EDITORIAL Journal progress report In January of this year this journal appointed three additional associate editors and revised its procedures for processing manuscripts. Several changes were effected in the ACS research manuscript office in Washington, DC, which, under the management of Yvonne Curry, assists scientific editors with the production of three ACS journals in addition to ES&T. One important move was to designate one person in that office, Marie Wiggins, as the principal editor in charge of ES&T. In addition, Ms. Curry and her associates have worked mightily and successfully to remove the backlog of manuscripts for ES&T and the other three journals. Parallel to these activities in Washington, the associate editors of ES&T have assumed the responsibility for the choice of reviewers, are now communicating directly with authors following the receipt of reviews, and in other ways are attempting to speed up the review process. That wonderful invention the fax machine has certainly helped us in this venture, but it has been the dedication of the associate editors and those in Washington that has really made the new system work. I am pleased to report that these new procedures are beginning to show the desired result. For the period January through August the average time from receipt to acceptance for those papers received in 1990 was 18 weeks as compared to 22 weeks for the same period in 1989. In addition to this decrease in processing time, the number of manuscripts processed in 1990 during this period increased by more than 100%. The October issue, reflective of our desire to achieve rapid publication, contains manuscripts that were processed with a median time from receipt to acceptance of 20 weeks.
0013-936W90/0924-1607$02.50/0 0 1990 American Chemical Society
The associate editors and I do not feel that rapid publication is the principal criterion by which we wish the journal to be judged. More important is the quality of the research papers that we publish. There are many factors that contribute to the quality of a scientific journal, including tradition, the level of sophistication of the field, and the perception of the joumal vis-8-vis other journals. To some extent, quality is reflected in the reject ratio of a journal, and for many years ES&T has had one of the highest reject ratios among ACS publications. That has not changed in 1990. The reject ratio for the first eight months of the year has been 0.50 compared to an average value of 0.51 for the previous 10 years. Still, rapid publication is important. Authors of publications in a dynamic field such as environmental sciences and engineering correctly feel that their work should be reviewed and published as quickly as possible. The editors of ES&T will continue to try to serve our authors and readers accordingly, consistent with maintaining the high standard they have come to expect from this journal.
Environ. Sci. Technol., Vol. 24, No. 11, 1990 1807
