualifying articles for free: 28% of our published articles were published completely free of charge, and for those authors who purchased our Preferred Editing service the average cost was just $289! As other journals continue to charge thousands of dollars to publish, it’s clear that our low/no cost, Open Access approach is disrupting the medical publishing industry and changing the narrative regarding what medical publishing should look like.

The Cureus team continues to curate and implement feedback from our valued contributors - here are just a few of our notable improvements from last year:

Choose from a variety of customizable Cureus email digests
Are you only interested in psychiatry and psychology? Or perhaps you'd prefer a digest all about family medicine? Select by specialty to ensure your monthly digest emails will contain only articles in your chosen area of interest. Visit your Account Settings page to personalize your Cureus email digest experience.

Concurrent submissions are now available for all authors
No longer reserved only for honors program members, all authors can now submit multiple articles at the same time. With an average time to publish of just 39 days, and with 57% of submissions accepted for final publication, all of your valuable research can be published in just a few weeks with Cureus!

Video abstracts are a new and unique way to promote your research
Announce your contribution to the medical community on social media by recording a short video highlighting your work. Interested authors should follow the instructions in the Cureus promotion guide. We’ll share your video across all our social media platforms with a combined audience of over 50,000 people.

We welcomed 8 new academic channels into the fold in 2021. Universities and organizations continue to appreciate the benefits of promoting their work through our academic channel program. With the benefits of a branded article collection, multiple layers of editorial oversight, and priority Cureus support, these departments and organizations are free to focus on their goal: publishing quality, peer-reviewed medical literature. 

• Aurora Breast Health Proceedings
• FLAGSHIP: Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine (KPCOM)
• Liberty Medicine Research Channel
• Medical Society of Delaware Academic Channel
• Modern Medical Educator
• Paolo Procacci Foundation
• Sinai Chicago Research
• University of Florida College of Medicine – Jacksonville

And last but not least, the Surgically Targeted Radiation Therapy for Brain Tumors: Clinical Case Review competition wrapped up in December with prizes awarded to the following articles:

• Rapid Interval Recurrence of Glioblastoma Following Gross Total Resection: A Possible Indication for GammaTileⓇ Brachytherapy
• Surgical Outcomes of Novel Collagen Tile Cesium Brachytherapy for Recurrent Intracranial Tumors at a Tertiary Referral Center
• Treating Recurrent Brain Metastases Using GammaTile Brachytherapy: A Case Report and Dosimetric Modeling Method