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Three-Year Review of the AJR: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going?

rstanley{at}uabmc.edu

It has been approximately 3 years since I took over the helm of the AJR, and an exciting 3 years they have been. Much has occurred since September 2003. It seems like a good time to reflect on the many substantive changes.

First, let me say that for these first 3 years, I very much have enjoyed working with the chairman of the ARRS Publications Committee, Dr. Jack Crowe, from Phoenix, Arizona. He kept the journal headed in the proper direction, despite all of the changes that were occurring. His wise and broad overview of the scientific publishing environment allowed him to provide valuable counsel to me and the editorial team. In particular, he and his fellow committee members helped us develop proactive strategies to deal with the remarkable increase in manuscript submissions that resulted from the journal becoming Web based.

At ARRS's most recent annual meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, Jack stepped down from his role as chairman and Dr. Charles Kahn, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, was named the new chairman of the Publications Committee. I and the members of our editorial team look forward to a similarly productive relationship with Dr. Kahn. And Jack will now direct his energy and talent to his new role as vice president of the American Roentgen Ray Society.

Staffing in the publications department at our home office in Leesburg, Virginia, has also undergone change in the past 3 years. During my first year as editor-in-chief of the AJR, Becky Haines was recruited from the Journal of Nuclear Medicine to become Director of the ARRS Publications Department, and shortly thereafter Fran Schuweiler, previously with the American Society of Clinical Oncology, was named Managing Editor of the AJR. They have assembled a staff of energetic and capable men and women who skillfully assemble our monthly journal. And the staff person with whom prospective authors and reviewers interact most closely is Diane Trafton, our Peer Review Manager. Fortunately, too, many of the high-quality ARRS staff members who were with the journal at the start of my term of office have remained onboard and provide the institutional memory so important to maintaining the culture and tradition of the AJR.

On October 1, 2003, when we opened the portal for Web-based online manuscript submission to the AJR, we were unprepared for the sudden increase in submissions. As a consequence, and because we were using the same acceptance and rejection criteria that had been in place, we accumulated an increasingly lengthy pipeline of accepted manuscripts, which quickly exceeded our capacity for timely publication, always a paramount goal for the AJR. The time between formal acceptance and publication of an article began to extend out to 15 months, which we agreed was untenable and which we promptly worked to address. We also concurred that it was clearly financially too risky to address this plethora of new material by continuously exceeding the journal's monthly page budget.

Thus, with the guidance of the Executive Council, and prompted by a report of the Publications Committee, certain key editorial decisions were instituted. First, beginning in November 2005, case reports were no longer accepted for submission to the journal. Second, the bar for acceptance of a manuscript, based on the reviewers' analysis, was substantially raised. Third, each of the editors began to play a closer and more personal role in the determination of acceptance or rejection, not only based on the intrinsic merits of a particular manuscript, but also on the frequency with which a particular topic was being addressed in our journal and the overall importance of the topic to the readership.

As a consequence, many manuscripts that would have been deemed revisable and ultimately acceptable in the past are now being rejected. The editors and AJR management staff hold a biweekly teleconference during which all of the manuscripts that are in the various stages of being reviewed are prioritized. After discussion and analysis, the decision to accept or reject a given manuscript is then made. The change in the process has naturally resulted in many inquiries from disappointed authors. I've been a disappointed author myself in the past, and so understand the feeling and try to be helpful and encouraging to these authors.

The increasingly important status of the AJR's online presence has resulted in more and more visits to the AJR Web site (www.ajronline.org). And in July 2006 we added approximately 100 pages of additional text to the monthly journal as the Web Exclusive portion of AJR, viewable only in the online version, which is the journal of record. It has enabled us to economically expand our monthly journal and to offer enhanced supplementary material in forms that can only be displayed electronically. When you are reading through your print copy of AJR, look for the abridged versions of these Web exclusive articles to find the links to the full-text articles and then visit www.ajronline.org to view the articles. Also, beginning very soon, we will offer an online "review of current literature" with rapid connecting links to the cited articles, including those from nonradiology literature. We hope to provide between 30 and 40 such titles each month.

Another value-added service—and a time saver for busy practitioners—that we already provide is called Really Simple Syndication (RSS), which you can use to receive targeted AJR content right to your desktop. RSS lets you select the table of contents' categories that you'd like to have automatically updated each month in your RSS reader. If you haven't already explored the many new features available at www.ajronline.org, you should do so soon, and when you do, check out the RSS subsite.

Over the next few years, we will strive to improve and enhance the content of the AJR, not just with electronic wizardry, but also by a more concerted effort to provide our readers with new, scientifically valid, clinically practical, and intellectually stimulating content from around the world. We welcome your feedback. Feel free to communicate with me at the e-mail address listed below.

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This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Stanley, R. J. Search for Related Content PubMed Articles by Stanley, R. J. Social Bookmarking                      What's this?