Dear subscribers and readers of the journal

Abstract

The year 2006 will witness significant changes in the Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics which, we hope, will greatly improve the visual and the functional aspects of the Journal. We are very pleased to be able to announce the implementation of a milestone in this reorganization, which is planned to be completed by July 2006. The Journal will now be apart of the Online First program, which will automatically load a revised manuscript on the Journals website in both HTML format as well as PDF format. The advantages of this process include: Articles are published days after authors have corrected their electronic proofs, thereby cutting weeks off the publication time. The online article is citable. Articles are published days, weeks, or even months before appearing in a print issue. The publication of the author's article is never delayed due to the status of other articles in the journal. The online article is sent to the various indexing services for inclusion in their databases. This online system will also update the submission process for authors. Starting in Volume 23, Number 1, at the end of the contents page, we will refer the author to a URL site they can access to find the most up-to-date author instructions. By not having the complete author instructions in print, we will avoid the problem of authors using outdated author instructions because they look in an old print issue of the journal. Also, since this journal utilizes an electronic peer review system, this will allow the author to utilize the online workflow for both preparing and delivering the manuscript. Finally, at the end of this volume year we will no longer be including a printed author/subject index. Now that the journal is online, the user will be able to electronically search not only in the current year volume but also previous years’ volumes for specific author and subject information. This is an important feature for the reader who will now have a greater pool of content from which to find specific and related information. All these changes will be beneficial in that they help to focus the journal's electronic capabilities in order to encourage easier usage and discovery of the journal's content for the reader. This in turn gives the journal greater exposure to the community it presently serves and it is hoped that it will encourage exposure to the community it has yet to serve.