At last year's Board Meeting in Warsaw, Poland, the board discussed and approved implementing a new structure that will introduce Associate Editors in the review process. This new structure will assist in the way manuscripts will be reviewed in order to stream line the flow and expedite reviews in order to accelerate the publication of accepted manuscripts. Also approved at the meeting was a plan to include a category Rapid (Short) Communications with the aim that the time to an initial decision will be short. Details can be found in the Instructions to Authors on the Journal website, www.informahealthcare.com/rab.
In looking back on the previous year, we would like to recognize our guest Editors, Dr. David Brenner and Dr. Jacqueline Williams for the special issue Overview of Research from the Centers for Medical Countermeasures against Radiation. In looking forward, we will be publishing papers presented at the 7th Auger Symposium in Forschungszentrum Jülich (Germany) guest edited by Drs. Ekkehard Pomplun and Ralf Kriehuber, a special issue on Bystander Effects with guest editors Drs. Munira Kadhim and Carmel Mothersill and papers presented at the DoReMi Stem Cell and DNA Damage Workshop presented in Oxford with guest Editor Dr. Ken Raj.
Also over the last year, the Journal has been E-publishing manuscripts under a Just Accepted category that has been received very well by our authors. Just Accepted manuscripts are papers published online in their final submitted format within two days of acceptance. These manuscripts still undergo copy editing and typesetting for the print issue and following authors’ corrections will replace the Just Accepted version as Early Online manuscripts. These manuscripts can be accessed on the Journal website www.informahealthcare.com/rab.
Also, we now have a Twitter account (@IntJRadBiol) and a LinkedIn page through which our readers can connect with us. We encourage our readers to use this site to provide their thoughts about the papers in the Journal and let us know if they find our Diary of Events useful. Please also submit, to the Managing Editor, information on upcoming meetings, that would be of interest to our readers, and can be included in our Diary of Events. Time lines for such submissions should recognize the 3-4 month time period for publication.
Finally we remind all our readers and authors that ethics in publishing is a very serious issue, that the Journal and Publisher are members of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and we follow their guidelines in supporting integrity in Publishing. These guidelines can be accessed at www.publicationethics.org.