Reviewers
W
h e n I became editor five years ago, you told me that your papers were processed too slowly. You said you were happy with the quality of papers published by u s , but you wanted to see them in print sooner after submission. We heard you and we responded. We responded by increasing our associate editor corps from two to six, by installing new procedures in our Washington Manuscript Office to expedite handling of papers, and by placing tasks such as author corre- spondence in the hands of our associate editors. We think the result is what you wanted. Whereas in 1987 the median time between receipt of manuscript to acceptance was 35 weeks, it is now down to about 20 weeks. The median times from receipt to acceptance for the issues published in August, September, October, and November of this year were 17, 20, 21, and 19 weeks, respectively. Review of research communications for the same issues averaged 9 weeks. Add about 14 weeks for processing the manuscript in Columbus, Ohio, where ACS journals are published, and overall we are now printing research articles 34-39 weeks after receipt. But these averages tell only part of the story. For example, in September the mean time from receipt to acceptance was 22 weeks. Four of the 18 papers published that month averaged more than 10 weeks with reviewers. Two of those papers took more than a year to complete the process from receipt to publication. I know you want us to publish your papers more quickly, but if we are going to improve our publication rate we need your help. When we send you a paper to review, review it thoroughly and send it back as soon as possible. Papers take a long time to review partly because they require substantial revision. In those cases 2308 Environ. Sci. Technol.. VoI. 26, No. 12.1992
we are not very concerned about slowness of publication because the author is ultimately to blame for a paper that requires major revision. We are most concerned about papers that are delayed because we cannot get good, timely reviews from our reviewer corps. Many times we have to prompt reviewers to respond within the allotted review period, and this requires staff time. Reviewers have three weeks to review a paper if they live in the United States or Canada and four weeks if they live in other parts of the world. We have discussed cutting this time by a week, at least for U.S. reviewers, but this would not solve the problem. That is because manv reviewers are just late with their reviews, some chronically. If reviewers would respond within the threeweek period, we could publish papers within 30 weeks from the date of receipt. Although this is not as rapid as we would like, for regular articles in scientific publications it is not bad. For those who plan to send papers to ESbT for publication, we pledge to process them as quickly as we can and to send them to reviewers who have shown that they can review papers well and expeditiously. For those who are reviewers, please keep in mind that others would also like to have a thorough yet timely review. All of us have a lot to do nowadays and reviewing papers is a chore not always welcomed, but it is part of our professional obligation. When you are called upon to review a paper, please help us to keep processing times down by sending us your review within the time allotted.
0013-936W92/0926-2308$03.0010 0 1992 American Chemical Society
