In trying to find some inspiration for the editorial for this issue of the Journal, I have been reading the editorials of other journals. I noted that some editors provided information on the acceptance rates and publication times of their journals. This is information that is relevant to both the readers and the authors of the Journal of Orthodontics. From the reader’s point of view it provides information on the type of peer review that we carry out and for the authors it gives information that they may use when they make the important decision on the target journal for their publication. So I decided that in this editorial I will provide information on these important topics.
The acceptance rates are shown in . Our acceptance rate for 2001 is 42% and this is comparable to other specialist journals. All the manuscripts that are received at the office are sent out for review to at least two reviewers. Fortunately, we have not had to take the step of rejecting a paper before being sent to reviewers. We will, however, do this if the paper is not written according to the instructions to authors. Equally rare is our acceptance of a paper without changes. Most papers are returned to the authors with recommendations for them to make some changes. A small proportion are not re-submitted. This does cause some problems in trying to plan future editions of the Journal, and we have decided that if an author does not resubmit a paper within three months, it will have to go out to referees again.
Table 1. Acceptance rates
The other relevant information concerned with the processing of papers is the time to publication and information on this is shown in . This is the time that elapses between the date that the manuscript is accepted and the date of publication. This is governed by the “queue” of papers waiting for publication dates. At present this is 7.7 months and is one of the shortest of many orthodontic journals.
More important information for authors is the time in process. This is the time from initial receipt of the paper and the eventual acceptance for publication. This is governed by the time it takes to obtain referees’ reports, in addition to the time taken by authors to respond to the referees’ suggestions. Our submit to acceptance time is currently 16.7 weeks.
These figures reflect that the Journal of Orthodontics is doing well in terms of time for authors and readers can be reassured that we are doing our best in publishing papers that are current and not held up in long queues for publication.
Lastly, this is the final time that the Journal will have sections in which the photographs are in monochrome. Oxford University Press have managed to provide a full colour journal at no additional cost. As a result, the Journal will continue to be an excellent forum for orthodontics throughout the world.