Editors' Report

Abstract

The year 1994 was an excellent one for the Journral. After initial transition problems, the editorial office has been reorganized and has become extremely efficient. A Deputy Editor with responsibilities that include statistical oversight has been added. We have spent much time consolidating style changes that increase compliance with major style manuals and consistency from article to article. We continue to work on the “readability” of the Journal's style, format, and content, and we welcome your critique on these matters. A new initiative this past year was to establish several “thematic series” for which most of the articles are solicited and are edited by an expert in the field. Examples include the series on models of clinical practice and pending series on medical decisions, clinical pathological conferences, advances in genetics, research on the aging athlete, and research on older people with chronic neurologic disorders such as previous poliomyelitis. We solicit your comments for other series. We wish to announce a new permanent section in the Journal. The title of this section will be Brief Methodological Reports. The Journal receives many submissions regarding use of a variety of self-reported, administered, or performance-based measures and scales that assess physical, functional, mood, cognitive, and social domains. We believe these articles are very important to the field, but many of them overlap with regard to their introduction, literature review, and discussion. For this reason, we are announcing a new policy concerning this type of article. All reports regarding measurement instruments should be submitted as brief reports with a short introduction and discussion and a total length of no more than 10 manuscript pages, plus no more than three tables or figures. In some cases, a longer article may be justified; however, unless the research is of substantial importance, longer articles will have less chance of publication. We would like to provide you with data and information regarding our review policies and their results. In the past year, half of all articles submitted have undergone only internal editorial review, and a disposition has been made based solely on internal review. All such reviews involved at least two editors. Of original submissions, approximately one-third are rejected based solely on internal review. There are two reasons for this policy. First, if we see that an article has no chance of timely publication, we think it is a disservice not to return it rapidly to its author. Second, because of the large and increasing number of submissions and the resulting workload for reviewers, we must make the review process efficient to maintain the high quality of the Journal's reviews. Of articles sent out for external peer review, approximately three-quarters are ultimately accepted for publication. Our processing times are as follows: time from receipt of the original submission to its being sent out to at least two reviewers averages 3 weeks. Return of all reviews averages 7 weeks. For those submissions that ultimately published in the Journal, we are proud to report that in 1994, only 7 months, on average, elasped from time of original receipt to actual appearance in print in the Journal. When letters to the editor and editorials are removed from this equation, the average time to publication is less than nine months. The editors work hard to decrease the processing time, and our objective is to have the shortest time from submission to publication of any major journal in our field. The editors continue to explore appropriate balance among scientific articles, articles with direct clinical application, and articles that offer some speculation with regard to the future. We particularly want to thank all the authors and reviewers who have worked diligently to make this past year a success, and we look forward to further progress in the year to come.