In this section of Editors’ Update, we ask a group of editors for their views on a relevant topic. The theme of this issue is journal performance, which can be assessed in various ways.

This includes, but is not limited to, the following:
- Impact factor – a measure of the frequency with which the average article in a journal has been cited in a particular year;
- Paper flow – the total number of (non-solicited) submissions to your journal per year;
- Rejection rate – the percentage of all submitted articles that are rejected;
- Usage statistics – total number of electronic downloads, number of institutional accounts and geographic distribution of usage;
- Publication times – the amount of time that lapses between acceptance of a paper and publication;
- Author feedback – feedback from authors on their experience of publishing in a particular journal that is logged in Elsevier’s Author Feedback Program;
- Reviewer feedback – feedback from reviewers on their experience of reviewing for a particular journal that is logged in Elsevier’s Reviewer Feedback Program.

Our questions to editors this issue are:

1) What are the principles that determine your journal’s content policy?
2) To what extent does journal performance have an influence on your content policy?

Giuliano F. Panza
Professor of Seismology, University of Trieste, Italy
Honorary Professor Chinese Earthquake Administration, Beijing
Editor of Earth-Science Reviews

1) I am an editor of a journal dealing with review papers aimed at bridging the gap between textbooks and research articles.
The content of the papers is controlled by the following factors:

I personally solicit papers on topics I consider relevant. These may cover controversial subjects or fill gaps in the literature. In selecting authors, the use of the h-index is of paramount importance. An author with a high h-index should guarantee an optimal impact factor for the journal.

I welcome non-solicited submissions as long as they are clearly motivated and could have not only a large impact on scientific progress, but also in the education of young scientists.

The rejection rate of papers submitted to my journal is mainly controlled by the quality of the papers. However, I try not to accept more than one paper on a given topic in the same year and to keep to a minimum the number of papers motivated by fashion. I encourage a wide geographical coverage in the publication, thus I tend to encourage the submission of papers involving scientists from developing countries.

2) The quality of papers is paramount. I look for balance between classical problems and controversial topics. Speed also plays a large role. Reviewers’ timely feedback is key for attracting authors. The amount of time that lapses between submission and publication is, in fact, a very important factor influencing the performance of a paper, and by extension, the journal.

I particularly value the possibility offered by my journal to publish many figures and tables of original data. In regular scientific papers, these are often sacrificed on the altar of conciseness, and this may hamper the reproducibility of results, as required by Galilean Physics.

Ian Henderson
Professor of Vertebrate Endocrinology, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom
Editor-in-Chief of General and Comparative Endocrinology

1) My journal’s content policy is based on three main principles. First and foremost is good, sound endocrinology in its broadest sense. Following that is originality and novelty. For example, we recently received papers on elephant endocrinology and the endocrinology of sea mammals. These papers were not totally original but they were novel and presented good science. Other areas that I consider original are the molecular and cellular bases of hormonal actions. Research here is exploring how the same hormones act differently in different species.

We also publish special issues, such as an issue that came out recently reporting on a meeting held in Manchester, UK last August. I work closely with my Co-Editor-in-Chief Bob Dores to decide what topics to cover in these special issues.

2) ‘Journal performance’ is very hard to define. I receive regular reports from Elsevier covering things such as my journal’s impact factor and the results of the Author Feedback Program. This informs me, for example, that my journal’s impact factor is increasing and reached 2.5 in 2006. It’s useful – and gratifying - for me to know that the journal is on an upward path, and I also realize IF can be important for researchers in attracting funding. However, there are journals in my field that we are never going to be able to compete with in terms of IF – and wouldn’t want to.

Instead of worrying too much about my journal’s performance, I’d rather concentrate on the quality and novelty of the papers’ content. While a controversial or novel paper might attract a high number of citations in the short term, thereby appearing to improve the IF, if one has any doubts about the soundness of the science, the paper should be rejected as it could, and in reality almost certainly will, affect the journal’s credibility in the long term.

Stefano Ruffo
Associate Professor of Condensed Matter Physics, University of Florence, Italy
Editor of Communications in Nonlinear Science and Numerical Simulations

1) My journal publishes articles in the broad field of nonlinear science, with an emphasis on both fundamental and applied aspects. This field of research grew quickly at the end of the 1970’s. The developments were originally restricted to
mathematics, physics and chemistry. It is now a mature field, which has a strong impact on several other disciplines, such as engineering, biology and sociology.

Most of the papers that we receive are unsolicited, but we also publish topical issues for which we seek contributions from recognized experts. Content policy should be determined by the high standard of the work and the timeliness of the contribution. We receive various papers from Asian countries (China, Iran, India etc.), and many of them are numerical exercises of doubtful interest. However, the quality of these papers is improving all the time and we should adopt a content policy that stimulates researchers to direct their efforts towards relevant and interesting open problems of nonlinear science.

Other factors that could influence journal content policy include: maintaining close relations with referees and creating a referee database with regularly updated (at least each year) personal information such as areas of expertise, interests, absence from the home institution, and so on; and holding an editorial board meeting at least every two years in order to discuss journal policy in detail.

2) Let’s examine separately the different issues.

i) Impact factor: An important ‘objective’ factor. There are ways to increase journal performance, such as publishing high-level topical issues.

ii) Paper flow: Definitely high for our journal and for many journals. However, we should try to bias the flow towards more interesting research topics, which is something editors can influence.

iii) Rejection rate: Currently 50-60 percent for my journal, rising to 70 percent. The rejection rate should not become too high or one runs the risk of rejecting papers that could attract many citations.

iv) Publication times: Having an official publication date can influence an author’s career. Very long publication times can result in massive backlogs unless one increases the rejection rate; but if the latter is too high, it can negatively affect the impact factor.

v-vi) Reviewer and author feedback: Both are important because they can retro-control editor behavior.

Please send responses to: EditorsUpdate@elsevier.com