Starting the Second Decade Off with a Bang!

Abstract

What a long way we have come. This past decade for IFT peer-reviewed journals has been a significant one. IFT introduced 2 new journals, JFSE and CRFSFS, to complement the already successful Journal of Food Science. The backlog of manuscripts of 10 years ago was handled rapidly and we have been setting new records almost yearly on time-to-first-decision and time-to-final-acceptance. Our manuscript handling system has been steadily improved thanks to the active involvement of Amanda Ferguson in interacting with ScholarOne. We have entered into a mutually beneficial arrangement for production and printing with Wiley-Blackwell. We have assembled a team of outstanding Scientific Editors and Associate Editors to ensure that we are bringing the best research and thinking to the field of food science and technology. This had led to an increasing impact factor for JFS, one of our stated goals 10 years ago. We enhanced the attractiveness of JFS by including a cover picture. We addressed the problem of plagiarism by incorporating CrossCheck iThenticate into our toolbox. Finally, we have expanded the content of all our journals so that authors and readers are looking to IFT's journals as their primary source for new information and ideas. With this success has come a new set of challenges, and we are starting 2011, the first year of the second decade of this century, to address a pressing problem specifically confronting the Journal of Food Science. JFSE and CRFSFS have confronted fewer challenges because they are electronic -only journals, are free with no subscriptions, and, therefore, represent fewer financial complications. The challenge that has arisen is two-fold: number of manuscripts submitted and number of papers published in JFS. For 2010, in JFS, we published 466 papers totaling 3,513 pages, 867 pages over our estimated volume size of 2,646 pages. The average rejection rate for all sections of JFS was 63%. By comparison, in 2009 we published 384 papers with an average of 6.5 pages per paper and a rejection rate of 62%. The overage on printed pages resulted in additional cost to the journal stemming from additional copyediting, typesetting, printing, postage, and online publication. Over the years there has been a gradual upward trend in the length of manuscripts. This could be ascribed to various causes but I think it is due to the fact that we no longer teach word efficiency, using words that most efficiently describe what we want to say. As a counter measure, several journals have now gone to using word count as a screen for acceptability of manuscripts. Amanda Ferguson performed an analysis of word length (excluding figures and tables) of several papers published in each section of JFS and CRFSFS. For the Concise Review (CRH) section, 70% of the papers have a word count less than 10,000. For CRFSFS, 40% have a word count less than 10,000. Therefore, rather than using page length (more than 50 pages total for CRFSFS) to define which reviews are “Concise” and which are “Comprehensive”, starting January 2011, we will use word count. Less than 10,000 words will be a JFS Concise Review and more than 10,000 or more than 50 pages as submitted will go into CRFSFS. We recognize that this is an arbitrary boundary and we need to rely on the Scientific Editors to make the final judgment as to suitability for JFS or CRFSFS. For the topical sections of JFS, the mean word count was 5,143, the median 4,930, and the range 2,348 to 8,558. In discussions with the Scientific Editors and staff at IFT and Wiley-Blackwell, starting in January 2011, the word count on original research manuscripts submitted to JFS will be limited to 5,000 words. The word count will not include captions on figures and tables or words contained therein, but will include the title, byline, author bio, abstract, keywords, body text, and references. The author will provide the word count on the title page of the manuscript as well as in the submission form on ScholarOne. Amanda has made all the arrangements for the authors and appropriate wording has been included in the guidelines for authors. The final decision on the manuscript using this criterion will remain with the Scientific Editor and/or the Associate Editor. We think this strategy will continue to enhance the value of JFS to our readership, deliver the best research in food science and technology, and keep JFS economically competitive. We appreciate your continuing commitment to IFT's peer reviewed journals.