Abstract
Dear Readers: Happy 2013! 2012 was another excellent year for the American College of Toxicology (ACT) and for International Journal of Toxicology. As I write this very near the end of December 2012, we have received nearly 350 submissions. As of the annual meeting of ACT in November, we had received submissions from nearly 40 countries. Although we are, by name and definition, an international journal, I am pleased to note that submissions from US-based authors have increased over the past few years, as have submissions from ACT members. Please remember that I not only look forward to receiving your original research manuscripts, but also welcome articles based on continuing education courses and symposia presented at the ACT annual meeting. I also invite those individuals who present posters at the ACT annual meeting to submit manuscripts based on those posters to International Journal of Toxicology. Finally, our publisher has encouraged me to seek out timely topics for review articles to be published in the Journal; these boost not only readership (and the knowledge of our readers), but also help improve the Journal’s impact factor. If you have suggestions for review article topics (and authors who might be willing to write a review article), please contact me. Finally, in addition to our regular supplemental issues of the Journal sponsored by the Cosmetic Ingredient Review, we have a couple of additional supplemental issues on the horizon—look for them in 2013!
Editing and publishing a journal is not easy, and is certainly not a one-person show. Once again, I extend my sincere gratitude to my Associate Editors, my Editorial Board members, the many members of ACT who have served as ad hoc reviewers and the many other individuals who are not members of the College, but who willingly review the occasional manuscript for the Journal. Our SAGE team (particularly our Project Editor Peter Alexander, who hears from me multiple times on the average day), Courtney Pugh, our Publishing Editor, and Barbara Eisenberg, who manages our supplemental issues, makes me feel like we are their only journal, which is, of course not the case. In short, thanks to all of you who share the work in getting our journal into our readers’ hands. Thanks also to the University of Cincinnati Graduate School for supporting a Graduate Editorial Assistant for Int. J. Toxicol. This is both an outstanding learning experience for students and a tremendous help for me!
Editing and publishing a journal is being made more complicated because of the increasing prevalence of misconduct, not only in research, but also in the publication of duplicate or fictitious data. According to an interesting tidbit that was unearthed by Associate Editor Dr Bill Brock, the first retraction of a scientific paper dates back to 1886. Misconduct in research and publishing has become such an enormous issue for our journal that Bill and I collected some facts and figures from the literature as well as some rather disturbing examples of submissions to International Journal of Toxicology l and held an informal session at the ACT annual meeting (slides are available upon request). The purpose of the session was to inform anyone who might be interested about in this issue, with a particular focus on informing reviewers that this is an issue that has to be in their minds when they accept the invitation (and inherent responsibility) to review articles for International Journal of Toxicology or any other journal. Unfortunately, as scientists we must also become increasingly skeptical about findings that we read about in the literature—what a pity. For a dose of what is going on “out there,” check out http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/.
I intend to continue to highlight this problem to our readers in subsequent Editor’s Notes.
I'd like to conclude these comments by engaging our readers in an educational exercise. As evidenced by a recent review of my Department’s NIEHS-funded training grant, the outcome of the SOT- and NIEHS-sponsored Education Summit 1 , and a recent article in Science 2 , there is some “mismatch” between what students and postdoctorals are being taught and the skills that they need in the workplace. I challenge each of you, regardless of where you work, to take the opportunity to improve the training of our young scientists as well as to assist in the retraining of our established scientists. I personally plan to start implementing steps to train a more “Total Toxicologist” 1 and would encourage all of you to take steps in that direction too. Any and all opportunities and innovative ideas are welcome if you have any to share……….and might be the subject of a subsequent Editor’s Note!
Best wishes for a happy, healthy, and productive 2013!