From the Editor: Progress on JOEH procedural changes

Having stepped into the role of the new Editor-in-Chief of the JOEH in January, I have been overwhelmed with the volume of manuscripts submitted to this journal. Significant effort has been made to update the submission system and provide guidance to authors, coordinate efficient peer reviews, and increase communications with both authors and reviewers. Hence, after months of working behind the scenes to compile issues of the JOEH, I am finally able to communicate some of the changes implemented to readers.

In August of 2017, the JOEH, LLC President announced procedural changes at the journal.^[1] Over the next few issues, I will provide additional details and summarize how these changes affect our readers, authors, and reviewers. The goal of these letters is to guide authors on our expectations of acceptable manuscript content, which we hope improves the JOEH submission process and helps readers better understand the details of our publication process.

Journal Scope The scope of articles published in the JOEH remains unchanged: All papers focus on communicating ideas, methods, processes, and research in the areas of occupational and environmental hygiene; exposure assessment; engineering controls; occupational and environmental epidemiology, medicine, and toxicology; ergonomics; and other related disciplines. As a new editorial staff, we have been encouraging new types of studies that I hope will provide insights to developing workplace interventions^[2–4] or technologies that may improve our ability to make decisions on risk.^[5,6] Each manuscript submitted to the JOEH is reviewed for relevance to the JOEH readers and is scientifically reviewed to ensure that the underlying study design, data analysis, and interpretation are sound.

Peer Review A key operational change in 2018 was the transition of the peer-review process to a double-blind review. As has always been the case, authors do not know who has performed the peer review of their manuscript. Prior to March 2018, reviewers were provided with manuscript authors’ names. Today, however, reviewers no longer know the names or affiliations of the manuscript authors. Authors are now asked to upload the title page, with author names and affiliations, as a separate file, which is maintained as confidential throughout the review process. Authors, however, must declare potential conflicts of interest in the submission process. Conflicts of interest, either declared by the author or perceived by the editor, are communicated to the reviewers at the time of the manuscript review. The on-line submission process now requires authors to (1) submit a separate confidential file that contains the traditional title page and (2) complete a conflict of interest statement.

JOEH Style and Submission Updates Over the past several months, we have made important revisions to the instructions to authors that more fully explain the manuscript preparation, submission, and revision processes. An updated style guide, which specifies the formatting requirements for manuscripts, is available on the JOEH website on the “Instructions for Authors” page. This style guide matches the publication formatting (table and figure numbering scheme, reference formatting, etc.), which speeds the typesetting of author proofs.

Please know that following the formatting style is important. When authors submit a manuscript, our editorial assistant reviews each manuscript for conformance to these guidelines before the peer-review process can begin. If manuscripts do not conform to these guidelines, the manuscript is un-submitted, and a request is emailed to the authors with specific items that require revision. We realize this is frustrating; I have been through it myself. I understand that no one likes to reformat references, ensure each piece of equipment has the manufacturer name and location identified, or reformat headers. However, the JOEH receives around 350 manuscripts per year, and we need your assistance in helping us to continue publishing quality papers. In some simple cases, we have made small formatting edits ourselves and provided authors with the revised Word document prior to beginning the peer-review process. We have found that many authors do not incorporate these changes in a resubmission, which then holds up the review process of the revision. In short, authors need to review the JOEH style guide prior to submitting the manuscript, as it contains specific requirements for JOEH articles.

Manuscript Types Finally, Jones^[1] introduced the five categories of manuscripts that the JOEH publishes: technical manuscripts, short reports, commentaries, review articles, and letters to the editor. In late 2017, the JOEH eliminated the category of “Case Study” reports and replaced it with the new “Short Report” category instead. Next month’s letter will describe the difference between the short report and technical manuscript. Furthermore, the JOEH is actively soliciting relevant review articles and commentaries on timely topics from experts in the field, an important undertaking that I will also address here in future issues.

These are just some of ongoing changes implemented at the JOEH in an effort to improve the quality and impact of our journal. I look forward to providing more detail in future issues.

Renée Anthony, PhD, CIH, CSPEditor-in-Chief, JOEH