Published by Oxford University Press 2005.
Research Article |
Editor's Report for June, 2005
In 2004, manuscript submissions to Molecular Biology and Evolution were up, the impact factor was up, and the acceptance rate was down. Prior to electronic publishing, MBE was typically receiving 350–450 manucripts per year. We received 729 manuscripts in 2004 and the current projection is >800 for 2005 with a continued upward trend (fig. 1a and b). MBE published 239 papers (2,361 pages) in 2003, corresponding to an acceptance rate of 37%. In 2004, we published 238 papers (2,375 pages) at an acceptance rate of 33%, which has remained constant through June of 2005. During the period 2003–2005, electronic usage of the journal increased dramatically (fig. 1c). At present, over 100,000 MBE articles per month are downloaded from the journal's Web site (http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/).
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Electronic publishing continues to change the way that scientists and libraries approach the publication process. Institutional subscriptions dipped slightly in 2004 (513) over 2003 (536). Yet, this was accompanied by a further sharp increase of institutional and corporate online-only access through consortial subscriptions at Oxford University Press (OUP), encompassing 1,238 additional sites. Increased access to MBE through consortial arrangements is an issue that Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE) has followed carefully in last 24 months and will continue to follow carefully in the coming years. With more institutes and libraries moving to online access, thereby increasing journal availability to readers, the number of personal subscriptions fell very slightly from 523 (2003) to 509 (2004). Through OUP's arrangement with developing countries, 914 institutes in 57 developing countries received MBE online free of charge in 2004, a marked increase over 273 free institutional sites in developing countries for 2003.
Many journals continue to experiment with Open Access—a pay-to-publish model in which authors assume increased publication charges for producing the journal, whereby free access to papers published in this manner is available to everyone on the web. SMBE is following developments in the area of Open Access publishing carefully. At present, all MBE papers are freely available in electronic form 12 months after their appearance in print.
MBE is maintaining its scientific standing at the forefront of the field. The most common way to assess a journal's standing is through a statistic called the impact factor. MBE's impact factor rose to 6.4 this year and remained stably above that of other journals in the field of molecular evolution (fig. 2).
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Starting in January 2005, six new Associate Editors (AEs) joined the board and two stepped down; incoming editors were Doug Crawford, Chuck Delwiche, John H. McDonald, Neelima Sinha, Marta Wayne, and George Zhang. I am grateful for their hard work thus far and look forward to their continued service during the coming term. Nick Goldman and Peer Bork, who stepped down, made valuable contributions to the journal through many years of hard work, for which SMBE and I are deeply grateful. MBE's current success is directly attributable to the hard work of its AEs and the referess who advise them.
MBE is committed to rapid handling of manuscripts. In 2004, the average manuscript handling time from submission to decision was 28 days. Manuscripts accepted in MBE are available via advance access on the Web site 5 days after acceptance. The time from acceptance to appearance in print averaged less than 8 weeks in 2004. That mark is two-third of its 2003 value and is stable in 2005. The May and April 2005 issues were larger to reduce backlog and maintain rapid publication.
What topics are currently hot in MBE? Table 1 lists the abstracts and full portable document format articles that received the most hits at the Web site over the 12 months ending June 2005. The titles provide an indication of what sorts of evolutionary topics have the attention of those who access our journal through the web. Some of the journal's most highly accessed papers appeared 20 years ago, attesting to MBE's tradition of long-lasting scientific advances. Table 2 provides an overview of those MBE papers from 2003 and 2004 that are currently receiving the most citations.
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In 2004, we introduced a new category of papers in MBE called Letters. They have an abstract, are short and to the point, and present results (not just debate). We have received 109 submissions as Letters thus far, I hope that readers are finding them to be an interesting addition to the journal.
The Editorial Office is running smoothly. The electronic manuscript handling system is running smoothly. It was a good year for the journal.
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