THE AALAS JOURNALS: 2009 IN REVIEW

The November issue of Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science (JAALAS) volume 48 and the December issue of Comparative Medicine volume 59 bring to an end the fourth full year of reorganization of the AALAS journals. Our sincere thanks go to the talented support we receive from art director Amy Tippett and scientific editor Amy Frazier, as well as to the AALAS staff, Melissa Bagaglio and John Farrar, who together continue to maintain a sustained and timely flow of well-edited and presented information through the process from submission to publication. A particularly important accomplishment this year was the publication of Competing Interests Policy for editors, authors, and reviewers. In addition, we have continued during the past year to define and differentiate the content of the two journals. Our main current emphasis is the broad category of infectious diseases, which are classified as emphasizing as experimental models and naturally occurring disease, which are assigned to Comparative Medicine, or quality control and health surveillance, which are assigned to JAALAS. For some articles, this distinction is difficult. Key differentiating features are whether the article is primarily descriptive versus hypothesis based, or basic science versus applied science. Perhaps the greatest change in journal statistics during the past year has been the marked increase in the number of articles submitted (Table 1). In CM, approximately half of the submitted articles are from authors and institutions outside the US, whereas in JAALAS 35% of the submitted articles are international. Thus, the journals are gaining in recognition worldwide. Because the number of articles published per year has not changed markedly (the target remains 10 articles per issue), the greater number of submissions allows greater selectivity in terms of the material accepted for publication. Thus, acceptance rates are now under 70% for JAALAS and under 50% for CM. We continue to anticipate that over time, increasing numbers of submissions and rising standards of acceptability for publication will raise the impact factors, increase the appeal of the journals to scientists, and result in even greater numbers of high quality submissions. Prospective authors should therefore anticipate that the bar for acceptable submissions will rise in the future. Table 1. Journal statistics With regard to species, fewer articles published in CM in 2009 with a focus on nonhuman primates (NHPs) fell. This decrease was due to the high number of NHP articles in 2008 in a special issue focused exclusively on infectious diseases of NHPs. In JAALAS, fewer articles were published on mice in 2009, whereas greater numbers of articles were published on less commonly used species. Specific topics that were heavily represented in JAALAS, (that is, topics represented by 4 or more articles during the year based on evaluation of the topic index in the last issue of 2008) were 2 that also made the list in 2008, anesthesia and enrichment, as well as environment and euthanasia. With regard to CM, the most published topics were cancer (also on the 2008 list), herpesviruses (as opposed to noroviruses in 2008 JAALAS and infectious disease in general in CM 2008), and obesity. We encourage authors to submit review articles for both journals, especially on currently hot topics. In addition, we continue to seek special focus issues for both journals and invite anyone interested in volunteering to serve as a guest editor for a specific special topic issue of either journal to contact me to discuss the idea. Overviews and special focus topics are usually cited in subsequent publications, which has a positive influence on the journals’ impact factors. As always, your suggestions for improvements in the journals are welcomed. Thank you for your support in the development and growth of the journals.