Abstract
Journal statistics are too often not transparent to readers and authors. It is my opinion that this transparency allows both readers and authors necessary information to assist them as they judge journal quality or decide if a journal is a good match for their manuscript. With this in mind I would like to share a summary of the statistics for Research on Aging for 2011. A total of 125 manuscripts were submitted in 2011. We have built an inventory of accepted papers an thus publish them online first as they await actual print publication. We currently have 27 accepted manuscripts published online and have a backlog of approximately 4 issues. At the end of 2011 we had 31 pending manuscripts in various stages of review and awaiting revision. We accepted 28% of manuscripts upon initial submission, 17% with minor revisions, and 22% were given a chance to be revised. Roughly a third of all original submissions were rejected.
Research on Aging is an international journal. In 2011 we have had 56 submissions from 20 countries and accepted 38.5% from 11 different countries. While we had fewer international submissions than the year before, they were of higher quality resulting in a larger acceptance rate.
When I became Editor in Chief at the beginning of the year I wanted to improve our turnaround time. We have drastically improved this target. The average time from submission to decision on original manuscripts for 2011 was 48 days (135 days in 2010). The average time from submission to decision on resubmissions was 26 days (78 days in 2010). This is a worthy target and one that we will strive to maintain.
There are numerous ways in which a journals quality is assessed. One of the most common involves a formula which accounts for the citations of papers published in a particular journal. The most common source for these statistics is the ISI Journal Citation Reports, published each year. In 2011 our ISI Journal Impact Factor was 1.290, a reflection of work published in 2010. The journal was ranked 14th out of 30 journals in Gerontology in the 2011 report.
Research on Aging began two new types of manuscript submissions this year. The Brief Report was initiated in the summer. There were 8 manuscripts submitted and 4 accepted to this column. The most recent feature was the Emerging Scholars column, focused on publishing dissertation research. Dr James Hinterlong is the Associate Editor for these papers. We have had 11 manuscripts submitted in this category and many are in process of revision and resubmitted.
Among the goals for next year will be the implementation of a standardized review form to assure that our reviewers are consistently assessing the same aspects of manuscripts. These forms will allow for scoring and assist with editorial decisions and comparison of papers. Finally, this review will provide authors with a checklist they can use to improve the quality of their papers upon submission, thus improving their chance of acceptance upon initial submission and facilitating the review process. During 2012 we are planning to continue to publish accepted papers online first. Finally, we look forward to a special issue devoted to communication research on aging.