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Annals 2004–2005: A Peek Back and a Look Forward
- The Editors
July marks the first issue of a new volume of Annals. The transition from volume 142 to 143 seems an appropriate time to reflect on the journal's health, review new features instituted over the past several months, mention developments on the horizon, and share a wish list for the types of articles that we would like to see in the months ahead.
Vital Signs
Like good clinicians, we begin by measuring our vital signs (Figure). Annals is in excellent health. Authors are submitting record numbers of manuscripts. We received 2671 submissions in 2004—more than in any year in the journal's 78-year history—and accepted about 10% of submitted material.
The time from submission to an editorial decision continues to decrease. We send about half of submitted manuscripts for external peer review. When we reject an article without external review, the authors receive electronic notification of rejection within 2 weeks of submission in 90% of cases. Most (72%) externally peer-reviewed articles are then rejected within 8 weeks of submission, and 91% are rejected within 10 weeks. Accepted papers usually go through the following process: submission → peer review → editorial discussion → statistical review, if needed → formal suggestions for revisions → author's revision → re-review by a senior editor and statistician → acceptance. The length of this process decreased from 29 weeks in 2000 to 19 weeks in 2004. The average time from acceptance to print publication decreased from 20 weeks in 2002 to 11 weeks in 2004.
About 85 000 physicians subscribe to the journal, and many others access Annals through their institutional libraries or read the publicly available portion of Annals' content on the Web. In 2004, readers electronically accessed the full text of published articles more than 4 million times. Annals' impact factor rose to 12.43 from 11.41 …
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