Progress in Pediatric Cardiology

About Progress in Pediatric Cardiology

Progress in Pediatric Cardiology — Journal Profile

Progress in Pediatric Cardiology is a peer-reviewed medical journal devoted to the cardiovascular care of children and of patients with congenital heart disease across the lifespan. Published by Elsevier since 1992, it provides a home for original research, review articles, expert opinion and debate aimed at academics, clinicians, healthcare managers, policymakers and patients, covering the understanding, management and improvement of paediatric and congenital cardiovascular disease. Its print ISSN is 1058-9813 and its online ISSN is 1558-1519 — the identifiers carried on this Journals World record and shown on the journal's ScienceDirect pages, which list the print ISSN as the linking ISSN and the online ISSN for the electronic edition. The standard abbreviation is Prog. Pediatr. Cardiol. The journal is affiliated with the Society of Pediatric Cardiology Training Program Directors, a link that shapes its strong strand of content on training, education and programme leadership alongside its clinical science. For a specialty in which many advances arrive as single-centre experience, technique refinement and carefully argued review, the journal's mix of research, reviews and debate is deliberately practical.

The journal's position in the field is best understood from its own description. Elsevier's journal pages state that the title focuses on all aspects of complex cardiovascular issues in children and in patients with congenital heart disease, merging pathophysiology, prevention, treatment, nursing, outcomes, quality improvement, medical education, adult congenital heart disease, genetics and advocacy. That breadth is unusual: most cardiology journals serve adult practice, and most paediatric journals treat the heart as one system among many. Progress in Pediatric Cardiology instead treats the child's heart — and the grown-up congenital heart — as a complete discipline, from fetal and neonatal diagnosis through catheter and surgical intervention to long-term follow-up, transition to adult care and the training of the next generation of specialists.

Quick Facts

Figures in this profile are attributed where they appear: Elsevier's own journal and shop pages for scope, affiliation and identifiers; the OpenAlex source record resolved from the journal's ISSNs for works, citations and topic profile; and SciJournal's Journal Citation Reports and SCImago-derived data for impact factor, rank and h-index context. Citation databases measure different things, so values from different providers are reported side by side rather than merged.

Scope and Subject Coverage

The journal's stated scope covers the understanding, management and improvement of paediatric and congenital cardiovascular diseases in full. Elsevier describes a rich mix of original research, reviews, experienced opinion and debate for a readership spanning academics, clinicians, healthcare managers, policymakers and patients. The thematic span named by the publisher runs from pathophysiology, prevention and treatment to nursing, outcomes, quality improvement, medical education, adult congenital heart disease, genetics and advocacy. In practice, recent issues show the range clearly: the September 2025 volume (Volume 78) carried case reports on prenatal management of severe tricuspid dysplasia, a giant right atrial myxoma in a child, histoplasma endocarditis on a prosthetic pulmonary valve and prolonged lactic acidosis after congenital cardiac surgery, alongside a guest-edited special section on recognition and management of cardiovascular disease in paediatric subspecialties, with reviews on cardiovascular complications in sickle cell disease and on preparticipation screening and electrocardiograms in athletes.

OpenAlex's topic profile for the journal, resolved from its ISSNs at checking time, confirms the centre of gravity: congenital heart disease studies, congenital heart defect research, cardiomyopathy research, Kawasaki disease and coronary complications, and cardiovascular complications in related conditions lead its topic list. The journal also runs themed collections — recent examples include the proceedings-linked collection of the 6th International Conference on Cardiomyopathy in Children and a collection on paediatric cardiology and sleep — which gives conference communities and specialist networks a route to publish coherent sets of papers. SCImago classifies the title in Cardiology and Cardiovascular Medicine and in Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health, which matches how libraries and indexers shelve it: a cardiology specialty title whose patient population begins before birth.

History and Development

Progress in Pediatric Cardiology began publication in 1992, and its run continues unbroken to the present: OpenAlex records a first publication year of 1992 and content into 2026, and ScienceDirect lists current volumes and articles scheduled into 2026 issues. The journal has therefore documented more than three decades of transformation in its field — the shift from purely surgical correction toward catheter intervention, fetal diagnosis, single-ventricle palliation pathways, mechanical support and transplantation, genetic diagnosis and lifelong adult congenital care all fall inside its publishing lifetime. Elsevier Ireland Ltd appears as the publisher in SCImago's data, with Ireland as the publisher country, while copyright pages on ScienceDirect sit with Elsevier B.V.; the journal is sold through the Elsevier shop as a subscription title with the Society of Pediatric Cardiology Training Program Directors affiliation displayed on the product page. Over its run the title has published a substantial archive: OpenAlex counted 2,098 works for the journal at checking time, a deep backfile that makes it a routine citation source for reviews of congenital and paediatric cardiac practice.

