Science Beyond Impact Factors

Abstract

Over the next month, some exciting changes will take place in the functionality of Editorial Manager, the online submission system for Pharmaceutical Research. Authors will be able to select a preferred Editor for handling their manuscripts, provide suggestions for preferred (or non-preferred) reviewers, amongst other changes. On the review side, we will implement new areas of reviewer feedback that will allow for better communication with editors. Ultimately, these changes are designed to better serve our authors in making the review process more transparent and providing more constructive feedback on individual aspects of manuscripts. There will also be a few additional changes (1 )o n “Team PharmRes”: After serving the journal for more than 7 years, Dr. Toshikiro Kimura will retire his position as Professor and Dean of Okayama University and step down as Editor for Pharmaceutical Research. Toshikiro has been a devoted Editor in the area of drug delivery and served as a strong advocate for our Asian authors and reviewers. He is currently assisting the editorial office in the search for his successor in related areas of expertise. Second, Dr. Christine Vauthier will be taking over as Editor for Dr. Patrick Couvreur. Christine is a prolific scholar in the area of drug delivery and nanotechnology who has worked closely with Patrick during his tenure with Pharmaceutical Research; as a result, she is very familiar with the editorial process allowing for a smooth transition. Welcome on board, Christine! Lastly, Dr. Uday Kompella haschampionedthe journal forseveral years in the capacity asEditor, Expert Reviews. Thanks to his efforts, the journal has seen a steady stream of high-quality review articles in burgeoning new areas of research. He will now assume the role of regular editor for the journal in the areas of nanotechnology for drug delivery, gene delivery, and imaging. A long-standing debate about the value of impact factors in appraising the scientific value of publications may get more complicated with the introduction of the Eigenfactor Score (somewhat similar to a journal’s impact factor but corrected for self-citations) and the Article Influence Score (AIS), which calculates the relative importance of the journal on a per-article basis. The AIS is determined by dividing the Eigenfactor Score by the number of articles published in the journal and normalized to