Along with the Editorial Office’s best wishes for the New Year to all our readers, here is a brief update on current data and projects concerning the Journal. We continue to concentrate on speeding up the evaluation process. For instance, half of the manuscripts published in the two first 1998 issues were submitted in the preceding 6 months. This of course only applies to submissions accepted with minor revisions and rapidly revised; for the others, the average publication span was 7.5 months. The total number of submissions has decreased by 15% in 1997 with respect to the preceding year; the average quality of the manuscripts, however, has been higher, so that the overall rejection rate has come down. There has been no change in the geographical distribution of submitting authors, and the trend to an increasing number of papers dealing with molecular and with clinical neuroendocrinology has been confirmed.

Along with the Editorial Office’s best wishes for the New Year to all our readers, here is a brief update on current data and projects concerning the Journal.

We continue to concentrate on speeding up the evaluation process. For instance, half of the manuscripts published in the two first 1998 issues were submitted in the preceding 6 months. This of course only applies to submissions accepted with minor revisions and rapidly revised; for the others, the average publication span was 7.5 months. The total number of submissions has decreased by 15% in 1997 with respect to the preceding year; the average quality of the manuscripts, however, has been higher, so that the overall rejection rate has come down. There has been no change in the geographical distribution of submitting authors, and the trend to an increasing number of papers dealing with molecular and with clinical neuroendocrinology has been confirmed. An upgrade of our computers now makes it possible to increase the impact of electronic communication in the reviewing process. A more rapid and efficient mode of interacting with the referees will be implemented at the beginning of this year and should result in a further reduction of our evaluation time.

Apart from this, as previously announced [Neuroendocrinology 1996;65:1], development of a special neuroendocrine databank and of attached computer-assisted navigation tools are in progress. This development is part of a research program aimed at designing user-friendly tools for well-defined scientific communities, such as the neuroendocrinologist community, whose relatively limited size is well adapted to pilot experiments. The tools are intended to assist investigators in retrieving information from the bank, by associating a stable graph based on neuroanatomical links to a search engine which analyzes combinations of key words at varying stringencies (i.e. key words appearing in titles and abstracts at set frequencies and/or proximities). The system will only be made available for public use after extensive quality testing. Neuroendocrinologists with neuroanatomical, physiological or pharmacological expertise, however, are welcome to participate in the initial tests. Those of you wishing to volunteer for this task may apply directly to the following address: <biomedscape@broca.inserm.fr>.

Finally, as is true for other Karger journals, a new cover page has been designed for Neuroendocrinology. We hope it will satisfy our readers; comments on the presentation of the Journal are always welcome. 

1998
Copyright / Drug Dosage / Disclaimer
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