THIS ISSUE OF ARCHIVES marks the journal’s initiation of an electronic manuscript submission and peer review system. Change comes to everything, and it seems worthwhile to review both this very visible change (which warranted an announcement on the Journal cover) as well as a number of others that you may not have noticed.
The most salient recent change is the launch of an electronic submission and review system. Many have questioned why this launch did not occur earlier. This is a fair question. The answer lies in the breadth of the Archives’s review process and the complexity of shifting from a format that had been fine tuned over the years to another without missing a single publication date or delaying the review of a steadily increasing number of submissions.
In any event, the conversion has been made. We believe that the delay has been worthwhile and has resulted in an improved and streamlined system. Some 100+ articles are already undergoing electronic review, the system for which is available through http://www.archives-pmr.org or http://ees.elsevier.com/archives-pmr. Articles currently in review will continue to be processed as they have been in the past. There will be a grace period of 3 months during which electronic submission is encouraged but during which the traditional paper submission remains permissible. As of July 1, 2007, electronic submission will become mandatory.
A related question is: How will this change affect manuscript processing time? The obvious, and probably correct, answer is a shortening of the time between submission and publication. However, even here, things are more complex than they might seem. For example, 3 years ago the time for a submitted manuscript to go from its initial arrival at Archives’s office to its appearance in print could approach a seemingly inexcusable 18 to 24 months. There were many reasons for this but by dint of operational changes, an increased allocation of journal pages, and the cooperation of authors, reviewers, and publishers alike the average time from submission to appearance in the Journal is now less than 6 months, despite the increasing rate of submissions. How much additional improvement can be expected from the new system remains to be established: we expect it to be significant.
The goal of a medical journal is dissemination of accurate, timely, and valuable information to as wide a group as possible. Archives has always striven to accomplish this goal and, we hope, has in large part achieved it. A criticism, however, that has been raised at times is that the Journal is excessively academic in focus and its articles are not always relevant to clinical practice. Archives is, and should be, an academically oriented journal with its focus on improving the evidence base of rehabilitation medicine. In addition, as is true for all medical journals, its published content is largely dependent on the manuscripts editors receive for consideration. However, change here is possible, and again, we hope, it will be for the good.
This issue of Archives marks the initiation of a series of columns that attempt to address the fact that rehabilitation is a field in which the clinician is often faced with conflicting research findings when making a clinical decision. The first of these series is coauthored by Christopher Standaert, MD, and Stanley Herring, MD, and is designed to address controversial topics in musculoskeletal and sports medicine. Additional columns on such relevant areas as health care regulation, brain injury, and medical economics are under consideration; their appearance will depend on reader interest.
A number of other changes are inevitable. One of these is the requirement for the registration of clinical trials. Archives, as have many medical journals, has issued policy on the registration of prospective phase II and III clinical trials, as outlined by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (eg, at http://clinicaltrials.gov). At this time, registration is not mandatory, but within a year or so, it may become as much of a requirement for submission of a study as a review by an ethics committee and conflict of interest disclosures are now. Other changes under consideration include providing short summaries of selected articles appearing in an issue along side the table of contents, an increased frequency of commentaries and editorials, and more aggressive reporting of happenings in rehabilitation from around the world.
The astute reader may also have noticed that the name of the editor in chief has changed. This is a manifestation of stability rather than change. Journal bylaws mandate a change in this position every 6 years. Kenneth M. Jaffe, MD, was editor in chief for the past 6 years, and it was under his watch and skilled guidance that the impressive changes discussed above have taken place. I hope that my efforts will contribute to maintaining Archives as an authoritative source of information for the entire rehabilitation community.
The editors are always open to ideas that may result in an improved journal. We encourage you to send suggestions to ArchivesMail@aapmr.org; while we will not be able to act on all, each will be carefully considered.
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