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The scene: a small meeting room in a Santa Barbara bed-and-breakfast.
Seven puzzled editors scratching their heads, trying to figure out just
what was different about the cover of the latest issue of the
American Journal of Physiology-Cell Physiology. Sudden enlightenmentan ugly hyphen appearing awkwardly on the cover where
none had been before. Rash comments and recriminations fired at patient
Margaret Reich, new Executive Editor for the Journal, who had kindly
agreed to suffer through a weekend in California to join us for our
retreat (well, OK, perhaps she wasn't suffering too much with 0°F
wind chills back in Bethesda). Finally, resolution, and the immortal
comment from Dennis Brown that forms the title of this editorial. The
hyphen is ugly, but it has a very salutary role.
Levity aside, at our retreat we were all very pleased to learn that, starting this year, the various sections of the AJP will have individually calculated impact factors. Given that AJP-Cell Physiology routinely falls within the top two AJP sections in terms of citation statistics, we anticipate that our impact factor will be significantly more favorable than that previously calculated for the consolidated AJP as a whole. We have long recognized that impact factors play an increasing role when authors, particularly our European colleagues, are deciding where to submit their best work. This change will reflect more accurately the high standing of the science published in our pages and, we hope, encourage additional submissions of the most significant findings in the field of cell physiology.
But why the hyphen? For reasons too complex (and boring?) to elaborate upon here, the new impact factors will require a change in the way that papers in the Journal are cited. Thus it will be necessary to include the full title of the Journal as well as the letters attached to the page numbers ("C" in our case) that designate the section of origin. Thus a typical citation would read: Smith A and Jones B. All about cell physiology. Am J Physiol Cell Physiol 278: C101-C114, 2000. US postal regulations then mandate that the Journal itself must show its full title on the cover, including any punctuation (thus the pesky hyphen). I encourage you to update your bibliographic databases and begin using this new citation style immediately when you refer to papers published in the Journal, so that impact factor calculations can be as complete as possible in short order.
Our retreat was held in recognition of the reappointment of our editorial team to a second term. We had a highly productive meeting and discussed a number of additional new initiatives for the Journal. I am particularly excited about our plans to issue a series of "Calls for Papers" to encourage submission of manuscripts in specific areas that we would like to highlight in these pages. Thus we will solicit original papers on a given topic, and these will receive special handling through the editorial process, with the goal of publishing a number of related papers in a single issue. In the coming months, we plan to solicit submissions on the study of membrane transporters using model organisms (to be coordinated by our newest Associate Editor, Kevin Strange) and on nonmuscle motility and the cytoskeleton (to be coordinated by Kathy Morgan). Other Calls for Papers are in development and will be announced on our web site as well as via E-mail to relevant APS members. We also welcome your suggestions of emerging and exciting areas of our discipline that might similarly be highlighted.
We also discussed several editorial policy changes. Perhaps the most significant of these is that we agreed to a new time limit for the submission of revised manuscripts. Thus, effective immediately, invited revisions must be received in our offices within 6 mo, unless there are extraordinary extenuating circumstances. Our goal in instituting this policy is to publish the most timely and exciting science. Papers that are not revised within this time frame will be considered to be withdrawn and will be administratively inactivated in our files. Any submission beyond 6 mo will then need to be made de novo to the main editorial office in Bethesda, with payment of the appropriate submission fees.
We also discussed the increasing practice on the part of reviewers to submit their comments by E-mail. AJP-Cell Physiology is not yet using the online manuscript tracking and reviewing system, APS Central. However, we recognize that many reviewers find it more convenient to prepare their reviews in an electronic format, and we welcome such submissions, provided they contain all of the elements that ordinarily would be included in a paper review, including priority ratings. We are currently drafting a policy on E-mail reviews that will enunciate these points. In addition, Margaret Reich has agreed to explore the possibility of posting our review forms on the web before our planned transfer to the online system. These various changes should enable us to maintain the timeliness of the editorial process without compromising the quality of our reviews.
Finally, we restated our commitment to our series of Editorial Focus articles that highlight papers published in the Journal and that are particularly noteworthy or significant. I have received nothing but positive feedback regarding these short pieces, and we are indebted to the authors who agree to prepare them with very short time lines. Many have commented on their use as a tool for teaching graduate students, as an introduction to an unfamiliar area, or simply in provoking new ideas. We certainly intend to continue this series and are planning layout changes in the table of contents, which will allow the easy identification of those articles that have been highlighted, without sacrificing prompt publication.
In closing, as I have done in each of these editorials, I urge you to contact me at any time with comments about or criticisms of the Journal. We can only be as good as the papers we receive, but all the Editors agreed at our recent meeting that there has been an extraordinary increase in the quality of our submissions overall. This is an exciting era in cell physiology, when the information and tools developed from the human genome project will begin to be translated into functional information at the level of the molecule, cell, and ultimately the complex, integrated organism. AJP-Cell Physiology is ideally positioned to report on these unprecedented advances in our discipline, crossing organ-based lines to draw common threads among fundamental biological systems. We look forward to receiving your most exciting papers as we move forward into this new century.
Kim E. Barrett, Editor American Journal of Physiology-Cell Physiology University of California San Diego Medical Center San Diego, California 92103-8414 February 2000, Volume 278 (47) |
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