L WALTER J. MURPHY, EDITOR
Publication Scheduling ‘
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ISITOHS to our editorial officesat 1155-16th St. in Waahington are always impressed by the publication machinery for handling the B o d of manuacriptaoffered for consideration. Particularly interesting is the manuscript review office,where an assistant editor, an editorial assistant, and a stenogmpher handle approximately 1500 manuscripts for INDUSTRIAL AND ENQINEERINQ CHEMISTRY and Analytical Chemistry each year. This officemaintains the active records and carries out most of the detailed steps involved in the review of the approximately WO manuscripts that are beingprocessed at any given time. From the customary form acknowledgment card sent upon i-eceipt of the manuscript, to a comparable form prepared when the manuscript is accepted, this officeaverages about ten individual mailings per contributed paper. Between the two simple operatione at each terminus of the procedure the steps are usually far from routine. Two reviewers are selected for their special competence in the paper’s field and asked to submit detailed critical comments to us. If their evaluations vary substantially, more critics are sought. Their replies are carefully studied before t r a n s h i o n to the author. Worts are made to delete any extraneous or too objective comments, although reviews usually can he forwarded as received. Comments of author and reviewer are shuttled back and forth until they agree substantially or the basis of disagreement becomes crystal clear. Within the limits of human ability, the process is designed to yield a finalrevised manuscript that can be accepted as authoritative. We can retain a seemly personal modesty, yet boaat ita virtues loudly, for the Bystem was inherited from wise predeceawrs. Every achievement has its price, however. I&EC’s editors, authors, and reviewers pay for this careful examination with a substantial invePtment of time and effort. When a paper intended for eyentual publication is subnlitted to a division of the AMERICANCHEMICAL SOCIETY for presentation at a national meeting, the complications of time and scheduling inevitably increase. Ahstraeta must be in the headquarters ofice several months ahead of the meeting date to allow time for preparation of the abstract book. Various divisions iseue preprints or conduct review procedures re- . quiring the paper itself to be completed and in their bands well in advance of the meeting. Heretofore, the editors of I&EC have not been very sggres sixye in encouraging authors to submit papers for publication prior to the m e e t i i presentation, even though thismeant that the total time from original preparation for the division tofinal publication in I&ECoften took many months. Our actions were conditioned by the knowledge that comments following presentation of the paper sometimes led to revisions or even further experimentalwork.
But the results were not completely satkfactory for the author. Publicstion wrw delayed. Worse still, if much interest was aroused by his presentation of the paper at the meeting, he had only the alternatives of providing duplicate copies for those who wrote for them, or of replying that the paper was being considered for publication and the editors could advise shout the prospects. Neither was this a good situation for the editors. We are very glad to have the author supply copies in answer to requesta, 80 long as the drafta are clearly marked “Property of the AMERICAN CHEMICAL SoCIETY. Not for Publication.” But control is uncertain and the situation awkward. The second alternative leads to time-consuming correspondence. In the future, we can expect developments that will make it increasingly desirable to shorten the submission-to-publication process in any reasonable way. The recent studiw by the Council concerning the national meeting program suggest that more and more divisions will strengthen their pre-acreening procedures for meeting papers. The Division of Physical and Inorganic Chemistry has recently annonnced such a move. These steps, which we heartily endorse, will add their bit to time requirements. We have decided to encourage national meeting authors to submit three publication drafts of the manuscript direct to the editor aa soon as prepared. We hope these manusoripts will come to us several months before the meeting. In such instances the publication reviewer’s oommenta often will be available to enable the author to present a better paper at the meeting. Even though the presentation version should not be identical in form or, necessarily, content with the puhlication draft, it would improve the quality of the meeting paper. We hope the experiment is succeasful. We know that some of the papers still will require revision, or may even be withdrawn in the light of the m t i o n followingpresentation. But we trust the great majority will be prepared originally with such care that few completely new versions will be necessary. The inducement is substantial. We should he able to reduce the over-all time for Bome papers by two to four months. The editors have an incentive, too, for making the new procedure work. We would be much happier to 8ee the outstsnding meeting papers appear in print within a month to six weeks after presentation, How well the new procedure will work remains to be seen. It depends greatly on the cooperativeness of the divisional officers and of the authors. And, of course, it will he sncceasful only if the author actually completes his paper two to three months ahead of the meeting date. We hope enough authors will be sufficientlyinterested to give us a good opportunity to tryout the method.
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