Editorial

Closing the year

This issue closes the 39^th year of production of Avian Pathology. In 2010 we published 63 original research papers, three reviews and three book reviews. Our impact factor of 1.654 for 2009 (published in 2010) was slightly lower than the previous year but we are very pleased to have the highest Five Year Impact Factor (2.217) and the highest Article Influence Score™ of all the journals devoted to avian species.

The journal has excellent and hard-working teams, on both the editorial and the publishing side and thanks are due to all of them. Two Associate Editors, Dennis Alexander and Alisdair Wood, are stepping down this year and we are most grateful to both for donating their personal time and expertise in order to maintain the high standards of the journal.

The Houghton Trust

Avian Pathology is the official journal of the World Veterinary Poultry Association (WVPA) (Biggs, 2008) and, as such, it receives submissions from all over the world. As regular readers will know, the journal is owned by The Houghton Trust, which is a charitable body that exists solely to promote extension of knowledge in the field of avian pathology and to disseminate that knowledge. The production of Avian Pathology is therefore a major part of this mission, and royalties from annual subscriptions and article sales are distributed by the Trust in the form of travel grants for younger researcher workers and as sponsorship for the Houghton Lecture that is presented at each WVPA Congress. The Houghton Lecture is also published as a review in Avian Pathology (e.g. Kaiser, 2010). Subscriptions to Avian Pathology have also been donated to selected libraries in developing countries that have an interest in poultry.

The Trust was so-named in recognition of the former Houghton Poultry Research Station in Cambridgeshire, where many major advances were made in the understanding of several important poultry diseases. Readers who turn back to Volume 1, Issue 1 of Avian Pathology will find that, of the five original articles published, four emanated from Houghton. They involved eight different authors from the Research Station, two of whom subsequently became Editor-in-Chief of the journal, thus demonstrating the long-standing connection between Houghton and the journal.

Important new developments

This year has seen some very useful developments for Avian Pathology including an increased allocation of free colour pages. This is a feature much appreciated by authors and readers alike. Colour figures are always reproduced as such on-line, although charges may be levied for some that do not necessarily require colour in print. The publishers can now host very high resolution figures online as supplementary material, so authors are strongly encouraged to produce their figures at a high resolution (600 dpi or more) in order to take advantage of this.

Another recent innovation is the use of ‘iFirst’. This is Taylor & Francis' own early online-publication system, which makes new knowledge available in the shortest possible time. iFirst articles that are published with page numbers can be cited as usual while ‘forthcoming articles’ can be cited using their Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs), in addition to the article and journal titles. The DOI is a unique number assigned to an article that stays with that article throughout its life. iFirst articles reach the public domain earlier and are therefore available for longer.

Avian Pathology is an iOpenAccess journal. This means that authors whose manuscripts are accepted have the option to pay a one-off fee in order to make their article immediately and freely available via the journal's website.

Incentives for subscribers and reviewers

Members of the WVPA enjoy a reduced journal subscription rate, as indicated on the inside front cover of the journal and mentioned in more detail under ‘WVPA Matters’. All back issues for the year of the subscription will become available for those who subscribe part way through the year.

One of the more challenging aspects of being an editor of Avian Pathology is finding willing reviewers for manuscripts. We have introduced a facility for scientists who are unable to accept an invitation to review a manuscript to provide details of other potential reviewers and this is much appreciated by our Editors. Furthermore, in an attempt to encourage fellow scientists to help in the review process, our publishers have agreed to offer them a 30% discount on all Taylor and Francis books. Acting as a reviewer can also provide useful insights for improving one's own manuscripts.

Hints for authors

Our acceptance rate for manuscripts remains at around 30%, indicating that only high quality manuscripts are accepted. One of the most common reasons for rejection is a lack of novel data suitable for an international journal. Prospective authors are strongly advised to read the Aims and Scope of the journal before submitting their manuscript in order to avoid the disappointment of having their paper rejected on these grounds.

Code of ethics and duplication of work

Avian Pathology has a strong ethical code and does not tolerate unethical publishing practices. It will not consider manuscripts which are submitted to more than one journal simultaneously, nor previously published work, nor work which is based in substance on previously published work. Modern technology can now detect infringements of this nature and Taylor and Francis is working with CrossCheck software which we are able to run on any instances of suspected duplication of work.