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Brain, Vol. 125, No. 1, 1,
January 1, 2002
© 2002 Oxford University Press
Editorial |
A message from the Editor
Readers of Brain were informed in my editorial a year ago that the journal planned to make online submission available in the spring of 2001. A survey of a substantial random subset of our authors and reviewers in 2000 indicated that 75% were in favour. In the event, there was some slippage in the timing, but we began accepting papers online from late July 2001. The service is provided through ScholarOne, in collaboration with Oxford University Press. By mid-November we had received over 170 papers on line, 2.5 times as many as those submitted as hard copy over that period. In retrospect, we were perhaps less than cautious in initiating a new system just as the main holiday period was starting and, as might have been expected, there have been some teething problems. Many of these were resolved through the skills and hard work of Lubna Zafar, our Editorial Assistant. On the few occasions when these problems affected authors or reviewers adversely, we offer our sincere apologies, and thank them for their forbearance. We also thank all authors and reviewers using the system for the first time who, if they encountered initial difficulties, persevered and overcame them. It is too early yet to say what impact this facility has had on the processing time for manuscripts, but we expect this to be shortened significantly. We are now asking all authors submitting manuscripts as hard copy to consider resubmitting online, because this will speed processing of their manuscript. Moreover, in the light of the potential disruption to mail service following the terrorist dispersion of anthrax spores, online submission may have some advantages for our North American correspondents that were quite unforeseen when we launched the online system.
Brain’s impact factor has been maintained in the current year at 7.30 (7.37 in 1999), and the journal continues to be ranked second among all clinical neurology journals. Editorial policy is not specifically directed at achieving a high impact factor, however, and in particular we discourage papers that are primarily methodological although, by being frequently quoted as sometimes occurs with such papers, they could substantially boost the impact factor. So while we are happy with the present ranking, we are reconciled to the possibility that future scores may not be as high.
The number of submissions to the journal continues to increase, and we estimate that it will be up by about 10% this year. Since I became editor in 1997, submissions have increased by 50%, and my Assistant Editor Carol Lovelidge tells me that the submissions have almost trebled since she began to work for Brain 10 years ago. Although we have been allowed a small increase in the size of the journal, we are still only able to accept about 30% of papers submitted. For the first half of 2001 the mean publication time (acceptance to publication) was 3.7 months. Each issue is now available online at the Brain website (http://www.brain.oupjournals.org) about 2 weeks before the beginning of the month in which it is due.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank Professor John Rothwell (Deputy Editor), the Editorial Board, the Editorial Office and our hard-working international referees (listed in the December issue) and our authors, on all of whom the success of the journal depends.
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