Transfusion welcomes Blackwell Publishing

Abstract

Effective with this issue of TRANSFUSION, the production, marketing, and distribution of the journal will be carried out by Blackwell Publishing of Boston, Massachusetts. The AABB will retain ownership of the journal and copyright of all material published in it. The present Editor, Associate Editors, and Editorial Board members will continue, and we expect to function as we have in the past. Thus, the rights to the journal and determination of its contents will continue as they are at present. There are several reasons for entering into this new relationship. Blackwell is the largest publisher for societies, colleges, and associations in the world. They have a major presence in the fields of hematology, transfusion medicine, and oncology, publishing 11 journals directly related to transfusion medicine and blood banking, as well as many books on these same topics. Among the nearly 600 journals that Blackwell publishes are British Journal of Haematology, Vox Sanguinis, Transfusion Medicine, Anesthesia, European Journal of Haematology, and Haemophilia. Their books include Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation by Nobel Prize winner E. D. Thomas, S. J. Forman, and Karl G. Blume; Human Blood Groups by Geoff Daniels; A Practical Guide to Therapeutic Plasma Exchange by A. A. Kaplan; and Blood Transfusion in Clinical Medicine by P. L. Mollison, C. P. Engelfriet, and M. Contreras. Blackwell has 10 offices worldwide and a distribution network that will allow TRANSFUSION to be present at conferences, congresses, and symposia throughout the world. Their sales and marketing teams will help us develop new strategies and explore new relationships to further extend the journal's reach. Blackwell's size and the number of books and journals they produce provide economies of scale that make it possible to negotiate better rates for production and distribution services, such as airmail delivery of issues to all international subscribers. If you live outside of the United States, you should be receiving your journals more quickly from now on! Blackwell operates its own online journals delivery service, Blackwell Synergy, which will include all current and back issues of TRANSFUSION. Via Blackwell Synergy, readers will be able to view articles in full-text HTML or PDF format and make use of state-of-the-art features such as e-mail table of contents alerts; personal homepages; links to and from databases such as PubMed (MEDLINE) and ISI; and powerful Boolean searching across the full text of all journals in Blackwell Synergy. Instructions for activating your Synergy online subscription will be sent to you shortly. In the meanwhile, the journal is still available at www.transfusion.org. In addition to our new publisher, we will also be introducing an online manuscript submission system. For the past year, the Editors of TRANSFUSION have been exploring various electronic manuscript management systems for online submission, tracking, and peer review. Our goal was to expedite the review process and to make it easier for authors to submit manuscripts to the journal. After extensive research, we determined that ScholarOne's Manuscript Central was the best system for TRANSFUSION, and we will be working with Blackwell in the coming year to implement this new service. Thus, we look forward to a substantially more rapid system of receipt, review, decision-making, and publication of manuscripts submitted to TRANSFUSION. We are proud of the quality and effectiveness of the production of TRANSFUSION by a very small group of dedicated people at the AABB offices in Bethesda. Production Manager, Betsy Colgan; Publications Editor, Carolinda Hales; Technical Editor, Dawn Rumsey; and Publications Specialist, Deborah Stultz, have worked with unsurpassed dedication, tirelessness, and commitment to making TRANSFUSION the wonderful publication you see each month. The shift to Blackwell in no way reflects on these individuals. Quite the contrary, we have been fortunate to have had such outstanding people dedicated to the journal, and it has been an honor to work with them. So, as we look ahead, we are embarking on another phase in the long and exciting history of TRANSFUSION. We are convinced that this new relationship will enable us to further enhance the quality, attractiveness, and timeliness of the journal to better serve our readers and authors. Your subscription to TRANSFUSION