Abstract
People often ask me what it’s like to be Editor of the Australian Dental Journal. My answer is that it’s a labour of love and, for the most part, it is a very enjoyable undertaking. However, it is also not only hard work but it is emotional work. Did you know that at the time of writing this editorial, 312 papers have been submitted to this journal in 2010 to be considered for publication, but only 31 have been accepted? This means that this year there have been 281 very disappointed would-be authors who have spent considerable time preparing their manuscripts only to have them returned with a “thanks but no thanks” letter. What does this mean? Is our editorial policy for what is acceptable for publication in our journal too harsh, or is it just that the material we receive is not up to standard? Personally, I think it is that the standards of the journal dictate that we can only accept high quality manuscripts of relevance to our readers and of general importance to the global dental community. This philosophy was recently vindicated by an impressive improvement in our international standing with other ISI indexed dental journals, from a rank of 54 (Impact Factor 0.945) in 2008 to 41 (Impact Factor 1.22) in 2009. While the ISI rankings, which are driven by Impact Factor, are of interest we should not lose sight of the fact that this is not the only measure of a journal’s “success”. There are other so-called measures of scientific quality such as the Eigenfactor for which our journal is ranked 47th in the dental journal listings. Again, this is a metric score which is all well and good but may not reflect other values of the journal. While it is nice to have good metric scores, the ultimate measure for me, as Editor, is the positive feedback I get from you, the readers. For this I say thank you and I hope we can continue to walk the fine line of providing what you want (papers relevant to dentistry in Australia) and what we need (good scientific rankings). Not an easy job.
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