Abstract
As Dr Sarah Curran leaves her position as Editor-in-Chief of Prosthetics and Orthotics International, we have an opportunity to recognise the contributions she made that have substantially improved our Journal. These include revamping the Journal format, increasing to six the number of issues per year, early on-line publication of accepted articles in OnlineFirst and improving the Journal Impact Factor (IF) from 0.634 in 2010 to over 1.0 for the past 2 years. Dr Curran has our gratitude for her outstanding contribution and our best wishes for every success in the future.
Thanks to Dr Curran’s hard work, I am assuming responsibility for a Journal that is strong, well developed and well respected. Although the journal is in a very good position, we are facing a number of significant challenges.
The Journal’s improved status has justifiably attracted a larger number of high-quality manuscripts, and the number of manuscripts accepted for publication has outpaced our capacity to publish them in print form. We now have a substantial backlog of papers accepted for publication and published electronically in OnlineFirst. While this makes it much easier for an editor to choose material for an upcoming issue, authors must deal with a longer wait before print publication and people who do not have access to OnlineFirst may have knowledge-access difficulties. We are examining options to increase our capacity for disseminating research in print format, but there are costs associated with such changes that must also be considered.
Our Associate Editors and members of the Editorial Board serve us very well, but portions of the international prosthetics and orthotics community are under-represented in our editorial team. The majority of Associate Editors and Editorial Board members come from Europe and North America, and a gender imbalance exists that is not representative of the clinical workforce. New Editorial Board members from Asia, Africa, and South America will be recruited to enable quality manuscript submissions from these areas and assist contributors when preparing their manuscripts for submission.
During my informal discussions with delegates to the International Society for Prosthetics and Orthotics (ISPO) 2015 World Congress in Lyon, the most frequent comments from authors concerned the timeliness and quality of manuscript reviews. We are attempting to shorten turn-around times in the editorial office and we are trying to improve the experience for our reviewers by introducing more structured feedback on submitted manuscripts. The most frequent comments I received from readers were about the balance between original research and clinical content. In our efforts to increase the IF of the Journal, we have tended to emphasise reviews and original research articles which attract more citations. Case studies and technical reports which may be of more interest to our clinical readership do not have the same positive effect on our IF. We are encouraging authors of research papers to include a section on clinical significance of the work, and we are ever mindful of the need to strike a balance between clinical and research content.
Over the next few months, the Associate Editors and the Editorial Board, in conjunction with the ISPO Publications Committee, will be reviewing the Journal and developing a strategic plan for Prosthetics and Orthotics International. Our plan will address the issues identified above as well as a number of other issues affecting the Journal. We welcome the views of authors and readers in identifying problems and solutions. To this end and to inform our review, please complete the on-line survey (https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/POIsurvey2015) which will remain open until the end of November 2015.
I look forward to working with the editorial team and our publishers in the months and years ahead to further strengthen the Journal, make it increasingly attractive for authors and help Prosthetics and Orthotics International better serve the needs of the international prosthetics and orthotics community.