Abstract
Thank you and goodbye
Nearly 10 years as editor-in-chief (EIC) of Laboratory Animals Journal (LAJ) is a long time. Now, a page is turning, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the players in making LAJ a success. It is also a time to review the major changes and upcoming challenges. One of the first events was the change in publisher (in 2012),1 with a transition from the Royal Society of Medicine to SAGE publishers, which promotes more than 700 journals, with about 165 journals in science, technology and medicine.
LAJ is published on behalf of Laboratory Animals Limited (LAL), a charitable organisation which uses revenues from LAJ to supplement bursaries. A constant worry of LAL is the negotiation of subscription rates and fixing the reductions for subscribing societies.
The attractiveness of LAJ is essential and is dependent on the turnaround time of the peer-review process, the quality of peer reviews, the impact factor and, most of all, on the quality of submitted manuscripts. The goal of LAJ is promoting good animal welfare sciences and the 3Rs. When I started as EIC, I handled all manuscripts, made immediate decisions or distributed them to the editorial board for peer review.
In 2016, LAJ celebrated its 50th anniversary.2 Within the last 20 years, the impact factor has increased to 1.5, the number of submissions increased from 80 manuscripts per year to more than 230, and the number of published manuscripts increased from 40 manuscripts to 68. Currently, between 25% and 30% of submitted manuscripts are accepted, while around 30% are immediately rejected for different reasons, for example being not within the scope, poor experimental design, insufficient number of animals or insufficient quality of the science and/or language.
In the beginning, LAJ was published four times per year, while today six issues are published annually, and abstracts are translated into German, Spanish and French. Each issue has a news section for news from editors and from subscribing societies.
LAJ adopted the ARRIVE guidelines3 early, and Nathalie Baehler (editorial assistant) checked the submissions for conformity. This was a time-consuming process. Therefore, later, a checklist was added. Despite checking the different points, editors still spend much time verifying the quality of the work and conformity with the guidelines.
The role of the executive committee in shaping the editorial board and alleviating the workload of the EIC was quite important. Recognising the increase in workload, additional deputy editors and additional section editors were added in 2016 (Arieh Bomzon and Janet Rodgers). In 2017, Janet Rodgers was replaced by Paulin Jirkof, and a year later, Arieh Bomzon retired and was replaced by Gavin Jarvis.4 A huge thank you to them for their work. As you can imagine, those changes needed a close interaction between LAL and SAGE, and plenty of face-to-face meetings. I really appreciated the constructive help. In addition, the EIC needed to represent LAJ at international meetings and meetings of subscribing societies such as FELASA and SGV. This was also an opportunity to provide important information to potential authors on publishing in the laboratory animal sciences.5
One of the highlights is the importance of mentioning the sex of animals when it comes to planning experiments and publishing data, and to include both sexes when possible in order to avoid sex bias.6 A negative experience was the scientific misconduct of a researcher who changed the method, but the results remained identical in different submissions – work that was rejected by LAJ but published by another journal.7 Despite this misconduct being published, today this article is still referenced in Medline. This points to the difficulty in the interactions and exchange of information between journals regarding rejected and doubtful manuscripts. One of the conclusions we had to draw was to reject manuscripts immediately when too many changes in reporting or even additional experiments were needed.
Over the past years, the workload for editors has increased, and the interval between submission and first decision is not as short as desired. This raises the question of whether we need professional editors instead of honorary editors. But this would use up all the profit and would make the distribution of bursaries impossible. Therefore, another option would be to increase the number of honorary editors.
Finally, this editorial position has been rich in personal and cultural experience, and I will keep many good memories. I thank the editorial team and the board of directors of LAL for their constant support and good work in promoting LAJ.
Emeritus University of Lausanne
Thank you, Beat and Gavin, and welcome new EIC team members
As the only remaining member of the former EIC team, I like to use this news article to thank my colleagues Beat and Gavin for the wonderful work they have done for LAL and for LAJ. I have really enjoyed collaborating with these two very different personalities. I wish Beat all the best, and hope he enjoys his well-earned retirement and that he will have a happy and healthy time with his family and friends. I am very grateful that Gavin, even though he will step back as EIC team member, will continue to support us as a section editor from now on.
At the end of 2020, two new laboratory animal science experts joined the EIC team to replace Beat and Gavin. I would like to take this opportunity to welcome them and to introduce them to the readership of LAJ.
José M. Sánchez Morgado qualified as veterinarian at the Universidad Complutense of Madrid. He is European Veterinary Specialist in Laboratory Animal Medicine and Veterinary Council Ireland recognised Specialist in Laboratory Animal Medicine. He is currently Director of Comparative Medicine and Adjunct Associate Professor at Trinity College Dublin. He is performing research on various infectious diseases affecting laboratory animals.
Jordi L. Tremoleda is currently a senior lecturer in Trauma, Animal Science and Welfare and the Named Veterinary Surgeon at Queen Mary University of London, UK. He previously coordinated the preclinical imaging centre at Imperial College London, following on a research fellowship at the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine at Edinburgh University. He holds a PhD in Reproductive Biology from Utrecht University, an MSc in Bioethics and Law from the University of Barcelona, an MSc in Education for QMUL and a degree in Veterinary Medicine from the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. He is an active member of LAVA, LASA and ESLAV.
I would also like to thank those section editors who retired or left us last year and to welcome our new section editors. LAJ relies on the networks, knowledge and expertise of its section editors to ensure a fast and sound peer-review process. Their work is highly appreciated by the EIC team.
Even though losing valued team members is always sad, I am looking forward to work with our new editor team and our editorial board to improve LAJ’s performance. We aim to provide a meaningful service to readers, authors and societies, and to facilitate laboratory animal science, animal welfare and the 3Rs in animal research.
We will have more news for you at the beginning of 2020.
University of Zurich
José M. Sánchez Morgado.
Jordi L. Tremoleda.