Editorial Leadership and Peer Review

As an Elsevier journal, Progress in Pediatric Cardiology operates through the publisher's standard editorial infrastructure: a named editorial team listed on the journal's ScienceDirect pages, themed issues led by guest editors — recent special sections name guest editors drawn from the subspecialty community — and peer review administered through Elsevier's online submission system. The affiliation with the Society of Pediatric Cardiology Training Program Directors is visible in the journal's content balance, where fellowship training, curriculum and programme-level questions receive sustained attention that few rival titles offer. Authors should consult the journal's Guide for Authors on ScienceDirect for the current editorial team, article-type definitions and formatting requirements, since Elsevier maintains those details on the live journal pages. This profile deliberately reports the editorial arrangements that could be verified from the publisher's pages at checking time — the affiliation, the guest-edited special section model and the submission route — rather than naming individual editors whose tenure could not be confirmed from a current masthead.

Metrics and Indexing

The journal is covered by the major medical indexing services that carry Elsevier's cardiology list, and its bibliometric footprint is recorded consistently across providers. SciJournal's metrics page, which draws its impact factor data from Journal Citation Reports and its rank data from SCImago, reports a 2025 impact factor of 0.290 (against 0.470 for 2024 and 0.627 for 2023), a SCImago Journal Rank of 0.173 for 2025, and an h-index of 39. Those impact factor values are low in absolute terms, and this profile reports them exactly as the tracker gives them: paediatric cardiology is a small specialty, citation pools are correspondingly small, and a journal serving training, case-based learning and subspecialty debate will not accumulate citations at the rate of a general cardiology title. The longer trend published by the same source shows the journal's impact factor moving between roughly 0.1 and 0.9 across two decades, which is the honest context in which any single year's figure should be read.

OpenAlex, whose coverage is broader and counts citations from a wider web of sources, paints the cumulative picture: the source record resolved from the journal's two ISSNs at checking time (source S187747600) listed 2,098 works and 11,466 citations, an h-index of 44, an i10-index of 300 and a two-year mean citedness of about 0.45. The gap between the OpenAlex h-index (44) and the Scopus-based figure (39) is a normal database-coverage effect. On open access directories, the position is simple to state: a DOAJ search by either ISSN returned no listing at checking time, which fits the journal's subscription model — individual articles can appear as open access or free content on ScienceDirect (recent case reports are marked open access), but the journal as a whole is a subscription title sold to institutions through the Elsevier shop.

Publishing Model and Fees

Progress in Pediatric Cardiology is a subscription journal. Libraries and individuals subscribe through Elsevier, and the journal's product page in the Elsevier shop carries the current subscription pricing; because prices vary by region, format and year, this profile does not quote a figure that would date quickly, and readers should take the live price from the shop page for print ISSN 1058-9813. Individual articles may be published open access where authors or funders arrange it under Elsevier's open access options, and ScienceDirect marks such articles accordingly — recent issues include open access case reports alongside subscription content. The journal does not present itself as an article-processing-charge journal in the DOAJ sense, and no APC figure is stated here because none could be verified from the journal's own pages at checking time; authors considering the open access route should confirm the current charge in the Guide for Authors before submitting. Accepted manuscripts are published on ScienceDirect in issue order, with articles also appearing ahead of issue compilation, and DOIs in the 10.1016/j.ppedcard pattern — the journal code visible in recent article DOIs — make each paper persistently citable.

How to Submit

Manuscripts are submitted through Elsevier's online submission system for the journal, reached from the journal's ScienceDirect homepage, and prepared according to the Guide for Authors linked from the same pages and from the Elsevier shop product page. Before submitting, authors should confirm that the work concerns paediatric or congenital cardiovascular disease squarely — the journal's scope statement is explicit — and choose the article type honestly: original research, review, case report and opinion or debate pieces all appear, and themed special sections are guest-edited, so a manuscript aimed at a collection should follow that collection's call. Reference style follows Elsevier's numbered convention for the journal, with references cited by sequential numbers in square brackets, as set out in the citation style guidance for the title. Given the journal's readership of practising specialists and training programme leaders, papers that state their clinical or educational implication plainly — what changes at the bedside, in the catheter laboratory, in follow-up or in the fellowship curriculum — match the journal's demonstrated taste.

Article Types and Special Sections

The journal's content falls into recognisable strands, all visible in its recent volumes. Research articles report clinical, imaging, catheterisation, surgical-outcome and health-services studies in paediatric and congenital cardiology. Review articles synthesise fast-moving areas for practising clinicians — the special section on cardiovascular disease in paediatric subspecialties, for instance, paired a review of cardiovascular complications in children with sickle cell disease with guidance on preparticipation screening and electrocardiograms in young athletes, topics where cardiologists advise colleagues in haematology, sports medicine and general paediatrics. Case reports form a substantial, valued strand: the September 2025 volume alone carried reports on prenatal management of severe tricuspid dysplasia with circular shunt using anti-inflammatory therapy, a giant right atrial myxoma, histoplasma endocarditis on a prosthetic pulmonary valve, and prolonged lactic acidosis after congenital cardiac surgery attributed to thiamine deficiency. Each isolates a management lesson from a rare presentation, which is the genre's purpose in a specialty built on uncommon lesions. Opinion and debate pieces, promised in the publisher's description of the journal's mix, give programme directors, senior clinicians and advocates a forum for contested questions of practice, training and policy.

