Inter Research Editors-in-Chief: 2010 Annual Reports

The Editors-in-Chief of Inter-Research journals have prepared their Annual Reports. A summary is provided here.

Subscriptions

For all IR journals, subscriptions for 2011 have rebounded strongly after the recent decline due to the economic crisis. The trend towards online-only subscriptions, which began several years ago, continues; they now make up about half of all subscriptions. IR is currently expanding its subscription base by negotiating package deals for its journals with various national scientific institutions; this will provide many more scientists with access to (all) IR journals.

New policies

There is a trend towards original submissions resembling preliminary drafts rather than polished mss. Editors are encouraged to reject sub-standard submissions without review.

Also, there has been an accumulation of cases where Editors have to wait many months for a revision to be submitted by the authors. After consultation with all Editors-in-Chief of our journals, IR is implementing a new policy: mss will be considered as 'withdrawn' if no revision is submitted within 4 months. If a revision is submitted after >4 months, it will be at the Editor's discretion whether to continue the process or consider the ms as a new submission.

Electronic supplements

IR journals offer authors the possibility of publishing supporting data that do not fit into the article itself — large tables, videos, or mathematical derivations — as online supplements. In recent years, there has been an enormous growth in the popularity of these supplements. However, they do not always meet the high quality standards of IR journals, and often cause considerable extra work for production staff. Moreover, long, complex supplements comprising several tables, figures and text sections may go beyond the intended function of electronic supplements. Excessive supplements need to be shortened, or made available by the author from an open-access repository (the URL would then be given in the published paper).

Marine Ecology Progress Series (MEPS)

The Impact Factor of MEPS has remained at 2.6. Eigenfactor.org has not updated its ratings since last year's report, when MEPS was on the No. 1 position in the categories 'Marine & Freshwater Biology' and 'Oceanography' (among 83 and 47 journals, respectively); in addition, MEPS was No. 3 (of 114 journals) in the category 'Ecology', and No. 4 (of 450 journals) in 'Ecology and Evolution'.

The rejection rate was 50% in 2010. Average timespans for the first round of review have declined from 80 d in 2007 to 58 d in 2010; this reflects the advantages of centralized ms handling via XPressTrack (XPT), which enables the Editors-in-Chief to assist Contributing Editors (CEs) who are temporarily unable to handle a ms. The production period from acceptance to publication shortened to 2 months at the end of 2010. The time from initial submission to publication has been shortened by >4 months over the past 4 years, and MEPS is currently publishing mss faster than ever before.

Aquatic Biology (AB)

The Impact Factor (IF) for 2009 was 1.4 (based on the first 1.5 years of publication). If the present trend continues, AB will soon pass most long-established marine and limnological journals and join the league of top Inter-Research (IR) journals such as MEPS. The rejection rate increased from 45% in 2009 to 51% in 2010. Average time for the first round of review was 46 d (19 d less than in 2009 and 30 d less than in 2008), and average time from acceptance to publication was 49.5 d (10 d less than in 2009).

Endangered Species Research (ESR)

As of 2011 ESR no longer has free Open Access (OA), but the Editors will award OA to selected articles authored by scientists coming from developing countries. The elapsed time from manuscript receipt to the first decision was 43 days, an improvement of >20 days from 2009. The rejection rate increased from 30% in 2009 to 35% in 2010.

Aquaculture Environment Interactions (AEI)

From November 2009 through 2010, 47 manuscripts have been submitted, and 17 have been published, on all topics across the scope of AEI. Articles are currently published with Open Access (OA) free of charge. AEI is reaching a substantial audience through the Inter-Research (IR) web pages. In total, the 17 articles have been downloaded 4500 times. AEI is not currently listed on major search databases. New journals must meet minimum criteria concerning regularity of publishing and established peer-review processes to be considered for listing. As those criteria are being met, AEI will be listed on databases such as Web of Science and Scopus, perhaps in 2011. Listing by Thomson Scientific should allow calculation of an Impact Factor in 2013.

Climate Research (CR)

CR has further strengthened its position as a major international journal. The Impact Factor (IF) increased from 1.73 to 2.25, which is the 2nd highest (after MEPS) among all IR journals; the IF of CR has trebled over the past 10 years. The 5-year IF was 2.21. The number of papers published increased from 58 in 2009 to 108 in 2010. For the first time in its history, CR published 5 complete volumes in one year. The rejection rate was 50% (up from 48% in 2009).

Aquatic Microbial Ecology (AME)

AME received a total of 213 manuscripts in 2010, of which 89 (42%) were accepted for publication, which is in line with the trend in previous years. The elapsed time from receipt to first decision was 48 days, and the 'publish as you go' policy has reduced the delay from final acceptance to online publication by 2–3 weeks, placing AME amongst the fastest of all journals in terms of time from acceptance to publication in final form (with page numbers).

There has been a marked increase in submissions in microbial biogeography and molecular ecology, genomics, bacteria–bacteria interactions and harmful algae, and we have broadened the composition of the Editorial Board to accommodate these thematic shifts. AME continues to be a reference for the international microbial ecology community, despite the emergence of a wide range of new scientific outlets. The impact factor declined slightly in 2009 relative to previous years, but there is indication that it will increase again for 2010, as AME continues to play a leading role in the field.

Diseases of Aquatic Organisms (DAO)

The impact factor for DAO has risen from 1.586 to 1.687 in 2009, the highest for the past 10 years. The number of papers submitted to DAO in 2010 was 274 with a 49% acceptance rate. The decline in acceptance (it was 59% in 2009) is a reflection of the Editors and Review Editors continuing to seek the best available referees. Average time from submission to acceptance was 89 days.