Perennial Goals for the Millennium

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The second year of my editorship has gone by, again hopefully unnoticed. In fact, relative to my opening comments and my first editorial report, this one will present a much more positive trajectory.

First, we have managed to decrease and then maintain the publication lag at about four to five months. On a relative scale, this time span is short, considering that two years ago, the time between final acceptance of a manuscript to its actual appearance in print was over nine months. After rapidly publishing an additional 800 pages, we were able to cut the publication queue to five months, and then to just below four months for the most recent issue. In perpetual pursuit of publication space, some of you have likely noticed that article formatting changed last April. This change will allow the publication of one additional article per month and should permit an even further decline in waiting time. We'd prefer the publication lag to be three months (or even less), and efforts have been ongoing for the past year to secure additional journal pages to meet this goal. As you might predict, the finances of the sponsoring Society (and some pressure from its membership) will dictate our ability to accomplish this.

Second, we have continued our efforts to streamline the peer-review process. Outstanding associate editors, Editorial Board members, ad hoc reviewers, and an excellent staff in Chicago, New York, and St. Louis are armed with new hardware and software for improved reviewing. This team has enabled a decrease in initial review times from a mean of 70 days two years ago to 47 days last year to 29 days this past year. Admittedly, part of the decrease in the past year (as well as the downward trend in the publication lag) has been the solicitation of more Perspectives and Minireviews (both of which have shorter turnaround times than standard scientific work), but there has also been an improvement in transit time for original articles. We are by no means satisfied with the current turnover rate, although it compares favorably to other major journals, and major efforts are underway to improve the situation further. In that regard, we are still aiming to institute additional peer-review software that will allow for more sophisticated tracking and online electronic reviewing. These efforts have been limited by the software vendor and will be overcome soon. In addition, we are instituting more rigid "nagging" protocols to be certain that reviewers and their corresponding associate editors are better aware of the need for speed. Further, if the need is not met, the editors will intervene to expedite the review process. New peer-review software already tracks the performance of reviewers and editors and has been responsible for some improvement, and we are hopeful to continue that trend.

On the same critical subject of peer review, I note that our manuscript acceptance rates have decreased. We dropped from 45% last year to closer to 40% this year. Recalling that approximately 40% was our target, we do not anticipate much further change. The bad news is that editors and reviewers have been urged to demand more from submitting authors in the way of scientific novelty and mechanistic insight. The impact of this policy is still hard to gauge, but spot-checks with scientists on the street indicate that articles are improving in quality. It's not unusual to hear that submitters chose to submit to the Red Journal over our nearest competitors in more general journals (e.g., the Journal of Immunology or the Journal of Biological Chemistry). Despite the dogma, some authors prefer a more specialized audience and perhaps higher visibility with their lung biology peers. In any case, when new impact factors are available next year, we'll be able to better determine if we are gaining further ground in this area.

Third, our efforts (in parallel with the efforts by many other journals) to go electronic have been remarkably well received. Under the High Wire Press system, the Red Journal has moved from 5,000 to 9,000 hits per week over the past year, serving 1,500 different users each week (not to be equated with 1,500 individuals because the same "user" subscription may represent many individuals). In these days, the field of electronic publishing is a dynamic one, and vigorous efforts by nontraditional publishers (e.g., the federal government via PubMed) and more traditional ones are moving rapidly in this area. We plan to continue to do the same to spread the lung biology word, recognizing that we do not want to compromise the tradition of excellence represented by the Red Journal and the ATS. Plans are underway to make past issues of the Red Journal available for free via the Web (beginning one year after publication) and to make articles available electronically at the time of acceptance (further eroding the publication lag). As noted above, we also plan to use the Web to better track manuscript status (by editors and submitting authors), and we can already use it to track manuscript popularity.

In that regard, I'm especially pleased to report the fourth point, that we've continued our task of "rewarding" reviewers by giving them a greater opportunity for contributing their viewpoints in Perspectives and Minireviews. These contributions aim to interpret and annotate basic science observations, especially for the disease-oriented professional. We now routinely use a system for screening all accepted manuscripts for a "tie-in" Perspective, and in general prefer to offer the Perspective opportunity to one of those (no longer) anonymous scientists who reviewed the manuscript. We instituted this system as soon as we had the pages to do so (about 15 months ago), and the response of the editor/reviewer pool and the quality of their contributions have been outstanding. According to our electronic feedback, five out of our top ten most-frequently-read articles were Perspectives. As in the past, unsolicited Perspectives, or more preferably, State-of-the-Art Minireviews in "Red hot" areas are also still encouraged.

Fifth, and last, all of this hard work (by you and your colleagues) appears to be paying a scientific stipend. For the first time in a while, the Red Journal is attracting even more submissions. The Journal's monthly average submission rate has increased from 29 per month in 1998 to 36 per month in 1999, representing a nearly 25% boost in the substrate for publication. Some of this influx is based on an increased number of Perspectives and Minireviews, but it is also due to an enhanced number of original scientific submissions. Presumably this increase in the contribution rate reflects a now well founded view that the best scientific work in respiratory research is being considered for publication in the Red Journal. I encourage each of you to contribute and to continue the high level of support and commitment that allow for the success of this Journal.

MICHAEL J. HOLTZMAN, M.D.

Departments of Medicine and Cell Biology

Washington University School of Medicine

St. Louis, Missouri

	Footnotes

Address correspondence to: M. J. Holtzman, Washington University School of Medicine, Campus Box 8052, 660 South Euclid Avenue, St. Louis, MO 63110. E-mail: holtzmanm{at}msnotes.wustl.edu