Themed collections extend that range. The journal has hosted the collection of the 6th International Conference on Cardiomyopathy in Children, a themed set on paediatric cardiology and sleep edited by specialists from the University at Buffalo and partner institutions, and the ongoing special section on cardiovascular disease across paediatric subspecialties. For research groups and conference communities, such collections offer a coherent publication route with guest editors who know the subfield; for readers, they concentrate scattered expertise into a single citable place. Authors considering a themed submission should watch the journal's ScienceDirect pages, where collections and their calls are announced, and should note that article numbering in current volumes (the 1018xx sequence in Volume 78) reflects Elsevier's article-based publishing flow, in which accepted papers receive their article number and DOI promptly rather than waiting for page composition.

Who Should Publish Here

The journal fits paediatric cardiologists, congenital cardiac surgeons and intensivists, fetal and imaging specialists, nurses and allied professionals in congenital care, adult congenital heart disease teams, and educators who run training programmes. It is a rational target for solid single-centre studies, well-documented case reports with teaching value, state-of-the-art reviews and argued position pieces in a field where randomised evidence is often impossible. Authors whose primary goal is a high impact factor, or whose work is adult cardiology without a congenital or paediatric angle, should look elsewhere; the journal's value lies in reaching exactly the clinicians and educators who treat these patients and train their successors.

Reading the Journal as a Trainee and Clinician

A profile should say plainly who actually reads the journal. Through its training-programme affiliation and its case-and-review mix, Progress in Pediatric Cardiology functions as continuing education for the congenital heart workforce: fellows preparing for boards, nurses and sonographers deepening subspecialty knowledge, and attending physicians who need a argued summary before a clinic or a catheterisation conference. Its debate and opinion strand matters in a field where practice varies between centres and where guidelines cannot settle every question — Fontan follow-up intervals, screening of young athletes, transition arrangements for adult congenital patients. The journal's publishers keep the archive fully searchable on ScienceDirect back to its first volumes, so a literature search on a rare lesion routinely surfaces its case reports and reviews decades later; that long tail, visible in the OpenAlex totals of 2,098 works and more than eleven thousand citations, is the practical measure of its usefulness to the specialty.

Similar Journals

Neighbouring titles an author might weigh include Cardiology in the Young, Pediatric Cardiology, the International Journal of Cardiology's congenital heart disease coverage, Congenital Heart Disease, and — for surgical technique — The Annals of Thoracic Surgery and the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. Progress in Pediatric Cardiology distinguishes itself within that set through its training-programme affiliation and its deliberate blend of research, review, case learning and debate.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the journal's ISSNs? Print ISSN 1058-9813 and online ISSN 1558-1519, as shown on the journal's ScienceDirect pages and in this Journals World record.

Who publishes Progress in Pediatric Cardiology? Elsevier; SCImago's publisher data names Elsevier Ireland Ltd, and the journal is affiliated with the Society of Pediatric Cardiology Training Program Directors.

Is the journal open access? It is a subscription journal. A DOAJ search by ISSN returned no listing at checking time; individual articles can appear as open access on ScienceDirect under Elsevier's open access options.

What is the journal's impact factor? SciJournal, drawing on Journal Citation Reports, reports 0.290 for 2025, after 0.470 for 2024. OpenAlex separately records 2,098 works, 11,466 citations and an h-index of 44 at checking time; the two providers measure different citation pools.

How long has the journal been publishing? Since 1992, continuously to the present day, with current volumes and forthcoming 2026 content listed on ScienceDirect.

Does the journal publish themed collections? Yes. Recent examples include the collection of the 6th International Conference on Cardiomyopathy in Children, a themed set on paediatric cardiology and sleep, and a special section on cardiovascular disease in paediatric subspecialties, each led by named guest editors from the subspecialty community.

Sources consulted for this profile: Elsevier's journal pages on ScienceDirect (scope, ISSNs, recent volumes, special sections, article DOIs) and the Elsevier shop product page (affiliation, scope description, Guide for Authors route); the OpenAlex source record resolved by ISSN (works, citations, h-index, topics, first and last years); SciJournal's metrics page (Journal Citation Reports impact factors, SCImago rank and h-index, publisher country); the DOAJ search API for both ISSNs (no listing returned at checking time). Figures are as recorded at checking time and are attributed to their source in the text.