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The Journal of Neuroscience, December 26, 2007, 27(52):14229-14230
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Commentary
A Tribute to the Outgoing Editor-in-Chief
David C. Van Essen, Past President Gary Westbrook will complete his 5 year term as Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Neuroscience this month, and John Maunsell will become the new Editor-in-Chief, effective January 1, 2008. This time of transition provides an opportunity for the leadership and the membership of the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) to express our deep appreciation to Gary for his remarkably dedicated and effective leadership of The Journal.
Gary has been an energetic and innovative Editor-in-Chief throughout his term. He has introduced many new features that markedly improved the quality and visibility of The Journal. These include new features, such as This Week in The Journal (TWIJ); Journal Club, Toolbox, and Commentary articles; and Mini-Reviews. In addition, he has maintained a strong commitment to scientific excellence coupled with fairness in the review process. Finally, Gary has overseen a number of improvements in the manuscript processing and production process. Altogether, The Journal has flourished over the past 5 years, and the Society for Neuroscience is greatly indebted to Gary for his many invaluable contributions.
Because the aggregate impact of this contribution is so large, it is worthwhile to provide a brief chronological summary of the most important improvements and innovations that Gary introduced during his term.
2003
Top
2003
2004
Redesign of The Journal's format
At the start of his term, Gary directed the redesign of the format of the print and web journal, which had not been changed since 1986.This Week in The Journal
Gary introduced this new weekly page, which highlights a paper from each section of The Journal. Starting with suggestions from the Senior Editors, he looked at each article scheduled for an issue, selected four for the TWIJ page, and with assistance from science writer Stephani Sutherland, wrote brief summaries of each article. Based on the number of hits to the website, the TWIJ series has been very popular.Electronic submission
After 3 years' work designing a system and selecting a vendor, SfN launched The Journal's online manuscript submission and peer review system on May 16, 2003.Weekly publication
The Journal moved to weekly publication in July 2003 in order to expedite publication times, reduce the size of each issue, and make the Tables of Contents more manageable in size. Initially, 50 issues were published per year, but The Journal increased to 52 issues in 2006 to reduce publication lag time.AbstractBrowser.pdf
The "AbstractBrowser.pdf" was created to give readers the benefit of a single browsable, easily printed document containing the Table of Contents, TWIJ, feature articles, and abstracts of all papers in each issue.
2004
Neurobiology of Disease section
In January 2004, several Journal sections were renamed to be more inclusive: Behavioral/Systems became Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive, and Development became Development/Plasticity/Repair. A new Neurobiology of Disease section, which highlights disease-oriented articles and translational research, was launched. This new section reflects an emergent set of interests among the membership and has set a new standard for translational neuroscience research studies.RGB color standard
In order to improve the quality of color in the online Journal, the traditional CMYK color separation used for print was switched to the RGB color standard used for electronic publications. The move to RGB color provided a big improvement for fluorescent images and has become the standard for most journals.Special Annual Meeting issue
This initiative provides greater access to the material presented in symposia and mini-symposia presented at the Annual Meeting. Organizers of selected symposia and mini-symposia, chosen in collaboration with the Program Committee, are invited to contribute short review articles for the Journal issue that is distributed at the Annual Meeting. The opportunity to publish a Journal article on an upcoming symposium or mini-symposium topic has been particularly well received by the junior investigators who organize mini-symposia at the annual Neuroscience meeting.Posting of full text from 1981–1996
This initiative entailed the scanning of 67,000 pages of back content for issues between 1981 and 1996, allowing complete open access to journal back issues.
2005
Journal Club
Gary initiated a grassroots effort to engage students and postdocs by launching the Journal Club section, in which a student or postdoc reviews a recent Journal article. The Journal published 55 Journal Club articles in 2006, with an acceptance rate of50%.
Toolboxes
Gary felt it was important to increase the number of method-oriented articles in The Journal without replicating the techniques sections featured in various other journals. His solution was to launch the Toolbox feature, with the intent that authors would briefly discuss recent techniques or resources of widespread use to neuroscientists or would critically analyze standard techniques. The Journal published 5 Toolboxes in 2006 and 12 in 2007.Commentaries
Gary initiated Commentaries with the idea of encouraging short papers on issues of broad interest to the neuroscience community that might not be published elsewhere. Nine such pieces were published in 2006. The series on Open Access, published in September–October 2006, was a notably successful example of the diverse perspectives that commentaries can provide. Other examples include Zach Hall's summary of the California stem cell experience and Bob Baughman's overview of the NIH Neuroscience Blueprint.
2006
Access control reduced to 6 months
After much discussion by the relevant committees and Council, The Journal's access control policy was reduced from 12 months to 6 months, thus making 96% of all articles published in the Journal completely open access.Four-week production schedule
When Gary began his term in January 2003, the time from manuscript acceptance to publication waseLetters
Although The Journal has never had a Letters to the Editor section, Gary thought we should encourage greater online exchange of opinion about published material. The result is "eLetters," an online Letters to the Editor feature. Anyone can post comments on a paper; postings are refereed by the Editor before they go live.
2007
Reduced publication fees for underdeveloped countries
In an effort to provide aid to neuroscientists and students residing in resource-restricted countries and to broaden the dissemination of science to all areas of the world, The Journal of Neuroscience now offers reduced submission and publication fees to scientists working and residing in the countries identified by the World Bank as those with an economic standing of low or lower middle income. Reductions and categories are based on the submitting scientist's work and residence addresses. The Journal also continues to consider requests to waive the fee for well documented cases of extreme financial hardship.In summary, thanks to Gary's many contributions, The Journal continues to set the standard for high-quality articles and fair and rigorous reviewing process in the field of neuroscience. We are confident that our outstanding editorial board will continue that tradition under John Maunsell's leadership. SfN leadership is proud of the progress in The Journal over the past 5 years and of our increasingly international representation of editors, reviewers, and authors. We encourage all neuroscientists to make The Journal their number one option for publishing important research.
On behalf of SfN's leadership and membership,
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