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From the Editor's Notebook |
rstanley{at}ajroffice.org
Supplements to the AJR are one of our responses to managing the large backlog of excellent, previously accepted research articles. As our readers are aware, the May 2006 issue included a supplement on radiofrequency ablation studies that needed expedited dissemination. Fortunately, the ARRS owns and publishes the AJR in-house, thereby affording the editorial team the leeway for rapid change and improvisation.
The editorial and publication staffs of the journal adhere to a relatively constant page limit based on conventional budgetary restraints. But in the past 2-3 years, we have seen a surprising increase in the number of acceptable submissions, most likely related to the switch to a Web-based online submission process. The timing of the switchover coincided, by a year or two, with the "flattening of the world," when transoceanic cables and satellite linkages opened up access to the Internet for previously underserved countries and regions. The floodgates truly opened. And the newly opened pathways became a two-way street, allowing the AJR to include new reviewers of submitted manuscripts from outside North America. The benefits of this are continuing to be appreciated on a daily basis by the editorial and production teams.
One consequence of the increase in submissions has been, as of November 2005, the elimination of case reports from the manuscript formats acceptable for consideration. This ban may be lifted sometime in the future, but not until we wrestle the number of already accepted case reports and other manuscripts down to a manageable size. Another solution has been to expand the size of the journal by adding the equivalent of 100 pages of content exclusively to the online journalwhich, incidentally, is the official version of the journal for purposes of the record and citation. This step will effectively increase the relative size of the journal from 250 to 350 pages of scientific content, starting with the July 2006 issue. So it behooves you readers who have not already done so to activate your online access to the AJR.
In the past, an article could be referenced by a conventional format such as "AJR 2006; 186:1212-1214." The new method, because the repository is a computer archival storage system, will no longer depend on the journal's continuing to exist or maintaining its original name. The digital object identifier (DOI) will be a permanent unique alphanumeric designation for each article appearing in the official version of the AJR. The form the DOI will take for the AJR is:
10.2214/AJR.XX.XXXX,
where 10.2214 is our cross-reference journal designation, AJR is the journal name in its standard usage, and XX.XXXX is the unique manuscript number (XX is the year submitted [i.e., 06, 07] and XXXX is the manuscript number assigned by the Web-based system used [Rapid Review in the case of the AJR], in order of submission). The DOI is designed to assist you in finding the article of interest online.
To see how these DOIs will appear, look at the fine print just above the received and accepted dates and author affiliations in any AJR article. For Viewbox articles and letters, the DOI appears before each title. In the Editor's Notebook, it appears before the References.
Thus, whether one's article in future issues of the AJR does or does not appear exclusively in the online version of the journal, for purposes of citation, the DOI will appear the same.
We will appreciate feedback from readers during the second half of 2006 regarding the "Web Exclusive" section of the journal. The printed version will include the titles of the Web Exclusive articles in its table of contents, as well as a brief abstract in the editorial pages of all Web Exclusive articles, with directions to the Web site. Happy browsing!
References
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