Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol 285: R275-R276, 2003;
doi:10.1152/ajpregu.00173.2003
0363-6119/03 $5.00
EDITORIALS
Looking back on the last 24 months
Pontus Persson
OF ALL MANUSCRIPTS SUBMITTED last year, roughly one-half were
from foreign countries. This illustrates the global orientation of the
journal, which is a truly leading international journal of regulatory,
integrative, and comparative physiology. Due to the online-only review
process, the time from submission of a manuscript to the first decision is
only 
1 mo (Fig. 1).
Moreover, because of Articles in PresS, manuscripts are published online even
before the printed version appears, making the time from submission of the
articles to publication extremely rapid
(Fig. 1). This is important in
times where scientific knowledge continues to grow exponentially. Of course,
most importantly, the prompt publication process provides our authors the
benefit of rapid dissemination of their research and results.
The submission rate of manuscripts is growing, which may indeed rely in
part on the very rapid publication policy. Moreover, the articles published
enjoy increasing popularity, as indicated by the impact factor, which,
according to our calculations, has markedly increased for the year 2002.
Table 1 indicates the most
often cited articles of our journal from 2001 and 2002. Because the new
editorial term commenced in the second half of 2001 and this coincided with
the new online handling system, not all publication times were available for
2001. Nevertheless, it is clear that the Articles in PresS option has
expedited the time to publication remarkably. Appetite, obesity, and
metabolism continues to be a very referenced field; however, the area of
inflammation now seems to take the lead in the most-cited papers ranking. The
United States appears overrepresented in this table, and it is noteworthy to
mention that there is also a slightly lower rejection rate for manuscripts
originating in the United States. Thus the higher acceptance rate may seem
legitimized by the greater amount of citations made to these manuscripts (the
latter may reflect a higher appreciation of these papers). Then again, taking
the citation frequency as an index for quality is a flawed approach. The
citation frequency very much depends on the increase or decrease in the number
of active scientists in certain fields.
Of the 783 manuscripts submitted in 2002, one-half of them went to press.
If one only focuses on the original articles, the acceptance rate is at 38%.
This relatively low acceptance rate allowed us to remain within the tight page
limitations; however, it necessitated that we only publish the very best
manuscripts submitted to our journal. The editors of the American Journal
of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology wish to
take this opportunity to thank our authors for submitting their cutting edge
research to our journal, thereby helping us keep up the very high standards of
quality that make this journal one of the leading in the world.
Copyright © 2003 by the American Physiological Society.
