Abstract
Dear IJT Readers:
I am amazed at how time flies, and that we are now reading the fifth issue of International Journal of Toxicology for 2009! So much has happened so far this year, most very positive, so I felt that an update was in order.
We started the year slowly, as there was a backlog of manuscripts awaiting my attention, and I had a lot to learn about the whole process in general. However, due to the patience of all of our colleagues at SAGE and the stamina and generosity of not only the Associate Editors and the Editorial Board, but also many ad hoc reviewers from the College and the toxicology community at-large, we caught up fairly quickly. Submissions are through the roof, so to speak, compared with the previous few years—if the pace continues, we will have more than double the number of submissions in 2009 than we did in 2008 (maybe I am scaring off reviewers with this prediction—I hope not!). At any rate, I thank both the authors who submit manuscripts to the Journal and everyone who contributes to the peer review process on behalf of IJT, most sincerely.
The transition from one Editor to another and from one publisher to another did not come without some challenges. We learned shortly after the publication of Vol. 28(1) that the link to have our manuscripts indexed in PubMed (MEDLINE) was not functioning properly. Thanks to several of the authors of papers published in this issue, who reported this problem to me, SAGE was able to quickly resolve this issue. Shortly thereafter, it was brought to my attention that there was a lapse in our indexing in Current Contents. This too has been addressed. Many thanks to SAGE’s Chris Richardson, Courtney Pugh, Michele Bitinis, Kristen Marchetti, and Charles Rink for their outstanding ongoing support!
Just when we were getting accustomed to the ‘new look’ of IJT, another, more subtle change is on the horizon. SAGE has developed a new internal design that will offer many advantages. Among these are a clean, modern, branded design; consistency through the production processes, thus reducing time, errors, and double checks; provisions to assure that manuscripts appear online correctly and for search engines to locate the data elements so that content can be posted online faster; and, importantly in these economically challenging times, the new design will ensure that SAGE’s processes are as efficient as possible, allowing SAGE to produce journal content in a cost-effective manner. Issue 6 will be our first issue published in the new design.
I am happy to report that submissions are coming in from around the world, which is consistent with the spirit of IJT, but also raises issues about study design, oversight, and reporting. Use of animals in research, as well as studies involving human subjects, require special scrutiny. A common oversight in submitted manuscripts is the omission of details as to the guidelines under which animal studies were conducted, or the circumstances surrounding Institutional Review Board/Ethics Committee review and approval of human-subjects protocols. Please note that these are important issues. Recently, the American College of Toxicology (ACT) Publications Committee, in collaboration with ACT Council, developed language pertaining to the latter; this can be viewed in our updated Submission Guidelines, found later in this issue. The ACT Policy Statement on the Use of Animals in Toxicology is published in Issue 1 each year and should be consulted as study protocols are developed and manuscripts detailing experimental findings are developed. Thank you in advance for paying close attention to these details!
As we approach the upcoming ACT Annual Meeting, I would like to remind you that meeting presentations could yield excellent manuscripts. I am happy to report that we have a couple of “Symposium Review” manuscripts currently in review. I strongly encourage all Symposium and Continuing Education course coordinators to work with their speakers to develop manuscripts summarizing their sessions. The ACT Program Committee works very hard to select and refine timely, high-impact topics; why not share them as widely as possible? Obviously I would also welcome manuscripts based on posters presented at the Annual Meeting. Details of the ACT Annual Meeting can be found on the ACT Web site: www.actox.org.
I hope to see many of you in Palm Springs!