New Initiatives for AJNR

Mauricio Castillo

doi:10.3174/ajnr.A0780

As I begin my tenure as Editor-in-Chief for the American Journal of Neuroradiology, I would like to briefly state my main goals. I hope to continue the traditions of strong leadership and innovation established by the 4 previous editors, Drs. Taveras, Huckman, Quencer, and Grossman. AJNR will continue to publish the highest quality scientific papers accompanied by pertinent clinical state-of-the-art reviews. Although there continues to be an interest in the publication of Case Reports and Technical Notes, their number will be decreased considerably (no more than 5 per issue) to provide more space for Original Research articles. Below is a summary of some of the changes taking place immediately:

Publication Preview

With this issue of AJNR, our readers will be able to access articles in an electronic form before they appear in the print version of the Journal. “Publication Preview” refers to articles published in an advance on-line version of AJNR. Other journals refer to this activity as “continuous publication,” “fast track,” “publish ahead of print,” and “on-line first.” The concept behind all of these terms is the same and refers to the ability to read articles before they appear in printed form.

Publication Preview will offer articles only after they have been peer reviewed, accepted, edited, and are in their final form. Thus, the articles available in Publication Preview will be identical to those in the printed journal. Select on-line articles will continue to contain additional material, such as tables and videos, and these enhancements will be clearly marked in the Table of Contents of the print version of the Journal. The period of time from final acceptance to publication is now as short as 6–7 months and we hope that articles will appear in Publication Preview 4 months before they are printed. Electronic articles will be posted on the Journal's Publication Preview Website on a weekly basis. The National Library of Medicine now recognizes the time of on-line appearance as the official publication date for articles. Thus, the electronic version of AJNR contains past and “future” articles and has become the de facto the journal of record.

Electronic articles will be clearly identified with a DOI (digital object identifier). This unique series of numbers and letters permanently identifies each article and serves as a substitute for a traditional reference citation until an article appears in print. Three days after an article appears on Publication Preview its citation will be transferred to Medline/PubMed, making it available to all AJNR subscribers. Although Publication Preview makes its debut during my editorship, most of the credit for instituting it goes to the previous Editor-in-Chief, Robert Grossman. We are also in the process of re-designing the AJNR Website to make this feature easily recognizable.

Open Access

Currently there is considerable attention being paid by the government and media to open access initiatives. Complete open access means that all articles accepted are immediately available on-line without any charge. Until now, AJNR has offered 2 types of limited open access: all Review Articles are available for free after they are published and the entire contents of the Journal is available 18 months after publication. In support of the open access initiative, AJNR will continue to provide Review Articles free of charge when they are first posted on-line and will now make the entire journal available 12 months after it is printed. Additionally, all articles that stem from NIH-funded projects will have open access when they appear in Publication Preview.

Senior Editors

I am grateful all the Senior Editors have accepted my invitations to continue in their current positions. In addition, Dr. Lucien Levy has joined us as a Senior Editor. Dr. Levy is currently Professor and Chief of Neuroradiology at the George Washington University Medical Center. His expertise in functional neuroimaging makes him a critical and most welcome addition to our Journal. I will be revising the Editorial Board within the next few months also.

Consultants to the Editor

Dr. Tim Roberts has been named as Special Consultant in the area of physics. He will also be responsible for a series of Review Articles in that topic area that will begin with this issue. Alicia Toledano, an expert on the application of statistics to imaging studies, has accepted an invitation to become our statistician. I thank them both for helping us further improve our journal.

A Note of Thanks

I have been very lucky to have worked with the 3 previous editors of AJNR, twice as a Senior Editor. What I have learned from each them will be put to good use during my tenure. Of these 3 individuals, I especially want to thank Dr. Robert M. Quencer, who has been a mentor and friend for more than 25 years.