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From the Deputy Editor's Notebook |
Deputy Editor estern{at}ajroffice.org
The wise man bridges the gap by laying out the path by means of which
he can get from where he is to where he wants to go.
We recently have expanded our pool of manuscript peer reviewers. Before the initiation of the Rapid Review system, the AJR relied solely on U.S.-based reviewers, mostly because of the time and expense of the postal system. We now have the exciting honor and privilege of working with some of our talented, English-fluent peers in South Korea, England, Austria, and New Zealand, to name just a few. Of course, now it is just as easy and inexpensive to send manuscripts out for review to and from Singapore as to and from Cincinnati.
One of the most noteworthy changes we have seen in the editorial office is a substantial surge in the number of manuscript submissions from non-U.S. authors. This trend also has been observed in other biomedical journals [2], not just in our specialty or in our journal. The timing of this surge in activity is interesting. For the past 3 years, the AJR has seen a stable volume of manuscript submissions and a stable rate of non-U.S.-authored manuscript submissions of 52%. Since we moved to online submission on October 1, 2003, the number of international submissions, and not just case reports, has been increasing steadily while the number of U.S.-authored manuscript submissions remains on pace with prior years. At the time of this writing, 58% of our year-to-date submissions are from non-U.S. authors—from 57 countries, no less. These manuscripts are arriving not only from expected countries such as Japan, Germany, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and Canada, but also now from China, Taiwan, Columbia, Iran, and North Korea. This increased volume of manuscript submissions does not seem to be a transient phenomenon because the rate of submissions continues slowly but steadily to increase. Technology is allowing the rest of the world to bridge the publishing gap.
The reasons for this trend are likely manifold, and any attempt to explain them would be speculative at best. Certainly, strong arguments can be made that U.S. academic physicians have larger clinical workloads now than in the recent past. A corollary is the declining number of academically trained U.S. physician scientists. The National Institutes of Health has responded to this disturbing multidecade trend with several new career development awards, a loan repayment program for trainees engaged in clinical research, and an increase in the size of the Medical Scientist Training Program, in an attempt to alleviate this shortage. We also would like to think that including non-U.S.-based peer reviewers will increase the awareness and stature of the AJR among their fellow researchers.
One might speculate that the quality of submissions might be less. We have not found this to be the case. Just look through the table of contents of this issue to see the high quality of work being done around the world. Our double-blind review process helps reduce any potential bias in referee opinions. The acceptance rates for U.S. authors and non-U.S. authors are similar. The grammar and syntax are not always "up to snuff," but clearly that is not what we are looking for from those authors whose mother tongue is not English. It is the quality of the research, the rigor of the science, and the clarity of reasoning that are important in the review and editorial decision-making process. The hard work and outstanding abilities of the copy editors in our publications office make the AJR consistently readable, despite the strikingly different writing styles and abilities of our authors. To our copy editors, Mid Scanlon, Jill Peters, Mary Rudiak, and Pat Beck, we are all extremely thankful.
Although English typically is used as the common international language of current biomedical science, it is still a barrier to physicians in many non-English-speaking countries. This hurdle eventually must be overcome. Rightly or wrongly, indigenous-language journals do not enjoy the prestige or impact factor of English-language journals. Publishers willing or able to translate scientific writing into other languages will help disseminate knowledge. One such agreement currently is being developed for the AJR, a topic that will be addressed in this space in the future.
For now, we all benefit from the continuing internationalization of the AJR. Online manuscript submission and online peer review are technologic bridges to an exciting international community of radiologists—a bridge to somewhere we want to go.
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