Abstract
When I was appointed as Editor for this Journal, two performance criteria were agreed with the College. The first was to decrease the time taken from paper submission to publication. Over the past year we have made great strides on improving the times to publication. We are now giving authors a first decision within 1 month on >90% of papers submitted. We currently have an acceptance rate of approximately 37%. We now have no backlog of accepted papers awaiting publication. Thus after a paper is accepted it will most likely be assigned within 1 month to the next issue. Our new publishers, Taylor and Francis, have been very helpful in assuring a smooth takeover of the publishing processes, and with assisting in reducing the time to publication. Again I wish to also thank all reviewers for their vital contributions to the processes of peer review, with a special thanks to those who return their reviews within 3 weeks.
The second performance criterion was to improve the international ranking of the Journal by improving its impact factor (IF). Over the past month the 2006 impact factors have been released. Archives of General Psychiatry, Molecular Psychiatry, American Journal of Psychiatry and Biological Psychiatry continue to be the highest impact factor journals in the discipline of psychiatry. Our IF has increased again this past year and is now 1.9, which is getting very close to the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease (IF = 2.0), Comprehensive Psychiatry (IF = 2.2), and Canadian Journal of Psychiatry (IF = 2.5). Our IF has therefore increased from 1.3 to 1.9 over the past 2 years, which is nearly a 50% increase. Of journals published in Australia, our IF is the highest of any of the Australian and New Zealand medical colleges, including the journals of the physicians, surgeons, paediatricians, and pathologists. The editorial team remain committed to further increasing the IF in the years to come. With the improving IF and the rapid time to publication we hope to attract more high-quality papers. The only downside on this will be that our acceptance rate may drop as the competition for publication becomes intense. However, we see this as a desirable step if our overriding objective is to improve the quality of our Journal.
Because citations are the vital ingredient in the determination of our IF, we have chosen top papers for 2006 based upon citations. The most cited paper from the Journal published over the past decade describes the Australian Mental Health Survey and was authored by Scott Henderson, Gavin Andrews, and Wayne Hall [1]. The most cited paper for 2006 describes the New Zealand Mental Health Survey and the lead author was Elisabeth Wells [2]. The eight other most cited papers for 2006 are listed alphabetically in the references [3–10]. A further three of these papers arise from the New Zealand Mental Health Survey, one describes the prevalence of mental disorders in Australian prisoners, and another the prevalence of eating disorders in an Australian twin cohort. Sadly, none of the most cited papers presents the results of treatment or outcome studies. Because improving outcomes for people with mental disorders should be a priority we would especially welcome papers that present data relevant to improving outcomes.